FEBRUARY 2022
Resident Eva Murphy finds familiar comfort in new home
Sharing stories of love How Staff Met Their Valentines As love fills the air with the approach of Valentine’s Day, we asked a few of our staff members to reflect on their own stories of young love and to share those stories with all of you!
❤ Diane Gunsolley, chaplain My love story began 40 years ago. It was my first year of teaching, and a co-worker suggested that we try square dancing lessons for singles in Bettendorf, Iowa. She only lasted about six lessons, but I thought it was lots of fun to “allemande left, ’round the square with a right and left grand and promenade home.”
Eva Murphy
When it came time for Eva Murphy to make a move from Wichita, the choice was easy.
One of my dance partners stood out because of his kindness. Since there were more women than men at the lessons, each tip there were women Diane and Will Gunsolley square dancing sitting out. As the new tip began, the men would invite the ladies to dance. Will Gunsolley was the only man to ask if the gal had danced the previous tip. He would only dance with someone who had been sitting out because he realized that person was missing out on the fun. Once we started dating, he told me that the first and last dance would be mine. The rest of the night I noticed that he asked the dancers least likely to be chosen. One year later, we were married. Over the years, I have witnessed his caring heart time and time again.
❤ Stephanie Oehlert, sales and marketing director My husband and I first met at a New Year’s Eve party in high school in Wichita in 1984. We had a mutual friend that went to junior high with a bunch of guys who ended up going to a different high school, Wichita Heights. We were just friends initially. Over the years, quite a few of my
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“My family, my son and grandchildren, live up here. My other son lives in Little Rock. When the great-grandbaby came, I decided I needed to be involved in his proper upbringing,” she said jokingly. “It’s working out beautifully. I like my apartment. I’m on the garden level, so I can have a patio.” With her grown grandchildren and a son nearby, she’s also enjoyed more frequent visits from family. “Both granddaughters are in the Kansas City area,” she said. “We’re all within 15 minutes of each other. They can be here in no time. I get to see them quite a bit. And the greatgranddaughter, she will tell you that she was two on Christmas Day and that her mother was born 31 years
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girlfriends dated guys from this group. Most of them were a year older than I was. When the majority of them went away to college, my husband went to Wichita State, and I was still a senior in high school at Wichita Southeast. We started hanging out more and dated at the end of my senior year. I did move away to go to college in Connecticut, so we broke up but stayed friends. We would see each other as part of our friend group any time I came home for a visit over the next six years. Then, one fateful Christmas visit, we started talking quite a bit. He asked me out to dinner, and we started dating — long distance at first, since I still lived in
Connecticut at the time. I ended up moving back to Wichita, and we got married a year and a half later. We’ve been married for 28 years and have twins, a son and a daughter who are 24 years old. We are still friends with our high school group and got together with them this New Year’s Eve!
❤ Tim Allin, executive
David and Kaarn Meyer
director the next six years. My wife Kathy and I were high school On my birthday in 2015, she wished sweethearts. me Happy Birthday and said that we needed to catch up. I had won tickets ❤ David Meyer, sales and to Schlitterbahn and needed to use marketing counselor – them before they expired. I didn’t assisted living and health care live in Kansas City at the time and I first knew of Kaarn (pronounced she did, so we set that up as part of Car-In) when I went to a football our catching up. We went to eat the game at her parochial high school night before and as we were getting and she was a cheerleader. I asked caught up, it ended up turning into a one of my friends “Who is that?” date weekend. By the end of the She was a couple of years younger weekend, we wanted to see each than me, and I was a senior in high other more, so we kept building on school at the time at the public that and we have been together ever school. I never really formally since introduced myself at that point. Time went along, and I went off to college. During that two year stretch, she ended up becoming good friends with my best friend, who was her same age, and then started dating another of his friends. More time passed and we were able to finally hang out a few times in those subsequent years. We ended up going different directions career and life wise and ended up not really communicating much for about
Stephanie and Chris Oehlert
❤ Scott Price,
maintenance service technician, plant operations My wife and I first saw each other at the drive-in theater in Centerville, Iowa, in 1976. I asked her out a couple of days later. We dated for two wonderful years and then broke up as we were both young and dumb. Six years
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Community Matters 913-599-6100 ◆ Fax: 913-599-3810 17500 W. 119th St. Olathe, KS 66061-9524 AberdeenVillage.com
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COMMUNITY MATTERS | February 2022
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is published monthly for residents and friends of Aberdeen Village by Presbyterian Manors of Mid-America, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
To submit or suggest articles: soehlert@pmma.org Tim Allin, executive director Stephanie Oehlert, director of sales and marketing
OUR MISSION: To provide quality senior services guided by Christian values.
