Kelly Baughman once sang in a gospel duo called Hard Road. It’s a fitting description for what was both the hardest time in his life and a profound turning point.
At 50, Baughman is chaplain at Valley General Hospital in Monroe. He took over full time recently after serving under the tutelage of Chaplain Bob Phillips, who left Valley General for a position in Boise, Idaho.
“Fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have wanted to enter a hospital,” Baughman said.
That was before life dealt its cruelest card.
In 1994, Baughman and his wife, Kathy, lost their 7-year-old daughter to a rare immune deficiency. The Lake Stevens area couple have two sons, ages 23 and 12.
At age 5, Melissa Baughman came down with chicken pox. A common ailment for most kids, it quickly became so serious it affected her bone marrow. From Valley General, Melissa was rushed to Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.
“That started the journey,” Baughman said.
Although her immune system was largely destroyed, Melissa “didn’t live in a bubble,” Baughman said. She attended school at Glenwood Elementary in the Lake Stevens district. “She did kid kinds of things,” he said, including quarreling with big brother Brad.
By the time she was 7, she’d had pneumonia 13 times in two years. Pneumonia took her life on March 14, 1994.
Baughman had been a middle school teacher in Monroe. After the trials and the care his family knew from Children’s Hospital, and with Melissa’s death, he felt called to serve in another way.
Not long after losing Melissa, he carried his guitar into the Delta Rehabilitation Center in Snohomish — also called the Chalet — to offer his talents. The Chalet is a residence for people who have suffered severe brain injury.
From that beginning, as he sang a few Christmas songs, Baughman has felt he receives more from the people he encounters than he gives. In grief, in the year after Melissa died, he played at nearly 100 places, among them retirement homes and the Everett Gospel Mission.
Over time, through the Christian &Missionary Alliance, he completed studies to become an ordained minister. A teacher more than 20 years, he still works one day a week in the Lake Stevens School District’s Home Link program. For 12 years, he’s been a part-time pastor at Mountain View Community Church in Snohomish.
In 2005, Baughman returned to Children’s Hospital to volunteer as “the singin’ chaplain.” Now certified by the Healthcare Chaplains Ministry Association, he has new roles as Valley General’s chaplain.
He makes patient rounds daily and counsels families as their loved ones are dying. Some have asked him to conduct memorial services. He is called to the emergency room to help trauma patients. In a senior behavioral unit, his guitar playing soothes elders with dementia.
He meets people of all faiths and those with no faith. “If it’s a faith I don’t know much about, I don’t pretend,” he said. “If they need me to call their spiritual leader, I’m a liaison to do that.”
Monica Sylte, a spokeswoman at Valley General Hospital, said Baughman is starting a grief support group, scheduled to meet for the first time at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 6. The hospital also has a refurbished chapel and is emphasizing a healing philosophy, she said.
Baughman’s presence is part of that. “Every situation is different, and every day is different,” he said.
Having endured Melissa’s ordeal and his own, Baughman knows what it’s like to keep vigil as medical professionals do their best to save a life.
“At times, that part of my experience is helpful, but sometimes not. You need to use a lot of wisdom and discretion in how you share your story,” he said. “Sometimes it helps to show that after a tragedy, you’re still functioning.”
His job takes knowing that patients are vulnerable, in an unfamiliar place, perhaps afraid and in pain. “You’ve got to be able to read people, to know when to pray – and when to leave,” Baughman said.
With an easy manner, he visited an elderly woman Friday, kneeling at her bedside to offer a simple prayer that she’d be going home soon. “Yeah, get out of here,” he said with a smile as he got up to go.
“It’s not all deep stuff,” said Baughman, walking a long hallway to see the next patient. “Sometimes it’s just making people comfortable, and laughing with them.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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