Friends Home in Kennett

Here are three testimonials from our residents.

A Resident Talks About Life Among Friends

For 82-year-old Charlie Wollaston keeping active is a lifestyle priority. And he says there is no better place to stay active and make new friends than Friends Home in Kennett.

Charlie enjoys participating in a wide range of the activities offered. He says he especially enjoys being a member of the Friends Home in Kennett Choir which practices at least once a week and performs throughout the year at other retirement communities and at the Kennett Square Senior Center.

“I love being able to travel around the area, meet new people and give them the opportunity to enjoy our performances.”

And speaking of traveling, Charlie says he tries to take advantage of many of the trips the Activities Program offers. “Two of my favorites have been a tour of Highland Orchards where we got to see the vineyards as well as the orchards, and a visit to the Brandywine River Museum.”

“I worked my whole life on my family’s 70-acre family farm in New Garden Township,” he commented. “It is my son’s farm now, and I enjoy visiting and seeing the next generation’s way of farming. I get to stay involved in the local agricultural community, too, by attending Grange meetings held here at Friends Home.”

Wollaston credits the excellent care he receives from the staff for keeping him on the go. “They are friendly, kind and very professional,” he smiled. “These nurses and aides have been the best at helping me manage my diabetes and stay healthy.”

And there are even more reasons for Charlie to stay healthy and active -- 22 of them to be precise.

He proudly states, “I have six children, 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. And, family members visit me and my sister, who is also a resident at the Friends Home in Kennett, at least once a week.

“I have to be somewhere,” he laughs. “So I’m very happy it’s here.”

Friends Home in Kennett: A Resident’s Story

Betty Rittenhouse never lies about her age. It might be because she looks decades younger than her actual number of years.

“I’m very proud that I am 97 and I will be 98 on October 24,” she says with a smile. “I grew up in Caln Township at the end of the horse and buggy age.”

A former school teacher, Rittenhouse, who lives in an Assisted Living apartment, has called Friends Home in Kennett her home for the last 11 years.

“I lived alone for a while after my husband died 25 years ago but my children were always worried about me,” she explains while sitting in an easy chair in her apartment decorated with the photos of her parents, children, grandchildren and extended family members. “I used to come and visit my life-long friend Harriet here and always thought what a wonderful place it was. So when it was time to move, there was never a question where I was going.”

Rittenhouse continues that she “likes absolutely everything” about Friends Home in Kennett. “Everyone is so very friendly and nice. And you have all the choices in the world. There is always a lot to do if you want an activity. If you don’t — that’s fine too.”

One look at her large, overstocked bookshelf — with everything from Shakespeare to Robert Frost to modern novelist Ishiguro — and you know reading is a passion for Betty Rittenhouse. She is a member of her church’s book club which reads one book a month agreed upon by the members.

“Then we meet at a member’s house to discuss the book and have refreshments,” she says. “It is a wonderful group.”

Rittenhouse also notes that when it is her turn to host the book club’s members, Friends Home is very accommodating. “We meet in the parlor downstairs and the staff helps me serve the refreshments.”

In addition to reading, Rittenhouse says she loves writing letters to friends and family, cooking and baking, arts and crafts and anything educational.

“Of course visiting with family is always wonderful.” She loves seeing her four adult children and her grandchildren — but confesses the light of her life is her one and a half-year-old great-granddaughter Helenka Elizabeth.

“And,” she concludes. “I always have my Friends Home family.”

A Resident Talks About Living At Friends Home In Kennett

One of the best ways to decide if a particular independent or assisted living residence is a good fit for you is to talk to people who live there.

Meet 89-year-old Pete Bodine. He has resided at Friends Home in Kennett for more than nine years and says “there is no where else I would rather live.”

A native of New York State (a small town called Pennyan in the Finger Lakes region), the retired mail carrier and World War II veteran was living alone after his wife of 33 years, Virginia, passed away.

“My son Danny and his family live in Chester County,” Mr. Bodine explains. “He didn’t like me living by myself so far away. So I came down here for a visit to see if we could find a place in the area for me to live and be taken care of for the rest of my life.

“My son had me all over and we visited a lot of different places,” he continues. “But I knew right away that Friends Home was the place for me.”

Mr. Bodine says that it was the warm and friendly atmosphere that he noticed right away.

“I love the personality of the home,” he says. “You never see anyone here who looks unhappy. And I can’t say enough great things about the staff.

Mr. Bodine especially appreciated that care after a recent eye operation. “I needed to have special eye drops at 8 pm every night. One night I didn’t feel like taking them and said I would do it tomorrow. At exactly 8 pm a staff person knocked on my door and said ‘ I’ve come to give you the eye drops that you’re supposed to have.”

