The Honor of Serving Veterans

Connecting the generosity of the community to those who gave for our country

Meet Katie Maxon

I'm Katie Maxon, and I am the chief of public affairs and voluntary service for the Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center (OGJVAMC). I have lived in the Iron Mountain area since 1995. I was born and raised in rural lower Michigan, so, yes, I am a troll, but I was very welcomed here in the U.P. I was married, had two boys, and started working towards a career up here.

I moved up here, right, fresh out of college. I was ready to get hired. I had my degree. I had that piece of paper. I thought I was a genius, and I was ready to go with my degree in wellness to little, teeny, tiny Iron Mountain, Michigan, to find a job. I quickly learned that there were only three positions and all three were already taken.

My first job here was at the CNR bar in Aurora, Wisconsin. Wonderful place. There was a group of guys who came in and played cribbage at lunch every day. They wanted to know, "Katie, what are you doing here? Katie, what's your major? Tell us what you want to do. Tell us what you want to be." Those are actually contacts I still have. A couple of them have passed, but those guys were instrumental in helping me find a role using my degree.

It was amazing to me how caring, how genuine, and how real this group of gentlemen was. They had a vested interest, and they were great. I worked there for about nine months, and then did get a temporary job at our local hospital. Everybody advocated, so I felt like the harder I worked and the more I put myself in, the more the others helped lift me up. It was a great experience from that perspective. They were connected and did a great job of--even if they couldn't help me, they might have known someone who could.

What I learned and what I loved was that the people here were nice. Everyone was willing to help and talk to you. The opportunities were a little bit more narrow, because I chose to live in a rural area. I knew that going into it. It helped to network. Everybody worked hard to get to know you and to give you an opportunity to get involved. Maybe it wasn't a paid opportunity working somewhere, but rather, hey, can you help us with this race on the weekend? That was, strangely enough. As I met more people and learned what they did, I found more and more things in this community that were interesting and opportunities where I could help with this race, and maybe that turns into something. Just be open and look for opportunities, even if it's small.

I have a degree in wellness and a minor in public health, which led me to my passion, which is just working with people. I really got lucky the way things went. I worked for our local community hospital for 20 years. I wore several hats there, including public relations and public affairs, community relations, as well as wellness.

I volunteered at the hospital. That's how I started there. It became very apparent that there were many opportunities at the Dickinson Hospital for community education and healthcare resources. There wasn't the same access to the internet as there is today. Presentations from physicians and coordinating community education were things that people enjoyed because it gave them data. You can now quickly Google this information, but you couldn't do that in 1995 as readily as you can now. Coordinating those things also got me connected with the community. It helped me interact more with individuals as well as our medical community here, too.

You have to remember to be open and creative. It might not be exactly what it looks like. I was young and inexperienced, so I came out of school thinking that there was a very straight path that I had to be on. I have a degree in wellness, and I can work in corporate wellness or cardiac rehab. That was where I put my energy, and I thought that was going to be it. The longer I worked, the more I realized there were companies in our area that have lots of different needs from the local hospital and its entities.

What blossomed was when health insurance changed. We had huge increases in the early 2000s. So many businesses were struggling and would continue to struggle if they didn't make changes. So investing a small amount in wellness gave them some opportunities to significantly impact their employee population, both in engagement as well as cost. And that opened a door to do health risk appraisals in our community.

I wore three hats at the hospital to be able to do what I loved. Not only did I do the community education, but I also oversaw the volunteers and did business development. Sometimes you've got to take on some extra challenges, but you get to keep a lot of what you love to do, too. You might surprise yourself and find something that you're truly and utterly passionate about that you didn't even know existed or didn't have on your radar as something that you would love.

The simple stuff that comes along with coordinating an event wasn't stuff I thought I would be doing. I thought I would be the one out there giving health information. Being able to know that you're going to run it from soup to nuts, you're going to be accepting to the point that you're going to have to expand those skill sets as well. You're going to have to work with local communities and make those partnerships.

I'm very grateful for the generosity of this community and how it partners with local community health care. We got to be a part of all of these organizations that were doing wonderful things for our community. We developed One Big Day for Kids with the Florence County Family Center and the Dickinson Area Community Foundation, and it is still in place today—just a great opportunity to get involved and connected with so many different community organizations.

I actually did use my degree, so that was great. I had an incredible amount of opportunity to be able to interact with our local community and get to know a lot of different businesses as well as organizations. I'm beyond grateful for the opportunity that Dickinson Hospital gave me after 20 years of working there.

