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The Granville Historical Society Oral History Project 2001 - 2002
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7) Retired People in Granville
How Kendal Got Started (Jane Heller) Jack and I took care of aged parents. My father was 96 when he died and Jack’s mother was 104. The problems of trying to handle older people and raising your own family at the same time can get overwhelming. And we decided that we would not do this to our children. David Richard’s sister lives in the Kendal at Oberlin and that’s how we got onto Kendal. The Richards decided they wanted to do the same thing and so did we. We wanted to take care of our own future and prepare for it and make our own decisions about where we wanted to be and not to have our children doing that. So we drove up to see Louise (the sister) at Kendal at Oberlin and decided it was exactly what we wanted. It took us a year to get the Kendal Corporation interested in us. We had them come out and we jumped through hoops like you wouldn’t believe. They wanted to make sure it was marketable and that we were sincere about it. Kendal is a not-for-profit. They are not a big corporation. I think they only have six Kendal communities -- I think we’ll be the seventh. When I think what Denison offers this community culturally, that’s why Kendal would come to a community like this -- because of what’s here. They’re not going to go to some little town that has nothing like this to offer. Granville is just an ideal spot because Kendal attracts the kind of people that would use Denison’s facilities. Just finding the piece of land was the problem. The place to put it that wasn’t going to upset anybody. The Middleton House property, I think, is ideal. We have a lease with Denison. We don’t own it. And then we bought some additional land from the Township to make it work. I think we have maybe 90 acres, something like that. I love the site -- it’s gorgeous. It’s going to be built on the ravine. And you can see the Chapel from there. So, for the Denisonians, it’s like coming home.
A Retirement Community That Maintains Uniqueness of Granville (Don Wiper) Kendal of Granville is a retirement community being developed under the overall auspices of the Kendal Corporation, which is a Quaker organization. Sally’s been very involved with the planning committee. We are not quite ready to leave [our home] here, but if we were ten years older, we’d jump, I suppose. We’re just hoping that when we’re ready, they’re ready for us and there’s a spot available. It’s the kind of community we’d like to live in because you maintain everything that’s unique and special about Granville and the university community. We have no desire to move to Florida or North Carolina or Arizona. I just don’t understand, and friends of ours have done this, not from Granville, so much as others we know around the country – who’ve lived in the community their entire lives and all of a sudden, they get 65 or whatever, and they sell their house and they move someplace where they don’t know anybody because it’s warm.
When Older Folks Leave Town (Lyn Robertson) People of retirement age are really finding it difficult financially to stay in Granville. Property taxes are getting so high that people on fixed incomes cannot any longer maintain these big old houses. And there aren’t appropriate small places for them to live. It’s really wonderful for people to be able to walk downtown from where they live and that pedestrian access that we’ve all prized is no longer available to retired people. And so with all these barriers, there has been a real pattern to people leaving once they’ve raised their children. And we’re losing, to be more poetic about it, I think we’re losing the wisdom of the elders when those folks leave town. Hopefully we can find a way, maybe apartment living, so that they can move out of the four or five bedroom house into a smaller place, but be still close to town, close to the library, close to the post office. They can ride a bicycle or walk into the center of town. |
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