Touch of Gray - November / December 2005

Carolina Meadows Continuing Care Community Celebrates Its Twentieth Anniversary
Minister in Active Retirement

Carolina Meadows Continuing Care Community Celebrates Its Twentieth Anniversary
   A dream inspired by Dale Kline, an experienced director of health care and retirement facilities, became a reality in October 1985 when the first residential units at Carolina Meadows were ready for occupancy. As Kline reached retirement age, he had realized that he would not choose any of the seven communities that he was managing! He shared the reluctance of retirees to pay large portions of their accumulated capital in entrance fees, from which they or their heirs might get no return. Instead he envisioned a community based on equity, providing refundable investment for residents or their heirs and also capital for development without the need for major outside borrowing. His vision also included continuing care during every phase of aging.

   Kline died in 1983 but his wife Ann and Edward Hess, former director of Carol Woods with whom he had been associated, pursued his dream. Mrs. Kline and Hess organized Carolina Meadows, Inc. to supervise the operation of the community that began to take shape in 1985. Proximity to Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina and Duke University and their medical centers led to the choice of a location just to the south of the Orange County and Chatham County boundary. An option to purchase 161 acres of land was contracted and the groundbreaking ceremony was held in 1984 at the red-roofed well-house at the northern entrance to the grounds, where a large farmhouse had stood. During the 1980s and 1990s three phases of development on the 161 acres were completed, producing a community of 229 villas, six apartment buildings, a health center, a building for assisted living, and a community center that houses dining rooms, offices, library, gift shop, swimming pool, and auditorium. Major amenities include a nine-hole golf course, tennis courts, and facilities for bocce and croquet. Between 1985 and 2005 the number of residents grew from two to approximately 650. A major addition to the community center is nearing completion in 2005 and an addition to the assisted living building - the Fairways - will be completed in 2006.

   Kathleen Mast, the current resident of longest standing, read an advertisement in Modern Maturity in the early 1980s, “Come to Carolina Meadows at Chapel Hill and you will be in blue heaven.” She and Gilbert Sanford were the pioneers who moved into the first units in October 1985. For two decades Kathleen, a native of Virginia, has lived in Villa 138, located at the area now referred to as “the historic district.” She recalls that in the first year, she and other residents braved faulty plumbing that flooded their homes and muddy fields that had recently been farmlands. These pioneers were imbued with a sense of adventure in creating a sort of utopia that would not only protect their investment, but would provide companionship with people in an active social and intellectual life. “We had fun,” Kathleen recalls, “dances, potluck suppers, card games in our homes and day trips to places of interest in Chapel Hill and beyond.” The first residents created a tradition of friendliness and acceptance of all newcomers. The intimacy of the early years is no longer possible, as the number of residents has grown, but the tradition is one of the distinguishing features of the Meadows.

   Of the 117 individuals who moved into Carolina Meadows between October 1985 and November 1986, seventeen are still in residence. They are: Billy Arthur, Edith Arthur, Harriet Churchill, Helen Brackett, James Eagles, Vira Eagles, Lillian Hodgeson, Olive Johnson, Gertrude Kohn, Louise Kuykendal, Kathleen Mast, Grace Nicholson, Walter Saeman, Louise Seymour, Janet Taylor, Frances Tillson and John Tillson.

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Minister in Active Retirement
   The Reverend Phyllis Koehnline herself represents the close connections between Chapel Hill and Carolina Meadows. Many of her connections are current: at University Presbyterian Church where she is Parish Associate, and teaches a weekly Bible class. At the Ackland Museum you will find her daughter, Evelyn Koehnline, who is the conservator of works on paper. Bob Rosenberg, Evelyn’s husband, teaches in the College of Pharmacology. Their daughter Suzannah graduated from Chapel Hill High School, and their son Sam is a freshman there now.

   The Koehnlines’ other children live in the Northwest, Carolyn in Bellingham, Washington, and Jim and his wife Andrea, and son, Tommy, in Seattle.

   The Koehnlines arrived in Chapel Hill in 1995 from Skokie, Illinois, where they had lived and worked for twenty-five years. But it was by no means their first time in Chapel Hill. They had met as UNC students in the late 1940s. Phyllis graduated in 1950 and they were married later that year.

   The next years were busy ones: They began graduate work in English at Ohio State University, and their three children were born in Columbus. Phyllis received her Master’s Degree in 1950, and Bill his Ph.D. in 1966. The family moved many times as Bill taught in a series of community colleges. In 1970, they moved to Skokie, Illinois where Bill was the founding president of a new community college. He retired in 1984, and just recently the art gallery in his name became officially The Koehnline Museum of Art.

   Shortly after settling in Skokie, Phyllis entered McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago to begin studies that eventually led to a Master of Divinity degree in 1977, and to being ordained as pastor of Evanshire Presbyterian Church, the only woman pastor in town.

   Soon after her ordination Skokie was in the news. A small group of Neo-Nazis in Chicago threatened to make an appearance there. Why Skokie? Almost certainly because that community had become known as a “safe haven” for Jews who had fled from Hitler’s Germany and arrived in the Chicago area. By the late 1970s Skokie had become home to over 70,000 Jews, some 7,000 of them survivors of Hitler’s death camps.

   Phyllis and her church were part of an interfaith group of religious communities who realized how devastating would be any suggestion of a Nazi presence in Skokie. Great solidarity grew between Christians and Jews during that time that still continues. The threat was never carried out and the survivors were spared. She had recorded her recollections of those days in Skokie and the Nazi Threat.

   While pastor of Evanshire, Phyllis was Moderator of the Chicago Presbytery one year and a member of the Board of Trustees of McCormick Seminary. “My claim to fame,” she says, “is that I chaired the search committee which selected the Reverend Cynthia Campbell to be president of McCormick, the first Woman to lead a major seminary.”

   After retirement, they chose Carolina Meadows for their retirement, and, “We love being back ‘home,’” she says, “with so much to enjoy from Carolina Meadows, the church, UNC campus, and Chapel Hill in general. There’s no place like it!”

   At Carolina Meadows, Bill Koehnline served as a precinct representative and then as president of an organization of residents who live in continuing care retirement communities throughout North Carolina (CCCRC).

   Bill also continues his fascinating hobby – recycling such things as Styrofoam, cereal boxes, cardboard tubes, etc., into three-dimensional fanciful constructions. These have been exhibited several times, and are always ready for giving away to anyone who asks.

   In addition to teaching a monthly Bible class in the Health Center, in 2000 Phyllis, with the help of other Carolina Meadows residents from University Presbyterian, began worship services at Carolina Meadows, for those who are unable to get to church on Sundays, especially those who disabilities make it almost impossible to enjoy regular services in town. Meeting on the second Sunday afternoon of each month, with Communion whenever there is a fifth Sunday, the congregation has grown in size and spirit, and greatly appreciates these services.

   Phyllis does too. She says, “I’m grateful still to be able to do what I love doing. And we all like the fact that nobody comes in to lead these services for us; they’re all in-house.” Last year she agreed to preach monthly at Carol Woods also, where residents there do all the preparation.

   A large number and a wide variety of residents are grateful to Phyllis for her unique services, and the community gives a special salute to the Reverend Phyllis Koehnline. -- Betty Landsberger, Resident

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