James and Diane (Rodosalewicz) Copeland as told to Liz Webb

“They saved our lives!” Diane said of the staff and volunteers at St. Peter’s Free Clinic as she turned her smiling face and swept her arm toward the staff and volunteers in the basement of the St. Peters Episcopal Church. 

 

James and Diane Copeland moved to Hillsdale County in 2002 from Sumpter, MI near Belleville, looking forward to their retirement in a house that Diane loves and that is surrounded by twenty acres of land on which James hunts.  After settling here, James was completing his 20th year of work at the Kmart Distribution Center in Canton, Michigan, driving back and forth to Hillsdale.  Unfortunately, when Kmart merged with Sears in 2005, the Canton Kmart location closed and James lost his job.  The work that was done in that center is now done in Chicago.  Previously, James had worked at Firestone in Wyandotte for 15 years before that business relocated to Kentucky.

 

When his unemployment from Kmart ran out in 2006, James applied for a seasonal mowing job at the Hillsdale County Road Commission.  In a pre-employment medical check, a doctor told him he had high blood pressure and since he had no insurance and no doctor, he came to the St. Peter’s Free Clinic for help with that and Diane came with him.  Volunteers at the clinic found that both of them had extremely high blood pressure:  hers was the highest ever recorded at the clinic.  

 

The job James has at the Road Commission is going well and they asked him to join them for five months this winter to do maintenance work for 25 hours a week.  But he still has no health insurance and so they come to the clinic regularly for blood pressure checks and for the medication to control it.

 

In explaining how they came to Hillsdale, Diane repeatedly said, “God brought us here.”  She went on to explain that when they would drive out to look for a house, they repeatedly drove by the same place.  It had a pond out back that was appealing and when she walked in the door she said, “I knew this was my house.”  It needed little fix-ups that James could do.  “The bones are good.”

 

The property they live on provides much of their food through gardening and hunting.  They can tomatoes and freeze green beans.  James advises that “Jade green beans are the very best.”  They especially love spaghetti squash, asparagus, and black raspberries, as well as pears and apples from their trees.  They catch fish in the pond and eat any squirrel, rabbit or venison that James shoots.  “We can make that nickel squeak,” said James.

 

When James and Diane were both working in Belleville (she as a letter carrier at the post office for ten years), they loved to do some vacation traveling with family to Yellowstone, the Tetons, Branson, Missouri, Dollywood, Florida, Boston, Colorado and Niagara.  These last few years have been economically challenging for them and they have not been able to travel.

 

Diane said, “This medical clinic really helps us.  I love to make short bread and bring it in for the workers.”  These patients really appreciate the care and treatment they receive at St. Peter’s Free Clinic.