If somebody's coming into this area, I would just say get to know as many people as you can, lean on all of those resources you have, be as open to opportunity, as you can be.

Working at the VA

Somebody from the VA contacted me and said, "Hey, we have an opportunity here for a voluntary service chief." You'd be overseeing our volunteers, about 250 of them, and have an opportunity to work with all of the donated funds that come in through the facility.

In my role at the hospital, I was the liaison between the Dickinson Area Community Foundation and our hospital foundation. I got to see, at least a minimal part of, foundational giving in my experience with the hospital foundation. The opportunity to work with Veterans and do the same thing on a larger scale was pretty exciting. I was granted an interview and accepted the position at the VA. Right back in that niche of working with our communities and working with the area to promote the services and activities of the VA.

I've been there seven years now. I spent the first four years as chief of voluntary service. I was prepared for the voluntary part go it. I had overseen volunteers for several years by

that point. Volunteer nature is nothing you can tangibly touch. Volunteers are force multipliers. Every time you bring them in, you see fantastic things happen. The Veteran niche is just astounding--it blew me away. It truly is a brotherhood/sisterhood. It's an instant connection. It was very humbling to watch that come together and to see what that volunteer effort does. It is not just the hours of service and the effort that they make, but even the financial commitment that comes in--Veterans helping Veterans. The service organizations stepping up and providing the little things and the big things that we need.

Three years ago, I accepted oversight for public affairs. In addition to the voluntary service piece of it with the volunteers and the donations, I also work with our public affairs team, our veteran experience officer, and our patient advocates, who help folks if they have a question or issue they need solved.

My number one is the Veterans. I'll share a story. The recent ice storm we had in March, we had a 91-year-old veteran who lost power, so no heat. His landlord made us aware because he had no phone. One of our social workers actually went down to his house to check on him, and messaged and said, he's got another 3 to 4 days yet without heat. We can't leave him there. So, I'm like, all right, let me see what I can do. We've got services through local hotels that work with us and give us a nice discounted rate, but we still have to pay. We quickly put that in place and arranged for him to stay at a local hotel for some nights. We call downstairs to food service, and they put together a nice big bag of food for him. He gets there, and the social worker comes in to grab the bag of food from me, and asks, do you want to meet him? I'm like, yeah, of course I do. He's just got the biggest smile on his face. He was so gracious and so just overwhelmed that someone would do this for him. "I can't say thank you enough." He's said, "I can't believe you can do this." He's like, "I was getting a little chilly. I could get out of bed for about ten minutes, and then I'd have to hop back in to stay warm." Never complained, never reached out to anybody. He was going to stay there with no heat for three more days.

When you hear stories like that, you know you're making a difference, and you know you can go back to your donors and justify what it is that you're doing. You can accolade your staff for the actions.

A social worker physically drove down there to make sure he was okay, and when he wasn't okay, reached out and did something about it. It had nothing to do with his medical care, had nothing to do with an appointment with the doctor. It had to do with the fact that he needed to be safe. And I love it.

We took him over to the hotel and taught him to use the microwave because he had never used a microwave before. We were pretty excited that he gained a new skill set as well. That's an easy one to come back to when you get to work for people of that caliber. You get to work with a team that truly cares and wants to make a difference. It really is a service organization. It's very motivating.

It's one of the reasons I love this community. Our leadership has empowered us--are you doing what's right for the veteran? That's been a huge thing for me, both at the VA as well as the hospital. My leadership always believed and always trusted. As long as you are ethically doing the right thing, you can justify it financially, and can stand up in front of the board and tell us why you did what you did, we are behind you.

I was always grateful to have that security, that psychological safety, to feel empowered to do what is right for my community, what's right for veterans, and what's right for my coworkers. It makes a big difference when you can. I've had a great experience, and I think that's something ingrained in a lot of the culture here in businesses and life. Your neighbors are just people who want to do the right thing.