He laughs. “They are really dedicated and give you excellent attention.”

His social life and activities calendar are also full. “My fellow residents are very outgoing and I have made quite a few friends,” he notes. “I also enjoy taking the day trips they plan for us. Two of my favorites were going to see the USS New Jersey in Camden — I was in the Navy during World War II and spent a lot of time on ships — and taking a dinner cruise on the Spirit of Philadelphia — what a ball we had.”

Mr. Bodine says he even has special praise for the food and kitchen staff at Friends Home in Kennett.

“I am a very picky eater and can be a big complainer,” he says with a smile. “The people who work in the kitchen go out of their way to help you and I can always get something I like.”

Mr. Bodine concludes that Friends Home’s Assisted Living provides the perfect balance of independence and assistance.

“You always have the help you need but you also have all the privacy and freedom you want.”

Meet Friends Home in Kennett Resident Dave Smith

If anyone in his native Queens, NY would have told Dave Smith he would one day be celebrating his one-year anniversary living in a retirement community in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, the life-long New Yorker says he would have never stopped laughing.

“I could never have imagined moving,” says the 86-year-old World War II army veteran (he was a medic who served in France and Belgium) and former ship pilot. “But of course things happen in your life and circumstances change.”

After his wife passed away, Smith did eventually move at the encouragement of his two daughters and grandchildren. One of his daughters lives in Hawaii with her family and the other lives in the West Chester area with her husband and two children.

Smith initially moved into an apartment near his daughter but then he suffered a stroke.

“My daughter and her husband both work so with needing extra care and the two kids it was very difficult,” he explains. “Luckily, after some searching we found Friends Home.”

“I was very apprehensive at first because I didn’t know what to expect,” he continues, “But this place couldn’t be nicer and the people couldn’t be better. I was a little worried about keeping my personal freedom but that has never been problem.”

Smith says some of the retirement communities he and his family looked at were “a lot more expensive” than Friends Home in Kennett “but not as comfortable or friendly.

“One place wanted a $30,000 entrance fee,” he explains. “And I said for what?”

Smith notes that you can take the man out of New York but you can’t take New York out of the man. He says that one of the best aspects of living at Friends Home in Kennett is it’s location in the heart of Kennett Square.

“Almost every day I walk to the public library to read the New York Times,” he says. “And sometimes I get to meet up with my son-in-law because he works on Linden Street.”

Smith says he discovered the joy of walking around town on his first day at Friends Home in Kennett.

“I accompanied another resident who was blind to a nearby coffee shop,” he explains. “We ended up sitting and talking for over two hours. She and I were friends until she passed away. Her daughter still comes to visit me.

“That’s the kind of place this is,” he concludes. “People care about each other.”

Meet Friends Home resident Pat Devereaux

“I never, ever thought I could be this happy.”

That is the quick answer you will receive if you ask 79-year-old Pat Devereaux how she likes living at Friends Home in Kennett.

When her husband of 51 years died of cancer five years ago, Pat initially decided to remain in her West Chester-area condominium. But after about two and a half years, living alone meant the woman who had spent most of her life as a stay-at-home wife and mother was lonely.

“I called up both of my daughters (one lives in Kennett and the other in Vermont) and told them I was not happy with how I was living,” she explains.

Pat didn’t want to leave the area so the daughter in Kennett began helping her look at retirement communities. None of the places seemed right. Then one day Pat’s daughter happened to be driving by Friends Home in Kennett. She stopped in, liked what she saw, and made an appointment for her Mom to take a tour.

“It just took one visit and I knew instantly,” Pat continues. “Within a month I moved in. And I have been enjoying life ever since.”

For Pat, enjoying life means engaging in her favorite activities, visiting with old friends and making new ones.

“I have always been an outdoors person and I adore gardening,” she explains. “Here at Friends Home we have raised bed vegetable gardens and we grow tomatoes, lettuce, string beans, beets, cabbage and onions. I also grow pansies and daffodils.”

Reading, exercising, sewing, knitting and shopping are among Pat’s other favorite hobbies. She says that Friends Home’s activities program can keep anyone as busy and involved as they want to be.

“I participate in the exercise class every morning, I always have a book from the library in my hand, and I never miss one of our shopping trips.”

Pat says that one of her favorite activities was participating in a special knitting project.

