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I N S I D E … BALTIMORE BEACON — JULY 2023
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SPECIAL PULL-OUT SECTION
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Downsizing a big home is not for sissies By Lynne Vance How many towels do I use in a week? How many pots and pans do I really need? I never had to ask these questions until I faced the daunting task of downsizing from my five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot house to a 1,071-square-foot apartment. The decision to downsize from the home I’d lived in for 57 years, where I’d raised my two children, was agonizing. But when an apartment became available that met all my requisites at my chosen relocation, Riderwood Village, an Erickson community in Silver Spring, Maryland, I snapped it up. “You’re 82 years old and in relatively good health,” I told myself. “It’s now or never.” With no idea how I would fit the contents of a nine-room, two-level house into four rooms, I panicked. Luckily, my good friend Gail had the answers. She committed to working every day to help me downsize, and assured me that my seven-week move-in time frame was doable. Gail could be detached, objective and tough, yet compassionate when needed. Also, Riderwood’s moving company offered a free consultation with its professional downsizer as part of my contract. As a first step, she advised going through the house to identify and label my “must have” furniture and other possessions with different colors of painter’s tape. She then measured them and devised a floor plan for my new apartment. Once we had an idea of what would fit, we got to work on discarding the rest. First, I asked my kids what they wanted. “What on earth would I do with all that fancy china, crystal and silverware?” my daughter asked. “Half the time, I use paper plates and plastic utensils when I entertain.” My son’s only request: a brass eagle and some of his dad’s old tools. That settled, Gail and I fell into a routine.
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She set the daily agenda with organizing skills that resembled those of a military officer preparing for battle. Everyone involved soon dubbed her “The Commander.” As we marched on, slaying “the clutter enemy” surrounding us, she declared, “We have to be ruthless and take no prisoners.”
PHOTO BY M. PAYNE
Linda Ann Harris also lives in one of Target’s group homes in Maryland. She and her only sister, Dr. Mary Harris Kesselring, Ph.D., a Westminster resident, also attended the gala in March. [Ed. Note: Writer Tim Cox married Dr. Kesselring in 2021.] Their father was instrumental in making sure that Target, in its infancy, was well funded with financial endowments to sustain the organization’s future. Though she
PHOTO BY KELLY HECK PHOTOGRAPHY
Harris family’s story
JULY 2023
More than 125,000 readers throughout Greater Baltimore
Helping those with disabilities By Timothy Cox In 1983, a group of Maryland parents who wanted better services for their children with intellectual and developmental disabilities founded a nonprofit called Target Community & Educational Services. The late Milton M. Harris of Lutherville was one of those parents. He and his wife, the late Mary Charlotte Wooden Harris, sought a better life for their youngest daughter, Linda Ann, who was born with intellectual challenges. The Harrises longed for an environment where their daughter would be able to grow and develop into the free spirit that she became, thanks to her 30-plus years as a client of the Westminster-based Target Community. It was thanks to the Harris’ hard work and commitment — not only to their daughter, but to the entire group — that the Target program has survived and thrived throughout its 40 years of existence. Recently, Target held a gala event for staff, clients and their family members to celebrate the organization’s 40-year anniversary. A special guest at the gala was Judy Woodruff, beloved longtime anchor of PBS NewsHour, and her husband, Al Hunt Jr., journalist and panelist on CNN’s The Capital Gang. Their son is one of 300 clients who benefits from Target’s services, which include group-home living arrangements and independent employment services. Jeffrey Hunt, now 43, lives in one of Target’s seven group homes in Carroll County. “He’s doing remarkably well,” Woodruff told the Washington Post in 2020, noting that her son has a job and friends. “He manages to have a remarkably positive outlook.”
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Keep, sell, donate or trash We went through the house room by room, using the categories Keep, Sell, Donate and Trash (KSDT). “When did you last use this? Why will you need it?” This was the test Gail and I applied to each item as we plowed through closets of outdated clothing, yards of unused fabric, stacks of vinyl records, and enough nail-filled baby food jars to reconstruct a city. If I wavered the tiniest bit in deciding, Gail’s irrevocable verdict was, “You don’t need it.” And the object met its appropriate KSDT fate. When, for instance, I removed a baking dish from a kitchen cabinet, Gail gave it the evil eye. “But that’s the lasagna dish I use for family holidays,” I said. “And,” she asked, “how many more of those will you host?” Gail was at her ruthless best when it came to my many travel mementos. “You don’t need a hotel stub from the Greek islands to remind you of the place. You have those 20 boxes filled with photo albums when you want to revisit.” With few exceptions, Gail outlawed sentimentality as a “keeper” reason. When I retrieved a stuffed puppy from underneath a crib mattress, I stroked it tenderly, telling her, “This was my son’s favorite sleepy-bye toy.” Gail patted my hand gently, took it from me, and agreed to create a Maybe keeper box. On other occasions, when I expressed undue emotion over something like my sorority pledge paddle, she’d say, “Take a picture with your cell phone and it’s yours forever.”
Tips for remodeling wisely
Maryland retiree Lynne Vance and her friend Gail worked for weeks to clean out Vance’s longtime home in preparation for her move to a retirement community.
Every night, overcome with a numbing weariness, I’d collapse in bed, asking myself, “Why didn’t I do this 10 years ago when I had more energy and less severe arthritis?”
Yard sales can help Halfway toward our downsizing goal, when we could barely move among the boxes and bags, I suggested a yard sale to give us some room. Gail agreed — with the caveat that whatever didn’t sell could not re-enter the house. It would be left for curbside pickup
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or stacked on the porch for donation. Surprisingly, the yard sale proved a successful downsizing tool and a muchneeded break. It introduced me to a host of neighbors, too. By the end of that day, a spirit of conviviality prevailed. Kids were riding their bikes and kicking soccer balls around the perimeters of the sale area while their parents chatted amiably over carry-out coffee cups. Many volunteered trucks and SUVs to haul stuff away, tables to display more See DOWNSIZING, page B-3
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Judy Woodruff, retired PBS news anchor, and Dr. Matthew Ramsey, president and CEO of Target Community and Educational Services, attended a gala to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Maryland-based nonprofit. Woodruff’s son is a client of Target, which provides housing, job training and other services to adults with developmental disabilities.
cannot cite an exact figure, Kesselring notes that her father’s financial contributions were “quite significant.” Kesselring and her sister, who are about 18 months apart, attended elementary through high school together. “Those were tough times for Linda and I,” Kesselring recalled. “Grade-school kids were relentless when it came to teasing me because of Linda’s obvious intellectual shortcomings…but our parents didn’t really know to what extent or how cruel our neighborhood and area school kids could be,” she said. Kesselring eventually married a West Point Army officer and became the mother of three sons. When her children were
young, her then-husband was stationed overseas and constantly faced deployment or relocation. She was grateful for Target, since she would be ill equipped to be her sister’s caregiver. “It would not have been fair to Linda, nor to my young children,” Kesselring explained. “[Linda] wouldn’t have had a chance to enjoy the long-term living arrangements that she has enjoyed while existing in the Target environment,” she said. Fortunately, Target provided Linda an opportunity to live with two housemates, overseen by two professional caretakers. See GROUP HOMES, page 7
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Time-travel to Maine to visit quaint drive-ins and candy shops from yesteryear; plus, cruise down the Mississippi River in style page 15 FITNESS & HEALTH k Ditch late-night snacks k Unorthodox heart treatment
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