Bertha Davis claims she “closed” Webster Elementary School when she and the secretary were the last school staff to leave the building in 1980. She had taught there for 50 years.

Nearly 30 years later she’s presiding over a grand opening instead, as one of the first patients at Ballard Care and Rehabilitation’s new short term unit - Recovery Suites.

Bertha summoned me because she felt Ballard needed to know how well she was being treated and that “such a facility was available within the community.” Adamant would be an understatement.

“People have to know,” she lectured from her bedside. To say that her clearly commanding presence as a longtime teacher had diminished with her 95 years would be a lie. I sat up straight, didn’t fidget and promised to spell everyone’s name correctly.

Mrs. Davis, as she was called by her 4th and 6th grade classes, taught thousands of students in her five decades at Webster. Although in all her years she never did have a student named Bertha.

Those former students visit her to speak of their own children and grandchildren.

Bertha Dorothy Davis moved to Ballard from Queen Anne after her marriage. She and her late husband Walt raised three daughters, all Ballard High School graduates.

When her children were young they loved to go to the Locks, Golden Gardens, and most exciting of all, to downtown Ballard to watch the trains in a store window. The bus line was so convenient her children thought it was their individual bus. Now Bertha has five grandchildren and eight great grandsons, none living farther away than Mill Creek.

But Bertha doesn’t really want to talk about herself; she wants to praise Ballard Care and Rehab. She is impressed, though never beyond words, with the staff’s positive attitude and quality service.

She has physical therapy twice per day, seven days per week. Each department head visits and then does follow-up.

“I don’t know about other places,” she said, “But here the attitude is, we’re getting you well, and we’re getting you home.”

At Sunset West, where Bertha has lived for 25 years, she participates in a walking group, Children’s Hospital Guild and bridge. In winter the women’s walking group stays inside, ranging over seven floors of the building. Several men have claimed they are going to join; Bertha suspects it’s for the treats at the end. Spring and summer her group walks the grounds in the evening.

“It’s a lovely finish to the day,” she said, “Kind of romantic.”

Resuming her active life is what pushes Bertha in her physical therapy (“Stairs yesterday. I was terrified”). She broke her hip in the early hours of her 95th birthday on Feb. 15. She’s still not sure how she slipped about 4 a.m., perhaps her slipper was misplaced.

Her ankle may have twisted; then she fell breaking her hip. The pain was such that she couldn’t drag herself to the phone in the other room or reach the one by the bed. Her son-in-law Mike, who has arrived with clean laundry adds, “She used to have a First Alert bracelet, but she had sent it back because she didn’t think she needed it.”

Bertha somewhat reluctantly answers my questions about her fall; it’s in the past and she wants to talk about the present – the wonderful care she’s been receiving. But she admits that in the hours before help on her birthday she was getting quite cold.

Although she knew that she would be found eventually, she wasn’t sure if she would still be alive. When her son-in-law arrived at 8:30 a.m., dispatched by her daughters when she hadn’t answered the telephone, she still tried to give orders to the paramedics. She wanted to go to Ballard Swedish but they explained that she would need to go to the new Orthopedics unit on First Hill.

So there was no party for her 95th this year. Fifty family members converged at Swedish but the food and cake never made it out of the car.

“Nothing survived the trip to the hospital,” Mike said, but he’s clearly not referring to Bertha who misses nothing.

Her insurance allowed five days hospitalization, after that, “I just didn’t know what was coming.” The physicians quickly realized her preference was for Ballard.

It appears to have been love at first sight all around at Ballard Care. Her “due date” for returning home to Sunset West is on April 8. She is resigned to no longer being able to take the bus but hopes she will be able to keep up her tutoring.

“I love the teaching,” Bertha says without past tense.

Later on, Sarah Likes, director of marketing and admissions at Ballard Care and Rehabilitation, explains that the new unit is geared to short-term versus long-term care and is only available to patients with a “solid discharge plan.”

Bertha’s family has a solid discharge plan for her, a woman who is going to be checking on Bertha several times a week; her daughter who actually manages Sunset West will be nearby. Meanwhile Bertha is working her way through a box of bridge challenges that may make her unbeatable when she returns to her group at Sunset West. “We’re all wonderful friends there.”

Cards, balloons and flowers fill a table in the spacious room. The visitors span generations.

“The history of your life comes to you when have something like this happen,” Bertha says tapping at her double solitaire deck. “But people need to know there’s such good health care in our dear little Ballard.”

I think more people need to know someone like Bertha.