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John and Julie Westmacott
Tim and Sandy Barnes
Scott and Michaele Price
later, after not seeing her during that time, we met again at a party and started dating again and later married in 1985.
2, 1978, and have been together for 43 years. We have two fine sons with wives who have given us four wonderful grandchildren.
❤ Heather Benney, nursing
services administrator I met my significant other by I tell everybody that I married up and chance. He’s a truck driver, and I got the better end of the deal. ran into him while he was on Michaele and I have a 31-year-old break. His first gift to me was a daughter who is a teacher in Kansas heart-shaped keychain from Love’s City, Kan. Michaele is retired. truck stop to symbolize where we met. ❤ Sandy Barnes, life enrichment director Tim had been dating one of my friends from high school our senior year when she introduced me to him one evening. Actually, I was not that impressed at the time, but thought he was OK for Jenny. Time went on through graduation, the summer, and my move to Goodwell, Okla., to go to college. It was a long weekend in the first part of October 1976. I came home and stopped downtown to visit with some friends when Tim drove up and started visiting with all of us. We all visited for a while and then decided to go to Tim’s high school homecoming game just south of Elkhart, Kan. This is when the tides started turning and he asked me out and we started dating. We were married on June
❤ David Nelson independent living concierge In one of my former lives, I was a Lutheran pastor. I started my seminary studies in Chicago in the fall of 1984. The seminary had an orientation program where upperclass students would take a group of incoming students and show them around the school and our Chicago neighborhood. My wife was actually one of those upper-class students and was in charge of the group I was in. As a group we would go out for dinner and play games, and she and I soon realized that we were really good at Trivial Pursuit! Well, those dinners and game nights with the group soon turned into dates with just the two of us, and within a year we were married. She certainly followed the suggestions of the seminary when they said, "Be nice to the new students!" ◆
Heather Benney and Moises
❤ John Westmacott, accounting assistant We met in college at Fort Hays State. We were both in the marching band.
Jennifer and David Nelson Aberdeen Village | A PMMA COMMUNITY
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ago on Christmas Day. And my birthday is the 26th, so we start out the day before with Jesus’ birthday and carry the party on through the 26th.” Before moving to the area, Eva lived at Wichita Presbyterian Manor. For 50 years, Eva and her husband, Bill, who passed away in 2011, called Wichita home, after moving there from Nebraska. “We followed the jobs,” Eva said. “My husband was a pharmacist, and I was a school nurse. I’m thinking and praying for the school nurses now, worried about how to keep kids in school.” While Wichita might have been home, life was on the road at Nebraska football games or in a travel trailer they used to enjoy the great outdoors. “Bill was a Scout leader, and we did a lot of hiking,” Eva said. “I got interested, so we hiked the Colorado Trail in bits and pieces. We had a camper, so we were out of the mud and rain. It was fun. We camped for many, many years with friends in a lot of the country. We took the camper all over. When we retired, we put in a lawn sprinkler so we could take longer trips. We liked the camper because we always knew we had a place to stay.” Their travels also took them overseas, including Europe and Morocco. At home, however, they liked to support their beloved Nebraska Huskers football team.
colleges, and we traveled with family to bowl games back when we were winning bowl games,” Eva said. “I think we hit the best years for Nebraska football.” Since her move to Aberdeen Village last summer, Eva is making friends and enjoying life in her new home. “Things are pretty much like they were in Wichita,” she said. “People
Valentine’s Day trivia Valentine’s Day was first declared a holiday by a pope. In 496 A.D., Pope Gelasius I made the feast of St. Valentine an official holiday, apparently hoping to expel the pagan rituals of Lupercalia by combining it with a holy day. The first Valentine’s Day celebration occurred in Paris. The first known official celebration of Valentine’s Day took place in Paris on February 14, 1400, which is when King Charles VI of France established La cour amoureuse, or the High Court of Love. The court, entirely run by women, met to deal with marriage contracts, divorces, infidelity and domestic violence. Passing out Valentines is a 600year-old tradition. The oldest record of a valentine is a poem Charles, the Duke of Orleans, wrote to his wife when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1415, in which he refers to his wife as his “Valentine.” For lack of a better phrase, the rest is history.
