Glass recognized for outstanding volunteer service

Cottesmore founder is honored for years of care giving

Susan Schell

of the Gateway

Inez Glass is the kind of woman who has a natural knack for taking care of people. She considers founding Cottesmore of Life Care center in Gig Harbor, a senior care living facility, a natural extension of her desire to take care of her and other people’s aging families.

“I told my family, ‘When you get older I’ll take care of you,’” she said. “And most of them I did.”

When she sold the facility to Life Care Centers of America in 1996, she continued to lend a hand as a volunteer, something she continues to this day. Her giving spirit results in rejecting any notion that what she is doing is anything special. Life Care disagrees.

At the company’s annual management meeting awards banquet in Cleveland, Tenn. last month, Glass was honored with the Carl W. Campbell Wind Beneath My Wings Award, an annual award recognizing outstanding volunteer contributions with Life Care.

She didn’t have a clue that she would be an honoree at the banquet.

“They called me up and gave me this award,” she said. “I was just amazed. I feel so unworthy. I haven’t done anything.”

Cottesmore’s founder was presented with a glass sculpture of an eagle in flight.

“There must have been 500 or 600 people in this big building,” Glass recalled. “You feel like a nobody and then there you are on center stage.”

Early beginnings

When World War II broke out the Leland boys were unable to join the service. But they had a sister.

Inez Leland was studying to become a nurse at Fort George Wright in Spokane.

“It was wonderful,” Inez Glass said. “I had already started basic training when I joined the nurses force. I had gone beyond the Cadettes.”

As the war progressed, Glass was a wanted woman.

“It was just the right time to go into the service,” she said. “I had a couple brothers that couldn’t go so I felt it was my duty to do it.”

Glass was shipped overseas, but felt the effects of the war before she left the states.

“It was so sad,” she said. “They came in and took two of our oriental nurses out of the training area out to Puyallup or wherever they were. We all wept over that. They looked like Japanese so they knew.”

After flight nurse training at Bowman Field, Kentucky, Glass boarded a ship to a mysterious destination.

“It was very secretive when we left,” she said. “They didn’t tell us where we were going, we just got on a ship. When we landed we heard them playing the bagpipes and we knew we were in Scotland.”

Throughout the war, Glass practiced nursing throughout Great Britain and Ireland. When the war ended, she and her husband traveled, but eventually settled in Puget Sound. Glass kept her promise to take care of her family and built a facility to offer care and companionship to citizens in their golden years. The center was named after a British town that captured the nurse’s heart during the war — Cottesmore.

Reach Lifestyles Coordinator and reporter Susan Schell at 253-853-9240 or by e-mail at susan.schell@gateline.com.