When you meet Emma Yerkovich of Salt Lake City, one of the first conversations you will have with her is about her son Jim, a champion basketball coach. Despite that fact that Jim is now 71, Emma still beams with pride over her boy. He has always been the apple of her eye – even though those eyes have been failing her for decades.
Through those eyes, Emma has seen a lot in her nearly 98 years on this earth – but nothing has given her more pleasure than watching Jim evolve into an important mentor for many of Salt Lake City’s finest basketball players at Judge Memorial High School.
Despite his many awards and accolades, it is Jim’s book that has been the source of Emma’s immense pride in her son. In 2003, Jim authored “WE: A Model for Coaching and Christian Living”. Emma shows the book off to just about everyone who visits her home.
There’s just one interesting twist to this story. Emma has never read the book. She can’t. Emma is now legally blind. No one even thought to ask if she ever read Jim’s book until her caregiver came along.
Michelle Davis with SYNERGY HomeCare has been helping to care for Emma several days a week for the last three months. Page by page, word by word, the 23-year old patiently read Emma’s prized publication out loud. After 13 years, Emma was finally able to share in her son’s work – not just holding it close to her heart – but hearing it come to life thanks to Michelle’s curiosity and kindness.
When Chris Dobson, the owner of SYNERGY HomeCare in Salt Lake City, called Jim to tell him what Michelle had done for his mother, Jim was touched and grateful. He had no idea his mother never read the book she bragged about so much. He also realized the extent of his mother’s love for him.
Chris says this event has given him a renewed sense of hope in the work he does and the role he and his caregivers play in people’s lives. Chris sums it up like this, “What a wonderful feeling to be part of a scenario that reminds a son how much his mother adores him while helping his mother connect a little closer to the son she loves so much.”
