Big, goofy pink glasses above a bulbous red nose, stethoscope a-gleam against a white smock, google-eyed frogs grinning from a cloth hat.
Thus tricked out, or in another of the many variations of her costume, Auburn’s one-and-only “jollyologist”, Dr. Gaylyn Shoemaker, sets out three days each week for local nursing homes, hospitals and convalescent centers, seeking souls inside that could use a heaping helping of the smile-inducing stuff she carries.
From deep pockets she produces jelly-bean and Smartie-filled bottles, pasted over with quirky prescriptions like: “For a good dose of jokularity, take a jolly bean and call me in the morning,” and, “By Golly Be Jolly.”
For anybody having a bad day, she’s got bubble wrap, with the following instructions: “Pop one bubble every four to six hours, call physician if symptoms persist.” On its reverse, a poem: “Pop a bubble, sigh a sigh, watch your stress go flying by. If one bubble doesn’t do, try six or eight or 22.”
And she’s sure to launch into a ditty or five, like, “Be your sunshine,” her take on “You Are My Sunshine.”
“I don’t sing all that great,” Shoemaker concedes to listeners. “God didn’t say we had to sing great, he just told us to make a joyful noise.”
So it should come as no mystery that after years of planting grins on faces that had almost forgotten how to wear them, companioning the lonely and talking to them, Shoemaker has worked up a devoted following, from Seattle’s Virginia Mason Hospital to Avalon Care Center in Federal Way, and points in between.
Hers is a volunteer, no-pay gig.
“I call it my ministry for lack of knowing what else to call it,” Shoemaker said recently. “I just try to make people happy and bring joy to them. … Like, if they’re in the hospital, I go and visit them. … I’ve just always loved old people. Even as a little girl, I would go to convalescent homes.”
There are no doctors in the area like Shoemaker — even she is not a doctor.
And don’t bother trying to pry from her the obscure university that bestowed on her head that degree in jollyology … she made the word up.
“It started out with friends who had life-threatening illnesses, and I had no way to help them,” Shoemaker said. “They were far away. So I came up with this idea of being a jollyologist, and I would do it by email every day. People have proctologists, rhinologists, everything else, why not a jollyologist? I would write to my friends something really outrageously funny, really bad blog jokes and some really stupid things.”
From there, she was onto a card ministry.
“How many times do you get a bright card in the mail anymore?” Shoemaker asked.
Then, about 2 1/2 years ago, Shoemaker met in a hospital Bree, a little girl afflicted with tumors behind her eyes and ears, and on her brain stem.
“I became her jollyologist. And I started coming out in costumes, and from there it just grew and grew.”
She’s active in other ways.
Recently, she was the Auburn Valley YMCA Kids Day doctor. She has raised money for the Mary Bridge Hospital Oncology Department Visa Courage Program. And recently, she debuted a song at a meeting of the Washington Chapter of Activities Directors.
Walking about in her costumes, Shoemaker is sure to draw attention.
“So many people stop me. I was over at Winco the other day picking up donuts for people at work, and 11 people stopped me and asked me what I did,” Shoemaker said. “I get a chance to tell them that I go to visit old folks and try to make their days happy. That’s my biggest thing. There are people who never get any visitors.
“What it’s about,” she said, “is trying to inspire people to go and visit older people. And you learn things from there. I go out with people thinking I’m serving, and I come back, and I’m the one that has the big lump of love in her heart. I just love it.”
Shoemaker and her husband are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They have four grown children and 11 grandchildren. They live in the Lake Holm area of Auburn
