When Linda Wolf retires from Pony Bird Inc. at the end of this year, she will leave behind a lasting legacy, her co-workers say.
Wolf, 70, of Arnold is leaving Pony Bird after working for four decades with families who have loved ones with developmental disabilities.
“She’s a huge advocate for these families,” said family support specialist Meredith Augusta of De Soto, who works directly under Wolf, Pony Bird’s director of family support and leisure. “She’s helped write legislation. She started this program, and now there’s more than 380 families involved. She’s grown this program into what it is.
“That is going to be her legacy,” Augusta said.
Wolf couldn’t have known that years ago when she started a respite program for families with children who have developmental disabilities.
Originally from St. Joseph, Wolf said she moved to the St. Louis area in the 1970s and earned a degree in social work from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
She then worked six years for the state Department of Mental Health.
“I worked on behalf of children and adults who were developmentally disabled and dependent on their parents,” Wolf said. “That experience encouraged me to work on behalf of those families and lent itself very well to my next position of leading a respite care program.”
In 1984, the Jefferson County Association for Retarded Citizens (later Disability Support Systems) recruited her to start a respite care program.
“I’ve been assisting families with respite care for 39 years now,” she said. “As the years have gone by, my role has expanded. At first, I was pretty much the one who started and ran the program. In 1999, ARC changed its name and we got a little bigger. In 2011, we merged with NextStep for Life and everything got bigger, and then in 2022, we merged with Pony Bird, and it’s now bigger. But that’s OK, because it frees me up for organizational matters.”
While at NextStep, Wolf added the KidStart library, which lends durable medical equipment, such as wheelchairs and walkers and adaptive and sensory equipment, to those with developmental disabilities, including toys with buttons to help develop fine motor skills.
She also added a leisure services program that organizes events to give those with disabilities the chance to develop relationships outside of family and work.
She took all three of those programs with her to Pony Bird in 2022.
“I really do have a passion for this work,” Wolf said. “I knew early on that social work was my calling. I feel that that’s my place in this world.”
Respite care close to her heart
The respite care program Wolf started way back when is going strong today.
“It’s gone from serving 12 families at a time when I started it in 1984 to 389 now,” she said.
Wolf estimated that she’s assisted several hundred families over the years.
Augusta’s family was one of those.
“I know how compassionate she is,” said Augusta, whose son, Lincoln, had a developmental disability and died in 2012.
“As a parent, Linda projected calm,” Augusta said. “In the midst of everything that was going on, I felt like I was in a storm, but Linda was the calm in the storm. She provided me with perspective of what I had to do. And had she not met with me at my house at the very beginning to explain the program and what it could do, I don’t think my family would have been a part of it.
“She’s very much into helping others get the assistance they need. That’s one of the things she taught me, that that’s why we’re here.”
Augusta went to work nearly 10 years ago for NextStep under Wolf’s tutelage.
“What she does most for her parents is what she did for me,” Augusta said. “She said parenting a developmentally disabled child is kind of like being on an airplane and they drop the oxygen masks. They always tell you to put yours on and then assist others. Respite care is like that. You have to take care of yourself before you can do a good job taking care of someone else.”
The respite care program provides vouchers to those who care for children with developmental disabilities to hire outside help to tend to their children while they take a break, Wolf said.
“We serve a full range of ages, from small children born with medical problems or delays to people in their 60s and 70s and still living at home,” she said. “There’s also a range of disabilities. We have families with 2- or 3-year-olds with severe medical conditions, such as if they’re on a ventilator, and also little kids with Down syndrome, who are just happy little kids like every other kid their age.”
Wolf said helping caregivers is key.
“I focus on the family,” she said. “It can be emotionally, physically and mentally draining to care for someone with a developmental disability. What I try to do is help them realize that they do have the strength to do it, but sometimes they need time away to recharge.
“Once they realize that they do have that strength, it’s not only better for the person with the disability, but it saves taxpayers money because it keeps the sons and daughters home and out of long-term care facilities,” she said.
What’s next?
Pony Bird held a party on Nov. 29 to celebrate Wolf and thank her for her years of service to county families.
Wolf said she plans to keep busy after retirement.
“Mark (her husband) and I bought a travel trailer a couple of years ago,” she said. “He loves to fish and I love reading, so we’ll be doing a lot of traveling. We want to spend more time with our daughters (Amy and Sarah, both grown). My husband has a long list of places he wants to go to fish. I don’t have a list of books I want to read yet, but I’m going to work on that. It will happen.”
Office staff who work with Linda Wolf in the department of family support and leisure at Pony Bird attended her retirement party. From left are Meredith Augusta of De Soto, Myrna Winchester of Hillsboro, Wolf of Arnold, Nicole Kyle of Bonne Terre, Donna Cooper of De Soto and Terri Dallas of De Soto.
Wolf said one of the things she’ll miss about her job is planning.
“I have a planning brain,” she said. “It’s going to be strange not to be always thinking ahead to the next event. Maybe I’ll have to draw up plans about when I should plant seeds in my garden, I don’t know.”
Most of all, though, Wolf said she’ll miss the people.
“I’ve had the good fortune of having a long career that I’ve really enjoyed helping people,” she said. “And I’ll miss the people I work with, that’s for sure.”
Augusta said Wolf will be missed as well.
“She is definitely passionate about what she does. She’s taught me everything I know about working with families with children with developmental disabilities. I’d say she knows the world of developmental disabilities inside and out. I don’t think of her as just a boss. She’s so much more. She’s a sounding board, a source of information, a friend, an advocate. To say her retirement is going to leave a void is an understatement.
“She really is leaving a legacy.”