Vi at Grayhawk

Title: Vi at Grayhawk - Meet the Residents - Carol Burdick
Time: 3 min 42 sec

Description:

Carol’s daughter and her family eventually settled in Phoenix, AZ. She was visiting her daughter when she decided to see a former neighbor residing at Vi. “It was so nice,” Carol said, I had to visit Vi at Grayhawk. “The community had such a warm and family feel,” Carol said. “I was impressed.” She decided it was time to move closer to her family and welcome the next chapter of her life.

Transcript:

>> CAROL BURDICK: My name is Carol Burdick, and I moved here to Vi in 2016 in the spring, from Hawaii after 35 years there, and I love it here. Adventure, let's see what does adventure mean to me? Adventure means something I haven't done before, a place I haven't been, something that is new and fascinating. I sort of take in all that sort of thing by osmosis I believe. I was living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I became involved with a group of people playing tennis there and they had a son named Larry Burdick. And eventually in '82 we decided to marry, and he thought we should look at some property in Hawaii to see if that might be a good place for us to live. I never dreamed of going to Hawaii other than perhaps on a vacation. As it turned out we did eventually get to Hawaii. The first day was wonderful. It was wonderful to hear the ocean, as the property was right on the water, to smell the sea air and see the palm trees swaying at night through the bedroom window. And the next day I was off down the beach with sand between my toes, and came back and said, "I think this'll work. I think this'll be a good place to live." Fishing was a big part of my time in Hawaii. We all took turns on the chair and when it was my turn the line went running out with a large zing, and it turned out to be a very big marlin which I had quite a fight with. I fought it for about an hour and 45 minutes. Brought it up, and it weight 690 pounds. We have had sharks that would follow in a catch, and we did have one very large shark, turned out to be a hammerhead shark, and swam behind the boat several times back and forth. And it was longer than the boat was wide. And the minute that fish was on the deck, captain said, "Let's get outta here." And we took off. It was quite ugly. I love animals of course, having gone to Africa was sort of high on my bucket list. It was a wonderful trip, we were there for about a month. Quite an experience all the way around. Got very close to some very wild animals. I purchased a digital camera that had a wonderful photo lens on it. And that sort of got me into taking lots and lots of pictures. I probably have 600 pictures of Africa. By no means am I a professional, but an amateur having fun at it. My daughter and her family settled in Phoenix. I decided it probably was time for me to leave my home in Hawaii and move into a retirement community. I purposely chose a community where I could be close to my family, but my family didn't have to have me living with them. I immediately started to enjoy some of the activities that are available to residents here. As it turned out one of them happens to be jewelry-making. Living here in this retirement community has been a wonderful experience for me. It's a community in which people are extremely friendly, get together. There is a life, new adventures, new things to do, and new people to meet. There's so many things in the world to see and do and so little time to do them.

Title: Vi at Grayhawk - Meet the Residents - The Latendresses
Time: 4 min 21 sec

Description:

It came to a point when the couple decided their South Carolina home, which they had build and loved, was more than they needed. They researched continuing care communities, and found a lot of options. For them, this was no problem. “Tom put together a spreadsheet,” Melinda recalls, “with names and locations and amenities and costs.” “We graded over 25 things,” says Tom. “Crazy engineer stuff.” But the winning reason they chose Vi was the friendliness of the people. Since they moved in on July 4, 2016, Vi at Grayhawk hasn’t disappointed. “Retirement has been good for us,” Melinda says. “We’ve been able to plan and execute it the way we we’ve wanted.” See the complete article at

Transcript:

>> MELINDA: Okay and you go first. >> TOM LATENDRESSE: Okay, I'll go first. I'm Tom Latendresse and we've moved to Vi in 2016. >> MELINDA: And I'm Melinda Latendresse and I moved with him. That was a great year for us. I was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tom and I met in the early 90s and got married and we moved to South Carolina. I spent years as a school administrator and taught in the classroom at the high school level. >> TOM LATENDRESSE: I was born and raised in a small town in Washington called Yakima. I was infatuated with aviation, even as a young kid. I joined the Navy so I could fly airplanes. I just loved the idea of flying. I remember my first lesson. We did things that normally other people don't do. I mean we did acrobatics on my first lesson. You became part of the airplane. The airplane and you were one. Almost immediately ended up in Vietnam. After almost 500 combat missions I did something really dumb and I got shot down. And I spent 10 months as a POW in Vietnam. And eventually the warrior has to say okay I'm done, let the youngsters do it. At the end of my career, I met this lovely lady right here. The Admiral that I worked for had a battle group party just before we deployed and we went over to Desert Storm. I met Melinda that night. She doesn't remember meeting me, but I certainly remember meeting her. And some time after we came back they tried to play Cupid, and did a pretty good job. They invited us for dinner together. We ended up making a ... what's that thing that we made? A chocolate big thing. Truffle thing. >> MELINDA: Trifle. >> TOM LATENDRESSE: Trifle, yeah. We ended up making a trifle together. Course anybody that makes a trifle, you got to marry them. >> MELINDA: I'm married to a pilot. A pilot has to pilot things. And so he's always had a plane or a boat or something. So, why not an RV. The RV that we have is big and very comfortable and we can be on it easily for several months without batting an eye. We came to a point in our lives several years ago where we realized that our beautiful house that we'd built and loved for so long was really more than we needed and more than we really wanted to take care of. >> TOM LATENDRESSE: And that's when we started our motor home trips and looking for a place to land. We made three trips across country for three years, visiting different places and children and grandkids. The process was long and kind of exhausting because we did look at an awful lot of things. And I had about 25 different things that we graded, you know, this crazy engineer stuff. Went home and looked at all the different reasons for being where we wanted to go and decided on Vi. It was pretty simple, actually. The things that we really looked at, and we didn't really have a grade for this, was the people. How friendly the people are, How are they an ambassador for where they lived? >> MELINDA: When we walk into the lodge and listen, you hear always a happy hum of people talking and laughing and generally having a good time. Through I think fairly good planning on our part, retirement has been, I think, everything that we hoped it would be. We've been fortunate in all respects that we have been able to plan and execute our retirement pretty much the way we wanted it. Our next adventure in the RV is a three-week trip? >> TOM LATENDRESSE: No, four. >> MELINDA: Four. >> TOM LATENDRESSE: Over a month. >> MELINDA: Where we're going to be touring the Midwest. >> TOM LATENDRESSE: It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. >> MELINDA: The RV really lets us get places that I think we wouldn't otherwise probably visit. That's one of the nice things about having an RV.