This week, Vashon mourns the loss of Chris Jovanovich, whose kindness, selflessness and legacy of community building on Vashon was a shining example of what is best about our island.
Chris, along with trusted and tireless associates, created something remarkable over the past three decades: an intricate network of care for vulnerable island residents and families in the midst of serious health challenges.
Her own gentle care for those facing health crises was the quiet part of her work, but one with enormous, ripple effects — those who witnessed and received it learned how to give it to others.
And along the way, Chris also lived and loved large in terms of her own family — somehow not only taking care of the community but also expertly mothering a beautiful brood of seven children.
How did she do it?
There’s a hint in our page three news obituary for Chris — a recollection by her longtime friend and associate, hospice nurse Kathy Shafel, of a mantra oft-repeated by Chris whenever a thorny problem arose in the course of their work together: “We’ll figure it out.”
Could any words be more reassuring and motivating than those?
Here at The Beachcomber, we chronicle our community’s deep challenges week after week and lay out a rough draft of the history of current events and how they will impact our community.
Most of the work of journalism exists in the space of the “now” — the telling of stories even as they develop, as we watch community leaders and problem-solvers also engaged in the work of “figuring it out,” as new challenges arise.
Developing stories we are following right now include that of Vashon’s Healthcare District, which earlier this week held a listening session to hear from islanders about their unmet healthcare needs, in order to help chart a new course for the district.
Our school district is also struggling now to adjust its constricted budget to its expansive promises to better meet the needs of its most vulnerable students.
Our fire district, under the leadership of new Fire Chief Matt Vinci, is also working to build a more stable infrastructure to meet the needs of islanders, even as it mourns the death of a commissioner, John Simonds. (See page 4.)
And always, we continue to make space on our pages for the public health messaging of VashonBePrepared, a can-do organization that has created a culture of self-sufficiency on our island, particularly in the past three tumultuous years.
And this week too, we have gone to press with what we know about the plans for the Seattle Indian Health Board to site a much-needed resource for Indigenous people in King County on Vashon — and another story which may or may not be related to that, the impending sale of the Vashon Community Care building.
In thinking about all these things, we hope that islanders will take the words of Chris Jovanovich to heart: “We’ll figure it out.”
That statement implies that we are all active participants in creating solutions, but it also, for Chris, meant proceeding with grace, compassion and selfless service to others.
We’d all do well to adopt her mantra — which, in Chris’s case, was never an expression of blind optimism, or a dismissive way of kicking the can down the road.
It was a promise she always kept.