“We both graduated from Nebraska
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are very friendly. I’ve made friends quickly, and the people who have been here longer are welcoming and accepting. It’s sad that we’re still in this COVID thing — I hope we can get back to playing bridge, Mexican train and rummy. We play bingo, though, and I’ve found that’s the fastest way to learn people’s names. When they shout out the winners, you get to learn them quicker.” ◆
COMMUNITY MATTERS | February 2022
English women believed bay leaves brought good luck on Valentine’s Day. In the 1700s, rural English women would pin five bay leaves to their pillows — one in the center and four on the corners — on the night of Feb. 13 in order to have sweet dreams about their future husbands. Candy hearts were originally medical lozenges. In 1847, Boston pharmacist Oliver Chase invented a machine that simplified the lozenge production process, which led to the first candymaking machine. Having identified an opportunity to revolutionize the candy business, Chase shifted his focus to candy production with Necco wafers. Some countries celebrate friendship on Feb. 14. Finland and Estonia celebrate Valentine’s Day a little differently. Known as Ystävänpäivä in Finland and Sõbrapäev in Estonia, both use the holiday as a Friendship Day, or Day of the Friends, when they exchange cards and gifts not only with lovers, but with friends and family members as well. ◆
Aberdeen Village shares customer service survey responses Aberdeen Village continues to seek customer feedback through monthly telephone surveys. Each month, residents and their representatives are randomly selected to participate in telephone satisfaction surveys conducted by Pinnacle Quality Insight.
I go to the halls when I want to, and I am very happy here,” said one resident. Another respondent said, “I would tell them that it is a wonderful place, everybody is very nice, friendly, loving, caring and I could not ask for a better place to live.”
We greatly value the opinions of our residents and their representatives about the care and services we provide, and we encourage them to participate honestly when contacted by Pinnacle Quality Insight. All state and federal confidentiality laws are met in Pinnacle’s service. ◆
The graphic above highlights some of the survey results. All scores are given on a 5-point scale, with 5 being the highest score and 1 the lowest score. Between December 2020 and November 2021, Aberdeen Village residents and their families gave the community high scores in demonstrating dignity and respect, cleanliness, and the move-in process. Residents and their representatives also indicated a high likelihood they would recommend Aberdeen Village to others. “Most important to me is that I get help when I need it, I get my privacy, Aberdeen Village | A PMMA COMMUNITY
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Area artists invited to submit work for Art is Ageless competition Senior artists in the Olathe area are invited to participate in Aberdeen Village’s annual Art is Ageless® exhibit and juried art competition March 25–April 29.
or professional. Find the complete rules and category listing online at www.ArtIsAgeless.org. Local competition winners will join winners from 14 other PMMA® communities to be judged at the systemwide level.
Entries of artistic works will be accepted from any area artist who is 65 years of age or older to exhibit and/or compete for an opportunity to be featured in the Art is Ageless calendar in 2023. Due to the uncertainty created by COVID-19, Aberdeen Village plans to hold its event virtually for friends of the program on the community’s Facebook page. Winners will be announced on Facebook following the event. Works will be on exhibit at the community for residents only. Artists compete in nine categories, including painting, drawing, photography, quilting and sculpture and may be designated as amateur
Artists may choose to enter the exhibit only. For the competition, works are to have been completed in the past five years (since January 2017). Works to be entered for judging need to be at Aberdeen Village by March 18. Contact Stephanie Oehlert at 913-599-6100 to arrange to drop off artwork. The exhibit is scheduled to be open to residents from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 25 through April 29. A residents-only reception honoring the artists is scheduled for 3 p.m. May 2. Plans remain flexible due to COVID-19.
17500 W. 119th St.
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Olathe, KS 66061-9524
The Art is Ageless® program encourages Aberdeen Village residents and other area seniors to express their creativity through its annual competition, as well as art classes, musical and dramatic events, educational opportunities and current events discussions throughout the year. Aberdeen Village is a PMMA (Presbyterian Manors of Mid-America®) community. Entry forms and information can be obtained by contacting Stephanie Oehlert at 913-599-6100 or soehlert@pmma.org, or access them online at ArtIsAgeless.org. ◆