October 15, 2019 —By Mary Coulling
Kendal at Lexington Resident Since Kendal’s First Day in 2000
There were nine of us who moved into Kendal that 17th day of July, 2000. After unloading our belongings and starting to unpack, we were invited in the evening to our new dining room for a celebratory meal. Coming from three separate cottage units and three different floors of Cox Hall, we walked along unpainted corridors and over concrete floors dusty with debris, stepping over wires strung in all directions. There were still workmen everywhere, waving to us and offering us cucumbers from their gardens. And as my husband and I left our cottage, the painter inside cheerfully assured us he could finish the trim in our bathroom by the time we finished supper.
We sat down at a single table on unmatched chairs near the foot of the stairs. At the end of the empty dining room were huge pieces of plywood hiding the girders and concrete slabs of the unfinished South Building. Outside the dining room windows we could see nothing but raw tamped earth and beyond it pastureland, filled with scruffy meadow grass with its skittering mice. But we weren’t concentrating on all that. Instead we shared three distinct emotions – elation, appreciation, and anticipation.
We were thrilled that we were finally here, after all the delays and uncertainties. We were enormously grateful to the many people who had made this day possible – the visionaries who saw a need for a retirement community in this place, the board members and staff who had worked tirelessly to make plans, solicit funds, and recruit residents, the generous supporters who gave start-up funds even when most of them would never live here themselves, and especially Isabel and Fred Bartenstein whose breathtaking generosity made the entire enterprise possible. We had a deep sense of gratitude to the Kendal Corporation for joining us in this new venture. Most of all we felt the thrill of anticipation, as we looked forward to welcoming the dozen residents coming to campus in the week immediately ahead and the eighty or more who would be joining us before year’s end.
What we could not have imagined, that evening fifteen years ago, was just how beautiful our campus would become – all the trees planted over the years now looking as if they had been here forever, the rose garden, the rolling terrain and curving sidewalks of Phase 2, and the carefully cultivated garden plots of individual residents. Nor could we have envisioned what a vibrant and interesting place our retirement community would become, with residents from all parts of the country sharing their varied talents and enthusiasms which have resulted in a lively and interesting place to live, exemplified by our energetic committee structure; our resident-generated Kendal College with its 70 wide-ranging offerings ranging from local history to Broadway musicals to atom proliferation; music and lectures provided by residents and outside groups; our well-written and informative resident newspaper; our handsome Kendal literary magazine; our resident art gallery; and our library overflowing with books, magazines, and newspapers. Beyond that, we could not have imagined what a welcoming, hospitable community we have become, this place that for all of us is now home – and in a very real sense, our family as well.
That evening, after we were served fillet mignon and cherries jubilee, staff members toasted us with champagne. Today it is our turn to salute all of you, present and past board members and staff, representatives from the Kendal Corporation, current and future residents and friends. As we do so, our emotions are much the same, elation that we have come so far, appreciation for all the help and kindnesses that we have received and continue to receive from board and staff, and our anticipation of all that Kendal at Lexington will become.
So tonight, after pausing to remember those who are no longer here and what they meant to us, we look forward to Kendal’s bright future – 15, 30, 45 years hence. To Kendal at Lexington, fifteen years old – but more importantly, fifteen years young – and counting!! Happy birthday!!
-Delivered by Mary Coulling at KaLex’s 15th Anniversary Celebration (July 19, 2015)