From a series of oral histories with residents and employees of the Loomis Village Retirement Community, South Hadley, Mass., regarding their lives and experience in a retirement community. (00:00:50) Long-term resident of Loomis, former president of Residents' Association and one of then first residents of the new cottages and wife of first president of the Association. Changes in the community. (00:05:00) Loomis' founding and early history. (00:06:22) Coming to Loomis as couple versus alone; husband of 67 years. (00:07:00) Background: born in Worcester, Dec. 2, 1919, and raised there until 1929; impact of Depression on family; moved to Newton until college; schooling, delayed for a year due to young age, taking typing and stenography. (00:09:17) Asked by guidance counsellor to attend Barnard College with scholarship; president of senior class upon graduation; math major; met husband in school and married in 1941. (00:10:52) World War II: husband enlisted before Pearl Harbor and assigned to Washington, D.C. with the Navy Department; work with Federal Reserve; return to New York and husband worked at Registrar's Office at Columbia University, becoming Registrar and ultimately to Board. (00:12:58) Move to Demarest, N.J. ("the country") for 46 years. (00:13:28) New York in the 1940s and 1950s. (00:14:48) Decision to come to Loomis: friends were moving away from Demarest, and with third son in Amherst, they looked at several places in New England. (00:18:29) Feelings on departing long-term home for retirement community. (00:19:07) Did they consider options other than a retirement community and how did they know that a retirement community was for them? (00:20:00) How would she describe Loomis to someone who had never been there? (00:21:23) Activities and groups at Loomis; operation for spinal stenosis at time of her husband's decline. (00:23:52) Background and early memories that stand out: grandparents lived in Amherst and took her to Mass Aggie "to see the animals." (00:25:15) Husband was a Trustee of American College of Paris for many years. (00:29:55) Changes in husband after they moved to Loomis.
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