WATERLOO -- Velda Phillips' career at Friendship Village began in a cloud of smoke.

She was running the kitchen. It had an area where cafeteria workers could smoke. She cleared it out.

"There was an area in the back of the kitchen where they took their breaks and smoked. A long time ago that was acceptable. One of the first things I did was tell them they couldn't smoke in the kitchen. Well, I lost a lot of friends that day."

In those days, decades before the concerns about second-hand smoke and smoke-free public facilities, she was ahead of her time. It was a baptism of fire, so to speak, that she passed with flying colors in her superiors' eyes.

Now, 35 years later, she's administrator at Friendship Village, and Phillips, one of the longer-tenured local administrators in her field, has more than passed muster in the eyes of residents as well -- like Jane Walden, who is the third generation of her family to live at Friendship Village.

"My parents lived here, Jim and Margaret Holmes," in the 1980s, Walden said. "They were so happy here." Both had health issues and there was Medicare and other details to work out. "Velda was so helpful to me with all the paper work. I was working full-time. I really appreciated it. That's my one special memory, her concern and help." Because of Phillips' assistance at that time, Walden said. "I knew I wanted to come here." She lives at Village Place, the so-called "high rise" unit of the complex.

"We've known her since my dad and his wife came in," in about 1980, said resident Marian Greene. "We liked her then. She was very helpful…The whole family has enjoyed Friendship Village for good long time. Velda has always been very pleasant and helpful to us." She and her husband David have been Friendship Village residents for about three years.

Phillips and her staff face the challenge of meeting residents' needs on a large and small scale, and are still trying to stay a step ahead of the times -- in this case a step ahead of a Baby Boom wave or retirees.

That's why the community has launched a major part of its $30-odd million in construction work over the past few years, including its Landmark Commons and Lakeview Landing projects, and a remodeling of is original 1968 health center on Park Lane.

They are projects undreamed of when Phillips took the helm more than a decade ago.

"When (predecessor) Betty O'Brien retired in 1990, and the Cove had just been finished, I think she felt she had built the campus out and tied it up in a neat little package and handed it over. We've done so much after that," particularly in the area of assisted living -- before the term had even become common parlance in the industry.

"We have a microcosm of senior citizens on this campus, a community bigger than some small towns in Iowa," with about 500 residents, Phillips said. "And so we can do our own case studies" on health care needs. And a middle step, assisted living, was needed. It offers an intermediary step between people who can function without any assistance, and a nursing home, which may have a number of services people might not need.

"We thought we could build a better environment for people in that gray, middle area," Phillips said. That's what spawned the community's Lakeview Lodge development about a decade ago.

Another step was to create nursing home-level care in a more residential environment that doesn't seem like a nursing home. That project was the recently completed Lakeview Landing. The next step is to renovate the old nursing home to make it as much like the Landing as possible.

Phillips got into the field because "I fell into it," she said. "I'm very fortunate. My degree was in education. When I graduated from high school, one of the accepted careers for women would be teaching; the other would be nursing. I went to school to be a home ec teacher. When I graduated from UNI, there weren't openings for that." She answered an ad for a manager trainee job for a company managing food service operations around the state. One of that firm's clients was the food service operation at Friendship Village.

"My training consisted of, the first day at work the dishwasher wasn't there. She was on vacation. So I washed dishes for two weeks." She ended up managing the operation.

"I learned what I know about management the hard way," she said. "All the staff working there knew a lot more about it than I did. My only experience was the summers spent working at the Mental Health Institute in Independence. They knew everything, and they knew how to make me learn the hard way," as illustrated by her ban on smoking in the kitchen.

But the management at Friendship Village liked what they saw. In the mid-'70s, Friendship Village started working on what is referred to as the "high rise" building on the complex, and asked Phillips to work on marketing that project to prospective residents. She worked her way up the ladder from there.

Her last job, the one she holds now, is the best.

"I like this job. I like to be the boss," she chuckled. "This is the best job in the whole world. People in the community and the 199 other people (her staff) do all the hard work.

"It is really about people -- not one person -- but all the people over the years that have helped to give Friendship Village the reputation it enjoys; a reputation of quality and stability," Phillips said. "We have been fortunate to have wonderful residents and great staff.

"Over the years I have been fortunate to work for and with some of the most genuine, loyal, honest and giving people in our community," she said. "We enjoy a long-tenured staff which creates a continuity of care. Supervisors and all employees can be depended on to make the right decision, without my influence. Because they know if your decision puts people first, it's the right decision."

At a recent reception, Phillips said one of her workers noted he was born 11 years after she started working at Friendship Village. "Before long he'll be looking back on a 35-year career and wonder how it went by so fast," she said.

Contact Pat Kinney at (319) 291-1484 or pat.kinney@wcfcourier.com.