“Some girls from the local school came here and some other residents and I taught them how to knit,” she recalls. “They couldn’t believe I have been knitting and sewing for over 60 years and made my daughters’ prom dresses by hand. They said they really enjoyed it and they did well. Now another group of girls from the same school wants to learn to knit so we’ll be teaching again.”

It is the staff that makes all the difference in quality of life at Friends Home, Pat notes.

“The entire staff from A to Z is just absolutely wonderful,” she says. “They are just the most wonderful people. All of the residents see them as our family and friends. You can be as social or as private as you want and everyone respects that.”

Right now she has a friend from her old condominium complex who is considering moving.

“I told her to move here,” she concludes. “I would never go back to living alone and I would never live anywhere else.”

Meet Joe Cloud

Joe Cloud ran an appliance store directly across the street from Friends Home in Kennett for more than 35 years. “I always used to look across the street and see the residents sitting and talking on the front porch,” Joe remembers. “It looked very nice but I never thought I’d be moving in.”

But move in he did. Six years ago at the age of 94. And on April 6, Joe celebrated his 100^th birthday at Friends Home – surrounded by family and friends. Joe says he “has had a wonderful life with no regrets” but never dreamed he would live to be 100. “I had polio and was disabled as a little boy,” he explains. “They had to operate on one of my legs in 1910 and I had 90 stitches in it.” He recovered but his movement and walking were always affected. Joe says he never felt sorry for himself and he always had a “can do” attitude.

In 1916, his family moved to Longwood from Hamorton. He attended school in Kennett and graduated from Kennett High School, where he served as class president in 1925.

Joe laughs that he has “been married his whole life.” He was wed and widowed twice. He was married to his first wife Lenore for 32 years and his second wife Lillian for 36 years. He has two children, Jack and Louise, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

After retiring from owning Cloud Appliance, Joe bought a cottage in Elkside, Maryland and enjoyed fishing and boating on the Chesapeake. He still visits the cottage with his family. At Friends Home in Kennett, Joe is currently chairman of the Residents’ Council and enjoys participating in many of the activities offered, such as daily exercise programs.

He has difficulty seeing, so he and his son talk on the phone every morning and Jack briefs him on news of the day and current events. “If we get going on politics, we can be on the phone for hours!”

A lifelong Phillies fan, Joe also enjoys listening to the games and visiting friends when his daughter or son can drive him.

On the occasion of his 100^th birthday, Joe says he especially wanted to thank the staff of Friends Home in Kennett “for their tender loving care – they are the best.”

When asked what advice he would give to others who want to reach the 100 milestone he concludes, “Live a good life and follow the Golden Rule. Take vitamins and don’t smoke.”

Meet Friends Home in Kennett
Resident Virginia Gunn

vgunn “I want to stay very involved in life and contribute as much as I can to the community.”

That is a philosophy Friends Home in Kennett resident Virginia Gunn lives every day. From teaching English as a second language, to being an active member of an informal Shakespeare club, to Bible study, singing with the Home’s choir and sitting on the International Relations Committee of the League of Women Voters – the bi-lingual 85-year-old native of Woodstock, NY is never at a loss for interesting events and activities.

And Friends Home in Kennett, she says, fits her lifestyle perfectly.

Virginia and her husband had lived in a large house in Nottingham and after he passed away she eventually moved into a condominium in Kennett Square. Then she put herself on a waiting list for Friends Home.

“I knew people who lived here and loved it,” she explains. “I liked the idea of a Quaker community and assisted living and skilled nursing services being available if I should need them.

“The staff members are the warmest, friendliest people you will ever meet,” she continues. “Everyone respects you as individual and you can always do what you want at your own pace”

Her active pace began when she was just a baby and her father moved the family to France where Virginia lived until she was 12. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1942 her knowledge of French helped her get a government job in Washington, DC that, after D-Day in 1944, took her to England and from there to liberated France, where she met her future husband, Harold. Harold and Virginia were married in 1946 in England. In 1949, the couple, with their two children, went to Nigeria, where Harold gathered material for a book.

The couple and their three children settled in Chester County when Virginia’s husband got a job teaching anthropology at Lincoln University, where she taught French. She is also very proud that the couple was involved in the Civil Rights movement during the 1960’s.

One of her fondest memories, she recalls, was being in Washington, DC in 1963 and hearing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his “I Have A Dream” speech.

Virginia enjoys sharing these memories and discussing many issues and events with the friends she has made at Friends Home.

Virginia’s Mexican English language student comes for a lesson in her apartment twice a week. The International Relations Committee of the League of Women Voters meets in the library of Friends Home once a month.

“There are many interesting people who work and live here. I am very happy a friend of mine encouraged me years ago to come and visit Friends Home. It is just a wonderful environment here.”

