Sbriglios Awarded Honorary Doctorates

Margaret Coccomo's sister told her about meeting a handsome young man, but warned her the gentleman was not available. He was studying for the priesthood.

"I thought he was too gorgeous to be a priest," says Marge Sbriglio (née Margaret Coccomo), who adds she thought he looked like movie star Errol Flynn.

The man was only home in Connecticut from seminary in Baltimore to visit his family for four weeks. That's all the time, as it turned out, that Sbriglio needed. The pair eloped within the month. As for the parents?

"We figured they'd be miserable, but they'd get used to it," Sbriglio recalls.

That was 59 years ago and, at 81, Marge and Robert Sbriglio are still an impressive team. They have just received honorary doctoral degrees in humane letters from St. Vincent's College in Bridgeport. The Sbriglios have endowed a full nursing scholarship at the school for nearly 30 years, but their connection with the institution goes back even further. After their marriage, Robert studied nursing himself at St. Vincent's as, later, did the couples' son Martin.

Nursing seemed a logical choice as Marge and Robert started out their life together. Marge was already nurse and her family owned Aaron Manor, the nursing and rehabilitation home in Chester. She and Robert became the owners. He borrowed money from his own father and bought out his in-laws.

The couple lived at Aaron Manor, then a 20-bed facility, and did everything from nursing to housekeeping and bookkeeping.

"We worked diligently. Double shifts the first 10 years were not unusual, but we were building our hopes and dreams," Robert remembers.

And those dreams have turned into six nursing homes-Aaron Manor in Chester, Mystic Healthcare in Mystic, Bel-Air Manor in Newington, Cheshire House in Waterbury, Greentree Manor in Waterford, and Lord Chamberlain in Stratford.

Their management company, Ryders Health Management, holds all the Sbriglios' properties with headquarters in Stratford.

Today, the Sbriglios' two sons, Robert, a physician, and Martin, are part of the management team, and Marge reports that a teenaged grandson, Max, is volunteering this summer at Lord Chamberlain. But she and Robert are still very much involved in the management of their facilities. Marge says she and Robert still live by the advice she got early on in her career: Don't ever turn your back on the business.

Marge, who explains she is an insomniac, goes to bed around

7 p.m. and gets up at 11:30 p.m. and goes to Dunkin' Donuts in Old Saybrook, where the couple now lives. There she buys 10 dozen donuts and two large cardboard carafes of coffee.

"Well, if I'm not sleeping, at least I'm making good use of the time," she says.

Then she's off to Lord Chamberlain in Stratford, where she serves coffee and donuts to the night-shift nurses.

"The night shift is thrilled that they're being acknowledged," she says.

From making rounds in the nursing home, Marge goes to corporate headquarters and is home in Old Saybrook by

2:30 in the afternoon. Then it's time for dinner, a little television for Marge, who is a Jeopardy! fan, and to bed by 7 p.m. And up again at 11:30 p.m. to start the next day. Both Marge and Robert work a full, five-day week.

On a recent day, Marge had reconfigured her schedule to be home in the morning to greet a visitor. But she had used the evening hours when she would have been at the nursing home to do some baking. She offered oatmeal raisin cookies-which, she says, she had baked at 2:30 in the morning-enough not only for brunch, but to also send a plastic bag home for snacking.

Robert is out of the house on workdays by 7 in the morning.

"Who can sleep after that?" he asks.

First he visits Aaron Manor, currently undergoing renovation.

"Reinvesting is a moral obligation as proprietors," he explains, calling the nursing home "a grand old lady" (he admits as the first property the couple owned, it has a sentimental hold on him).

Still, the nursing home business has changed over the 60 years since the Sbriglios began with Aaron Manor. Today, Robert says, nursing homes are engaged in a far wider variety of activities, including physical therapy and post-operative care. As a result, patients are younger and bring a different degree of sophistication to their stays.

"People have lived well and they've got to have motel, hotel accommodations" and, as a result, Robert says, the Sbriglios are constantly updating their facilities.

Marge has very strict ideas about how she wants the staff at their facilities to look. There is a facility wide dress code that includes different colored uniforms for different staff functions. She says this system lets patients know if, for instance, they are dealing with a nurse, a physical therapist, or a dietician. She recalls that Robert was recently in the hospital for a heart problem.

"Somebody had on a Harley Davidson shirt and somebody else one from Disney World and I just wondered if these were the people who were going to take care of my husband," she says.

Sbriglio and Robert are Connecticut natives, born in the New Britain area. They are both the children of immigrants, a fact that prosperity has not erased from their minds.

"We don't aspire to false airs," Robert says. "We've never lost our humility."

The couple has a second home in Florida, but both say they are away only two or three weeks during the winter.

"We stay here and work every day," Robert says.

Marge likes to include inspirational sayings on everything from cards to the decorations on their mantle piece.

"There's an energy in the poetry; it shows our purpose," she explains.

A recent holiday card included a phrase from Russian writer Leo Tolstoy: "Life is a place of service." Above their fireplace is an embroidered pillow with the words "Plant a Seed, Nourish a Dream."

Right now, though age has brought with it some physical complaints, Marge and Robert's stated purpose is to continue to do just what they have done for the last 60 years.

"I don't let any diagnosis stop me. I just wake up and move," Marge says.

"I'm only going to slow down when rigor mortis sets in," says Robert, adding one caveat: "If the time ever comes that we are jeopardizing the health of our patients, then we'll slow down."