Built on a 'Dream and a Promise' a Decade Ago

Eric and Tammy Hammond

Eric Hammond is a cowboy at heart. He operates a 210-acre, full-working horse ranch north of Pawnee Rock where he teaches people to ride and care for approximately 50 horses. Many of those riders become advanced and compete in rodeos; some even turn into ranch hands. It doesn’t sound unusual, except that Eric’s riders and ranch hands are clients from Rosewood Services Inc. As an instructor certified by the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, Eric conducts a therapeutic riding program for adults and children with disabilities and serves as ranch manager for the agency.
 
“I’m just in awe of what people with disabilities are able to accomplish, given opportunities,” said Eric, who opened the ranch with his wife, Tammy, five years ago as one of many therapeutic programs that Rosewood Services provides its clients. “They are able to feel and do the same things that we all do, you just have to reach them with the right programs on the right level. To see them go from not knowing anything about horses to many of them taking the reins and riding independently, it’s amazing to watch them gain that confidence in themselves.”

Eric and those riders owe their awesome experiences to Tammy, founder and executive director of Rosewood Services. While Eric is the cowboy at Rosewood, Tammy is the unmistakable maverick who turned an unlikely dream of starting a service-provider agency into a reality of serving clients with the agency’s unique and effective programs.

Today, Rosewood Services is the largest provider of services in Southwest Kansas and one of the largest providers in the state, serving more than 125 clients with disabilities and employing more than 120 people in this area.

Rosewood’s ranch and its furniture gallery are considered cutting-edge programs within the industry and they are now being viewed as models for other agencies as possible start-up programs to serve people with disabilities. Most importantly, people with disabilities are discovering Rosewood as they choose the Great Bend agency from others across the state.  
 
It’s hard to imagine now that the business began 10 years earlier with Tammy as the sole employee of a start-up company that had difficulty getting backing. Community Bank, Tammy’s fourth lending institution stop on the path to secure financing, loaned the money to the Hammonds to purchase the initial property on north Washington that today serves as Rosewood’s administration building.
 
To get the loan, the Hammonds leveraged everything as collateral – their house, 50 acres of land, a small herd of cattle. They even put a second mortgage on their home as Tammy had to secure an economic development loan through Dodge City in order to generate initial operating capital for the business.

“I was committed the day I signed the loan,” said Tammy. “At that point, we had no other choice but to succeed.”

In the first few weeks of operation, she hired administrative staff, implemented policies and procedures, secured licensing from the state, Medicaid, a certificate authorizing wage and hour rates, received approval to open from the state fire marshal and from SRS as a licensed facility. She also hired a dozen direct-care staff in one sitting, literally sitting in a circle on the floor in the admin building’s basement because Rosewood had no furniture.  Then zoning became a contested issue and that took four Barton County Commission meetings to resolve before Rosewood was granted a special-use permit to operate in a residential area.

“Our first employees left their jobs on a dream and promise that it would be OK,” said Tammy. “It was scary and humbling, too.”
 
In its short history, Rosewood has faced adversity and hardship beyond what most businesses face, but the agency has cleared every hurdle and today optimism for the future serves as medicinal fortitude. 

“It’s been a situation where every obstacle has created opportunity,” Tammy said. “There were a lot of challenges and there continue to be challenges, but through all of it, there has always been support from the guardians, the employees and the clients. We all have that unity about us, that sense that we’re all in this together, to see that this experience is the best it can be.”

Furniture Crew – Rosewood clients and staff work diligently to produce beautiful, high-quality furniture for sale at the Rosewood Furniture Gallery.  Manager Sandy Smith, a    longtime guardian with Rosewood, is shown at right in the back row.

Rosewood quickly became a popular choice for clients. The agency outgrew its original space within a few months and so the spacious OutBack building was built and fully operational a year after Rosewood opened. The clients were involved with the building process and through that experience the origin of a furniture store was born that eventually became Rosewood Furniture Gallery, in downtown Great Bend. The Gallery serves as a manufacturing and retail store where clients sand, stain, varnish and assemble all the wood furnishings sold.

The OutBack serves as the agency’s hub. It’s a workshop for some clients, a place where classes are conducted and the place where clients gather at the start of each day before going to the many area jobs where they are productive members of the community. Some of those jobs are at the Ranch and the Gallery, but others are at places like restaurants, discount stores and groceries stores, as well as providing lawn care and janitorial services.

Three years ago, Rosewood built an addition on its original building to increase operating space. About that time, it purchased an adjacent house to the south and followed by purchasing another home to the north of its administration building. NextDoor Retirement Facility, the home to the north, serves as Rosewood’s medical department and as a home to care for aging clients as well as those who need situational medical care. The house to the south, the SouthQuarter, serves as classrooms and as a daycare service for employees. All of the facilities include offices and meeting rooms or classrooms. As Rosewood has grown, it has also increased residential homes to provide single and small-group living arrangements for clients.

Saddle Up – A Rosewood client, with the assistance of volunteers and staff, prepares to ride during the Annual Rosewood Rodeo, which is held each October.

At the Ranch, clients have recently planted an orchard of fruit trees, nut trees, and vineyards of grapes and blackberries. Soon clients will be operating a honeybee farm, too. Rosewood also recently started its gourmet coffee fundraising program at its downtown location that allows fundraising groups to keep half of the proceeds. It’s a continual evolving process in the eyes of Tammy and her staff as they continually examine new and creative ways to approach business.

“I don’t ponder why we can’t do something, I focus on how we can do it,” said Tammy.  “We create our best practices every day as we continue to grow and evolve for our clients and their success. Our 10-year success is due to the tremendous, ongoing achievements of our clients as they work, participate in their community and share in the day-to-day joys and challenges of life. We will always look to their success to judge our own.”

http://www.rosewoodservices.com/