After 25 years caring for people at home, often during their most challenging times, Carl Albright retired last month as a Miles & St. Andrews Home Health and Hospice certified nursing assistant.

For Albright, it was a second career. Like his first career, teaching, his work as a home health aide was largely about connecting with people by listening and understanding their circumstances, and a desire to make their lives better. His retirement plans include spending more time with his five children, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, starting with a trip to Seattle.

President John F. Kennedy was his inspiration for a first career in teaching through the Peace Corps.

“I saw his inauguration on our brand new TV,” said Albright. “So when I was finishing college, I applied for the Peace Corps.” Teaching in a place where people had nothing taught him a lot, he said. “You can make friendships and be close with people of a completely different culture sort of automatically,” said Albright.

After the Peace Corps, he taught at Georges Valley High School in Thomaston, Maine (now Oceanside High School), Winthrop, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., as well as the Edgecomb Eddy School as first and second grade teacher and also as principal. As much as he enjoyed teaching though, he was always looking for something different, he said.

After teaching for many years, Albright was drawn to becoming a certified nursing assistant (CNA) partly by a latent ambition to do something in the medical field – he had been a pre-med student at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Working under the supervision of nurses, CNAs are responsible for basic care such as bathing, grooming and feeding patients, and checking patients’ vital signs. They also offer patients a great source of emotional and physical support.

After taking the CNA course offered by what was then Miles Health Care, he worked at Miles Memorial Hospital (now the Miles Campus of LincolnHealth) in the Medical/Surgical Department and discovered he loved the job.

He enjoyed getting to know the nurses and the doctors and working with patients. Characteristically, Albright did much more than provide medical care. He listened carefully to patients and took pride in understanding their needs and getting to know them as people.

As he learned more about Home Health & Hospice, he was impressed with the compassion of staff members and he liked the flexibility the job offered. As a Home Health & Hospice CNA, Carl could work with patients on a one-to-one basis and make an enormous difference in their lives, both by the way he provided care and by educating families on how they could provide care for their loved ones.

Miles & St. Andrews Home Health & Hospice Executive Director Kathy Bean, RN, first met Carl in 1987, when they were both working on the Medical Surgical Unit of Miles Hospital. 

“He has always possessed many qualities of an outstanding certified nurse’s aide, but what stands out is his intelligent, compassionate manner, his devotion to providing exceptional care and the genuine concern he feels for everyone.  We are so thankful Carl chose to work with us.  He will be greatly missed,” said Bean.