Kathy Lemmon has decided not to seek reappointment to the Porter County Board of Health. How long has she been on the board? She can’t remember, but it has been at least two decades.
Neither she nor board attorney David Hollenbeck, one of only two attorneys in the board’s 67-year history, could remember when she was first appointed.
“The data collection was a little sketchy back then,” Dr. Linda Boxum, the board president, said as board members wished her farewell at her final meeting Tuesday.
“I can’t even imagine you not being there,” Boxum said.
What’s next for her? She isn’t sure. “I might be sitting in the audience. I don’t know.”
The board has some new members now, and Lemmon figures new blood is good for the board.
Over the decades Lemmon has been on the board, she has helped the county’s health department deal with a lot of issues. “I learned more about septic systems than I ever thought I’d want to know,” she said.
Among the issues facing the county is dealing with mental health issues. She recalled dealing with people who became hoarders to the point where it became a public health issue. “It’s good that mental health is coming out in the forefront a little bit more,” Lemmon said.
“We have our residents who are bipolar and resistant to being on medication,” she said. Their family and friends know what this means – “having to put up with one day loving you dearly and now ‘this is not my husband or immediate family,’ but loving you dearly and the next day writing you a letter and saying, ‘I’m going to sue you for defamation of character.’”
“It’s a problem that people don’t want to face or talk about, so getting it out in the open more by education through the health department would help,” Lemmon said.
The health department is strong on working with partners now.
Hollenbeck told the board Tuesday about a situation in which the health department had to deal with a Valparaiso dwelling that wasn’t fit for human habitation. Before the structure was condemned and the residents forced out, the health department worked with the city, township trustee and nonprofits, including the Salvation Army, to help the residents find somewhere else to live.
Cancer is another issue, Lemmon knows. She was on the board during the pandemic but missed some meetings while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments. “I was laid up for a while, and it honestly took a while to recover.”
“One of my dear friends wrote me a note and said, ‘Don’t worry, no one else is out having fun,’” she said.
For Lemmon, cancer was personal, but she still considers it a public health concern. “I honestly believe environmental factors have a lot to do with it,” she said.
“My oncologist had said if my cancer would come back, it would be aggressive and lung cancer. He said almost everyone in Northwest Indiana has nodules on their lungs from the pollution that we’ve breathed,” she said.
Lemmon, a retired nurse, spent most of her career working with pediatric patients. Having graduated from a three-year diploma school in 1961, she figures she’s old school and should make way now for new blood on the board. “It’s a changing time,” she said.
“It’s supposed to be a balance of Republicans and Democrats” on the board, Lemmon said. “I don’t think most people are aware of that. I never felt during my time on there that we decided things along party lines. It was strictly trying to do what was best for the total county, the 170,000 or 180,000 people within our county.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