At the VA, we have both nurse recruitment and physician recruitment. We always work hard to try to bring providers into the area, from general practice to specialty care. We do struggle, but I think the nation struggles. There is a shortage of providers, so as far as job security, just about anything you do in health care, you are going to be employable. Health care itself has grown in volume and specialties. You're seeing fewer and fewer family providers, and more people specializing and getting to a point where they're specializing within specialties. We struggle getting folks who want to commit their family to living here. One of the things is to impress upon those folks is that if you are looking for a friendly rural lifestyle, you'll find it here. We see that once someone moves here, they stay. We usually don't lose folks because once they get here, it is the experience they wanted. One of the advantages we have is the development of virtual care. It really opens up the ability for those of us who want to stay in rural America to be able to stay in rural America and still have great access to quality advanced care that we can't just maintain on site here.

Business leaders in this community understand we need to have a good hospital here, so people will live here and work here. At the VA, we provide care for veterans, caregivers and their families and the majority of our health care is focused on veterans. But we need a local community hospital not only because we rely on them to provide services for our veterans that we can't always provide, but we also need a good health care system for me. I work at the VA, but I need health care. So working together is just pivotal to making it all happen.

When I moved over to the VA, I was shocked to realize what they did. I had no idea the

depth of programs and services provided, and the care veterans receive, everything from mental health to physical care to those extra intangibles that come from donors and volunteers. It really is an astounding facility. It is so important to our veterans. Making sure we honor their sacrifices has been a wonderful message to share.

About the Dickinson Area Community Foundation

My first interaction with the Dickinson Area Community Foundation (DACF) was the connection with the Dickinson Hospital Foundation, which involved coordinating their support of healthcare and healthcare needs at the hospital. Through that, I got to learn about all that they do in the community.

I started using their mini-grant program for all of the youth sports I was involved in. You could get lots of different things for teams, for the little league and youth football teams with just those small grants, and it made a big difference in the day-to-day function and safety. Every coach's box needed first aid kits, and that was something we didn't have money for. We were paying for equipment, so utilizing those grants helped.

From there, you learn about the scholarships. I have two boys who graduated from Iron Mountain Public Schools. The strong scholarship program that the Dickinson Area Community Foundation maintains is amazing. I had a girlfriend in a different school district, and she said, "Where are all these coming from? My kids have four scholarships at the school, that's it, that's all that's available to them." I was dumbfounded because at that point, I became very aware of the commitment. Again, you go back to the community doing the right thing. How many of our community members have found it important to support the scholarship program. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not just DACF offering this money. It's people coming to them and wanting to leave those legacies. The fact that they've cultivated that and they are doing it well is phenomenal.

The more you get to know about DACF, the more you value and see the extraordinary things that they can do.

We were very grateful that the VA has been the beneficiary of an endowed fund. There is now an endowed fund for the local VA, For Good, For Ever. That is a huge security. We have a ton of service organizations that help support us -- VFWs, American Legions, and DAVs -- that you are used to seeing involved with veteran care. Our community is super generous. For instance, Bertha writes us a $2 check every other month. She writes a message of hope every time and a little card, and sends us $2 in cash, which is probably a $1 each month that she's saved from her Social Security and went without something. She sends the most lovely messages about praying for our veterans and their safety. To watch that commitment come through, it's great. We've seen more and more service organizations lose posts and lose their units. The Berthas of the world, I don't ever want to put that permanently on someone. Having an endowed fund created for us through the Dickinson Area Community Foundation has been huge. It’s on its second year, so we're getting to the point now where it will begin to pay dividends to us on a biannual basis. The VA did not find out about it until after it was done. The donor made us aware of what they had done, and they have made it a passion project. We've been very grateful, knowing it is a fund that can be added to and only grow, and it will forever benefit us. We're pretty excited about that.

DACF created a solid, trusted relationship in this community and all they do is good. It has done a great job at maintaining consistency over time. That's what trust is, consistency over time. They've done an excellent job of presenting new ways for people not only to invest but to get help, too. All of the things that they've done over time, they really are very conscientious of looking at need and where funding should go--how does it get there, and how do we do that fairly and consistently, while maintaining excellence. I give credit to the administrator, Tamara Juul, as well as their administrative leadership team. They do a really good job of cultivating and partnering on so many different fronts. Millions of dollars in scholarships go out every year. The organizational support that they provide. To you and me, a $250 grant might not seem like a lot, especially when we look at some of the bigger grants that we get in the business world. A $250 grant to Little League that really does fund all of our first aid kits for the year. It puts ice packs at every field so that when a kid gets bonked with a ball, you can hand them an ice pack. Knowing that those things are there in your community for you is valuable.

I really love to see the growth, expansion, and change over time based on need. They do a phenomenal job of looking at the community and assessing need, asking--Where's the need? How do we help?

