Resilience in the D is a five-part series launched to commemorate BridgeDetroit’s fifth anniversary and recognize Detroiters who have made a difference in their communities. Selections were made based on resident nominations.

Bettye Wright’s upbringing set the tone for her life’s mission.

The 86-year-old grew up surrounded by elders who helped her learn to care for herself and for each other. Most prominently, her late grandfather, Tobe McDaniel, who embraced people with decades of lived experience that he had not yet reached, she said. 

“When I was growing up in a rural suburb of Kansas City, my grandfather was so helpful,” Wright told BridgeDetroit. “Most of the widows or single ladies that were getting older, he had keys to their home, he picked up their mail, and for one period of time he owned the grocery store, so he would deliver their groceries to them and I just saw what he did to take care of them.”

Wright took that reverence for elders with her when she moved to Detroit in the early 1950s.

That influence and Wright’s giving nature explain why she has spent nearly her entire life taking care of people. Whether as a mother, grandmother, or nurse, she’s dedicated to identifying what others need and going out of her way to help provide it. 

Since 2017, she’s spent most of her time caring for senior citizens on the city’s southeast side at a nonprofit she founded with her grandfather’s namesake: the TobeMC Senior Daycare – or as Wright calls it, the TobeMC Center. 

Barbara Brown, a friend of Wright’s since 1968, said she thinks of Wright as an artist and “giving is her art.” 

“She uses the art of love, the art of looking to others and trying to meet some of their needs,”  Brown said.

Services for seniors

TobeMC Senior Daycare at 14526 Mack Ave., provides a host of services and programming for seniors, including food delivery, a medical clinic to connect people with healthcare professionals and medication, free clothing donations, exercise classes and weekly Bible study. 

Teresa DuBose has known Wright for a couple of years and said the giving nature of her newfound friend is “a breath of fresh air.”

“She’s selfless, she knows that it is not about her. None of this is about her. This is about making an impact and making a difference in the lives of the seniors in our community,” DuBose said. “She wants people to know that just because you’re a senior doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to be sitting over in the corner knitting or watching ‘The Price is Right’ and ‘Steve Harvey’ reruns, that seniors are still viable contributors to the community.”

“She wants people to know that just because you’re a senior doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to be sitting over in the corner knitting or watching ‘The Price is Right’ and ‘Steve Harvey’ reruns, that seniors are still viable contributors to the community.”

Teresa DuBose, friend of Bettye Wright

Wright admits she does not enjoy being praised for her work, and doesn’t “really want any flowers” for doing what she believes comes naturally to her. 

“In a lot of ways, I’ve been blessed, so I feel like it’s me giving back,” Wright said.  

One of the center’s more recent offerings is its memory cafe, which Wright developed in April to help people with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease record their memories and exercise their minds to keep them sharp. Wright said it’s also a way for seniors to just have someone listen to them. 

There are several memory cafes around metro Detroit and they offer a comfortable space and, often, with refreshments.

“Since we started this memory cafe, we have realized that it took a couple of sessions for people to be comfortable sharing,” Wright said, “but now it’s like sometimes you’re almost all trying to talk at the same time. They’re very comfortable sharing their experiences and things that they’ve gone through.”

Dr. Barb Rosemond, who helps run the memory cafe alongside Wright, said she was inspired to help with the program because Wright is “a very positive person” who attracts other positive people who want to help her. 

“That’s what got me involved in the memory cafe and learning new things about things I didn’t know anything about,” Rosemond said. “I think it’s contagious, I think Bettye’s curiosity is contagious.”

Wright views the program as a way to help aging people recover parts of themselves they have forgotten. 

“We’re all going to have issues in our lives that we have to deal with, but if you can get two hours of joy and peace, you can go back to all of the nonsense a little more equipped to deal with it.”

Bettye Wright

“We’re all going to have issues in our lives that we have to deal with, but if you can get two hours of joy and peace, you can go back to all of the nonsense a little more equipped to deal with it,” she said. 

What was almost lost

Wright’s desire to help others led her to enroll in nursing school at Mercy College. In 1959, she was the only Black student to graduate from her class. But that career in nursing and lifetime of caring for others almost ended before it began. 

“I was on my pediatric rotation, and I saw this little boy, I went in and introduced myself, and he spit in my face,” Wright said. “And this little girl from Missouri wasn’t prepared for that, so I automatically slapped him.”

The boy she slapped was white, and Wright said that, at the time, she “just knew” that she was going to be kicked out of the program. 

“So then I had to go to my instructor, and thank God that lady and I became best friends. She was Jewish, and I had to go to her, and I said, ‘I am sorry. It was just automatic and I didn’t even think about it.’ She gave me one week off so I had to stay home, but I made up for it, and I still graduated with my class.”

From there, Wright went to work at Henry Ford Hospital and eventually began to look closely at orthopedics and spinal care for people with chronic back pain and illnesses. She retired from Henry Ford in December 2007. 

Helping at home and abroad

After retiring, Wright wanted to continue helping people, but not just here in Detroit. Wright wanted to go to a country she had been to several times, to help open a clinic and care for patients who couldn’t afford care. 

“So we started going to Ghana,” she said, “and we would get volunteers and surgeons, physical therapists, neurophysiologists, nurses, all of the disciplines that we utilize here in the U.S. We got them to pay their own fare and come to Ghana and volunteer.” 

Wright stayed in Ghana from late 2007 through late 2017 and helped to raise funds to build a hospital there. While there, she helped develop a faculty to train the nurses in Ghana, most of whom were physician assistants, nurse practitioners, or doctors that she had worked with in the U.S.

Her time in Ghana reminded her to focus on helping people meet their basic needs and  motivated Wright to open the TobeMC center. 

“When you go to a place where you’re still getting people’s basic medical needs met, you realize how many people (in Detroit) still need those things,” she said. 

Aging and Loneliness

Wright had assembled a group of friends from her time at Henry Ford, from her church and various organizations she had been involved in over the years to start making TobeMC a reality, but it wasn’t until the center was around for two years that Wright realized how vital it was. 

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged people everywhere, but Detroit was hit especially hard. The city had lost more than 1,520 people by June 2020, according to city data. 

Wright said TobeMC paused many of its programs temporarily, but she never stopped caring for the seniors in her community. One such senior, who Wright calls “Ms. Ella,” was struggling to get transportation during the pandemic. 

“Seniors need to keep moving, and sometimes as seniors, we need motivation to keep moving. We do better when we have groups.”

Bettye Wright

“So when the pandemic first broke out, I established a relationship with a church that’s down there by my old condo called Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church, and they started a food program where they made these meals for people and boxed them up. I talked to a guy down there and said, ‘if I pick the food up and bring it to my seniors, is that okay?’ and he said yes.”

Wright delivered meals to Ms. Ella for about a year, and, in that time, she also encouraged her to participate in programs at TobeMC. 

“One of the things that we learned from the pandemic is isolation is not good,” Wright said. “It’s detrimental. Seniors need to keep moving, and sometimes as seniors, we need motivation to keep moving. We do better when we have groups.”

Wright puts a lot of her own money into TobeMC, but she also gets a lot of donations from friends and former colleagues. Some of whom, Wright said, “don’t even live in the state, but they have been supportive.”

Wright and her friends at TobeMC are going to continue working on programs to help Detroit’s seniors. If you want to donate, the center accepts clothing donations, as long as the clothes are clean and in good condition. It also accepts money via PayPal and Zelle at 313-333-3810.