RUSSELLVILLE — Cindy Mahan’s family in Marshall set an example early in her life that drove her to start a program to help disabled children 40 years ago in a drafty old school with one employee.
Today, it has evolved into Friendship Community Care in Russellville, a statewide nonprofit organization with 1,000 employees and services for babies, children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The agency also oversees the senior centers in Pope, Yell and Johnson counties.
“I’ve really looked back, and my dad and his three brothers and Aunt Faye had a hardware store in Searcy County. They took care of many of the young men who did not have a lot of money. He had put them to work, and he had two disabled people who worked for us in that store,” she said. “Our whole family helped with a lot of single mothers whose children, they could not take care of them well; they did not have any male figures. [My family] took care of kids that didn’t have any hope, and I’m sure that’s where it has come from.”
Mahan, 63, is CEO of Friendship Community Care. She started it as M-R Day Service Center in 1972
after earning a Master of Science degree in education and a special-education certification from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
“I had moved from Fayetteville, where I had worked at the Elizabeth Richardson Center, a center similar to Easter Seals and also similar to Friendship,” she said.
“Once I went to Russell-ville, I was driven to make sure families had what they needed,” she said. “I was 23 and just had a whole, whole, whole lot of drive, and I’m still driven.”
She developed a program for school-age children with disabilities who weren’t being served in the schools, and an early intervention program and preschool program. She worked closely with the public schools.
Mahan and one employee moved into the former Mountain Springs School in Russellville.
“It was an old [Civilian] Conservation Corps building … and had the old plank floors. The bathroom was like 50 feet out, and we had a little heater out there. We pulled those kids out there and changed diapers. We had an old pot-bellied stove, and the parents made the drapes. Levi Strauss gave us all the fabrics.”
The bare-bones situation didn’t bother Mahan.
“I’d beg for this; I’d beg for that,” she said. “We just made it work.”
She didn’t feel out of her element at all.
“I saw many, many families in Searcy County … that didn’t even have floors in their homes, you know. I saw a lot of children and families that struggled so.”
The first year, the M-R Day Service Center had 10 students, and Mahan picked them up in her vehicle and drove her then-husband’s car to pick up lunches from the Russellville school cafeteria.
To qualify, the children had to have intellectual or physical disabilities, such as autism, cerebral palsy or epilepsy.
“We developed our own board and set up private corporations and applied to HUD (Housing and Urban Development) for grants,” she said.
In 1974, Mahan received a $75,000 grant to build a facility in Russellville. About 20 years ago, it underwent a $2.3 million renovation, and the facility can accommodate about 200 children.
“We’re just so much more,” she said.
Today, programs are in 37 counties. The main administrative office is in Russellville, but there are sites in Clarksville, Dardanelle, Danville, Siloam Springs, Bryant, West Fork, Marshall, Mountain View and Pottsville.
One of the programs offered is respite care.
“If you had a child with autism, we might go in at 3 o’clock and do personal care till 8 o’clock,” she said.
Friendship Community Care has apartments for intellectually disabled clients to live independently. The organization includes adult day programs in Russellville, Bryant and Mountain View, including integrated businesses such as Pottery Worx, a paint-your-own pottery studio, in Russellville and Bryant.
Overseeing the senior centers makes sense, Mahan said.
“When you look at the needs of the elderly, they have about the same needs, so a lot of our services cross over. As people age, we need physical stuff. We need a place to live; we need food brought in; we need therapies, or whatever.”
The organization has lots of moving pieces.
“I oversee all of it, but I have some good managers,” she said.
Theresa White, director of training and marketing for Friendship Community Care, agreed that Mahan is driven.
“Everything we do is about excellence and quality of care, whether it’s a 6-week-old baby or an 85-year-old senior living in one of our apartments. Every single service we provide is touched by Cindy in some way,” White said. “She has her hand in every single thing we do. I tell people as director of training, this is going to be the hardest job you ever have, but it will be the most rewarding. We’re not building washing machines. … We change people’s lives.
“She believes to whom much is given, much is required. She feels like she was given so much opportunity and learned so much from her father, her whole life is about giving to those who have no way of giving back, but they do every day with their hugs and kisses and ‘I love yous,’” White said.
Mahan said she wouldn’t want to do anything else.
“I think the reason I’ve been successful in this is I have a real entrepreneurial spirit, and I’m truly a builder of anything and any type of business,” she said. “I can’t imagine just working for money instead of helping people. I’m so driven, and I’ve been really fortunate that I could have a career that also gave me so much fulfillment in helping people.”
Mahan’s parents died about 10 years ago, but she has continued their legacy.
“This has just been my life. We have had such a great time developing all the systems we needed for families,” Mahan said. “I love to see our employees, as well as our clients, progress and have a really, really good life.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.