Kendal at Oberlin

I’m Greg, Ernie and Jane E.’s oldest son. While Ernie was from “back east,” Jane is an Ohio girl. They met as Oberlin College students and raised a family nearby. Our relatives are dispersed, yet strive for connectedness.

Ernie’s parents lived in Florida, Jane’s in Medina, Ohio. Aging took its toll as my grandparents approached 80. “Continuous care retirement community” wasn’t an option. Hospital trips and intermittent rest home stays increased.

Between 1980 and 1990, my four grandparents died. During that time, I and my siblings started our own families. After funding their children’s higher educations, my parents retired, moving out-of-state. It was a charged decade, intermingling joyous, hopeful new beginnings and lingering, saddening last goodbyes.

In 1991, my parents concluded they were too far away from grandchildren and that “Ohio is still home.” They moved back and in October, 1993, Jane and Ernie became residents of Kendal at Oberlin. In recalling our painful experience of “discontinuous” care during the last years of Jane and Ernie’s parents’ lives, I and my siblings were relieved to know that Jane and Ernie were ensured “continuous care” as members of the Kendal at Oberlin community.

We’re pleased with the guarantee of appropriate health care, as needed as life circumstances change. We’re impressed with the extent and quality of facilities and programs, artistic, intellectual, physical, social and emotional, which serve in my mind as preventative care. We’re gratified to know that Quaker peace principles underlie community governance. We’re glad to feel regularly welcomed as temporary residents in the guest rooms, as visitors at the tables in the dining areas, as users of the exercise facilities, as participants in a variety of programs.

We hope that continuous care retirement might become our culture’s model for supporting dynamic, self-actualized lives, an option accessible to many. Thank you, everyone at Kendal at Oberlin, for living your dreams, fulfilling promises and creating hopes.

The admissions office received this letter from resident Thelma M. after family members visited Kendal during a summer weekend .

Dear Maggie & Terry,

A year from now, you will get a request for an application to be placed on the priority waiting list from my grand-nephew, Moses, age 9. It would have been in your mail last Monday, but his mother (my niece Lynn) suggested that he take it home to Pennsylvania to recopy because he had misspelled “priority.” She also recommended that he defer his application until he had saved up the priority list fee of $1,000. Moses observed that his allowance is forty cents a week (“fifty cents if I pick up all my toys”). He will ask his father for a raise, but the prospects, given the sluggish economy, are not promising. He estimates that it will take him a bit more than a year to amass the amount.

Moses, younger brother Daniel (7) and their mother visited me last weekend. After less than a day here, Moses and Daniel called their father to report on how they were faring. “Kendal is cool, Dad,” I heard Moses say, “they have a pool and lots of grass for playing tag and people who like to talk to us and toffee at the reception desk. I think I’ll retire here.”

As the four of us went over to Kendal’s pool Saturday afternoon, Moses asked me how old he needed to be to move in. I said I’d find out, but thought that there would be plenty of time for him to finish high school and get a job. “You have to pay an entrance fee,” I reminded him, “so it will take some savings.” Moses wondered if his mother would help him open a lemonade stand on the front lawn of their house so he could get a head start.

Moses and Daniel climbed Mt. Kendal (aka Wildflower Hill). Twice. “This is probably the smallest mountain we will ever climb,” observed Daniel who was not so sure about his brother moving here. Daniel was delighted, however, with the sight from the top: he could see slides and swings over in the New Russia Township park. He conceded it was a nice addition to the lengthening list of Kendal amenities.

Early Friday evening, as we took a walk around the perimeter path near Mt. Kendal, there – looming from behind the hill – was a hot air balloon. It had just taken off from the open space between the hill and the park’s tennis courts. Its wide red and blue stripes were taut as an occasional flame hissed upward into the cavity. Two young men waved at us from the dangling basket as they controlled the flame and the flight. Each boy’s camera captured the slow climb of the balloon directly overhead and their eyes, big as saucers, followed it until it disappeared to the south. “Gee, what an awesome place this is,” whispered Moses to his mother, “I really need that raise.”

Sincerely,

Thelma M.