They have a lot of niche programs that would speak to almost any passion, from youth, schools, education, health, to wildlife.

Living in the Dickinson Area

I have two boys. One is currently working, and the second is a senior at Michigan Tech. Both boys will have a degree in mining engineering. They follow in each other's footsteps there.

From my experience, I'm an Iron Mountain Mountaineer, so I got to cheer Black and Gold. But, I would fully 100% say we have phenomenal teachers here. They really are committed to making sure kids have a great education as well as the support they need to get it. We all know school isn't just books and classroom. It sometimes becomes a second home for kids. Teachers have to be involved, connected, caring, and providing that second home. I'm grateful for the experience my kids had at Iron Mountain.

We actually bought our home in Iron Mountain based on the annual scholarship page that came out every year in the newspaper. I don't even think I had kids yet. I was pregnant when we moved into our house, and I was like, "we need to live in Iron Mountain because the kids need to go to Iron Mountain and get those scholarships." It was over $1 million in scholarship back in 1999, so I was like, oh, there's where we want to be. But, in all honesty, I don't think you can go wrong with any of our school systems if you get involved. That was key for me, joining the PTO and volunteering to come in and be a classroom mom. As I got to know that staff, I really got to see how they took care of kids, and I don't think I ever would have experienced or known, what great educators we have without taking that step. I really would encourage folks, involve yourself. Pick something, even if it's small. If you've got a job that really doesn't have as much flexibility, even picking and choosing to have work one book fair a year, even just getting yourself into the school systems, and being a part of it, really opens a lot of doors. Again, people are nice, and when you start helping, they want to do the same, so you get an opportunity. Youth sports was a big one for us to connect on that level with people. You give back to your community a little bit, and it was an opportunity to see those school systems work and everything they do.

Once we got to high school, in the fall of senior year, the scholarship coordinator hands you a pack and says, here is when all the scholarships are due, here are all the scholarships that are available through the Dickinson Area Community Foundation, Iron Mountain High School, and 3 or 4 different sources. That doesn't happen in other places.

I can speak to both Kingsford and Iron Mountain. There is a true dedication to giving kids opportunities. They really do a good job of setting kids up for success. I'm not as familiar with Norway and North Dickinson, but I know they've got great staff and are dedicated.

When you talk about school systems, my kids were ready. They went to a state university, Michigan Tech. It's known for being a little tough, and they were ready. They had the foundational education and study skills they needed. I didn't know how to study when I went to school. I had no idea how to study. Our school does a great job preparing those kids for how to be at college.

Working with both the hospital and VA, we have had opportunities for local schools to bring staff members on tours to find out more about health care careers. They're doing those things not just with us in health care, but in industry as well. They're looking for opportunities for kids to be better prepared for whatever it is they're going to do. Whether it's a college path or a local tech school, an apprenticeship, a training, or even going straight to work, they can help these kids navigate where jobs are and what's available locally. They do a great job of working with the ISD as well as Bay College. It's been incredible how our education system has really leaned into getting involved in our community.

What are your favorite places in the area?

Honestly, I love my front porch. We bought our house in 1999, and I live in the same house. It has a stone front porch with a little white picket fence. My favorite time of year is summer, when I can eat my dinner outside on the front porch or maybe enjoy a cocktail. People walking by with their dogs, kids going by on scooters, and kids going by on their bikes with their fishing poles in their backpacks. Everyone says hello. I love, love, love seeing that. It's absolutely phenomenal to be able to do that. I live near Lake Antoine. Living right near the lake, it is about a five-mile walk. It's a great distance, very serene and picturesque. No matter what time of year you do it. Spring, summer, fall, winter--it is absolutely gorgeous.

You can't go wrong at Fumee. I ski, so I go to Pine Mountain and City Park. I like the side-by-side trails in both Michigan and Wisconsin, hopping on and going up to Alpha Brewery or taking the Norway Truck Trail or the Carney Lake Road to Rock Dam, absolutely beautiful. It's a lost treasure for a lot of people. I love coming downtown for the festivals. They've done a great job bolstering those community events and making them fun. So I'm grateful for everything they do.

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About Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center

Caring for those who served in our nation’s military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors since 1950

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About Dickinson Area Community Foundation

Mission

Enhancing and strengthening our communities now and for generations to come.

Vision

​Connecting people with their passion to positively impact our local communities forever.

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