Meet Friends Home in Kennett Resident
Joe Giaquinto

“It hasn’t always been easy but I have been lucky.” joe giaquinto

That is how 95-year-old Assisted Living resident Joe Giaquinto sums up his life experiences.

To hear of his early beginnings, lucky might not be the first word that comes to mind.

Joe’s mother passed away when he was just seven years old and his father could not work and take care of three small children. The children were separated, each going to various relatives in New York and New Jersey, with Joe spending a number of years in an orphanage in the Bronx. They were eventually all re-united at a home in Brooklyn near Coney Island when Joe’s father re-married.

In 1939, Joes says he was extremely lucky because that was when a wonderful event occurred.

“I met my wife Jean and it changed my whole life,” he says. “I didn’t know what joy was until then. We were married for 66 years.”

While living with his wife and their first baby in Brooklyn, Joe got drafted and ended up in the Navy for the last 26 months of World War II.

“Again I was lucky because I was in combat in the South Pacific at Okinawa,” he explains. “But I was never injured and got to come home to my family.”

When he returned, Joe settled into a career as an accountant, a job he kept until retirement. When he retired, he and his wife moved to South Carolina to be near their daughter and granddaughter.

They loved South Carolina, but as they got older it was clear that Joe and Jean needed to be somewhere that offered assisted living. But they couldn’t find any place in South Carolina that was right for them.

Then their other daughter Pat, who lives in Kennett Square, recommended Friends Home.

“We fell in love with it here right away,” he says. “Jean knew immediately this was it.

“It wasn’t stiff and formal like so many places we had visited,” he continues. “It was a very warm, relaxed atmosphere that felt like home.”

The Giacquintos lived together in a studio apartment at FHIK for four years until Jean passed away in 2005. Joe decided to stay in the same apartment that had been such a happy home for them.

Joe says it is very important to him that he stay active both mentally and physically. And the evidence of that is all around his apartment.

The exercise bicycle he rides every morning is plainly in view as is the electronic piano he plays and many issues of the New York Times, The Economist, Newsweek and Smithsonian...

“I love current event events and keeping up with things,” he says. “It is important to always be learning something new. It keeps your mind open. I also still do my own taxes.”

Joe says he is also very proud of his seven grandchildren (and notes they all went to college) and his 12 great-grandchildren.

“I have had a very full, charmed life he says. And I’m still enjoying it,” he concludes. “Friends Home lets me do that.”

Meet Friends Home in Kennett Resident
Alma Struble

A room of one’s own without being alone. astruble

That is the beauty of living at Friends Home in Kennett according to 93-year-old resident Alma Struble.

“Everyone on the staff goes out of their way to be helpful and encouraging,” she explains. “They anticipate what you may need. They look out for you and will do as much or as little as you want.

“For example, I am in Assisted Living but I insist on making my own bed every day.”

Originally from Philadelphia, Struble lived for 80 years in a Marlborough farmhouse with 12 acres near Unionville where she and her husband raised their four children.

A graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, Alma taught Latin and French at Unionville High School for five years before stopping when she had her first child. But she didn’t exactly stop teaching altogether.

The Struble’s property contained a very large pond that was perfect for swimming. So she organized a program, with a few other mothers in the area, to teach any child who wanted to learn how to swim.

“I think every kid in the ‘greater Marlborough area’ went in that pond at one time or another,” she says with a laugh. “Those were fun days and great memories.”

One day in 2006, however, living alone in the big farmhouse became impractical. Struble was in the hospital recovering from a cracked pelvic bone that was the result of a fall.

“My balance was bad and I needed to use a walker,” she says. “There was no way I could go back home by myself. Thankfully, one of my sons knew about Friends Home.

“I moved in directly from the hospital and I liked it immediately,” she continues. “You feel the warmth as soon as you come through the doors. I have my own room, my own furniture – everything I want.”

Struble says one of her favorite aspects of life at Friends Home is the extensive activities program she enjoys participating in with her fellow residents – many of whom she now calls friends.

“They have a great big calendar with all activities that are scheduled for every day of the month so you can plan everything you want to do,” she explains. “I love the variety of games and the visits from the therapy dogs because I love animals. I also enjoy working in the Friends Home garden. We just have a great time here!”

When not engaged in activities, Struble, a self-described “outdoor addict” can often be found enjoying the fresh air on the porch. “It’s never too cold to be outside,” is her motto.

Alma says she would never again want to live alone.

“I am definitely a member of a large extended family,” she concludes. “And this is home in every sense of the word.”