Sara Gilbert Frederick
Diane Hanley once asked a resident of Primrose Retirement Community how old she was turning on her birthday. The woman happily replied that she would be 39. When she realized her mistake and corrected that number to 92, Hanley laughed along with her.
“I told her that she should have stuck with her first answer,” remembers Hanley, the assistant manager at Primrose.
Although Primrose, which opened its facility at the top of Adams Street in Mankato 10 years ago this month, is home to residents in their late 60s as well as those in their late 90s, the average age of the 59 people living there in early June was in the mid-80s.
But although age — along with concerns about mowing lawns, taking medications and generally staying safe — is what has led most of them to take either an independent or assisted-living apartment at Primrose, few of them let their age define them.
Rachel Howieson still walks along the outdoor pathway every day. Frances Paulsen still nurtures the “garden” blooming on the balcony of her second-floor apartment. Aurice Gilman still uses her spare room for her sewing machine, and Adeline Wright still works on the loom she has set up in her apartment.
And almost everyone watches the Twins when their games are on TV.
“I know when my friend Dorothy is watching the game,” says Wright, whose apartment is directly under her friend’s. “She pounds on the floor whenever they hit a home run.”
That pounding doesn’t necessarily bother Wright; instead, it reassures her that her friend is all right — and that she’s enjoying a good baseball game.
“They all look out for each other,” says Brooke Amundson, the community manager at Primrose. “They support each other and watch each other. If they notice that a pattern is off or someone isn’t doing what they normally do, then they let us know.”
Verna Evans, who has lived at Primrose nine of the 10 years it has been open, watches for Howieson on her daily walks. “If she’s not out there, I know something’s wrong,” she says.
The staff checks up on residents as well: Every night, someone flips a tab at each doorway; if those tabs, which are pushed down when the door opens, are still up when a staff member goes through the halls the next morning around 10 a.m., they knock on the door and check in. And if someone fails to come to lunch or another regularly scheduled activity, they do a quick check as well.
“Those reassurance checks make the residents feel more secure,” Amundson says. “We just want to make sure they are safe.”
Amundson and the staff also want to make sure the residents have enough to do. The Primrose calendar is filled with activities, including bingo on Mondays, exercise sessions three times a week and trips to Hy-Vee and other local businesses every Tuesday. There’s a weekly chapel service and two beauty salons in the building, where stylist Deb Miller spends two mornings a week doing hair.
But the residents have no trouble filling their time on their own either.
“Cards are huge here,” Amundson reports. “There are always groups playing Bridge or 500 or Pfeffer. There are some ladies who get together for a wine night, some who play checkers and, of course, lots of them who get together to watch the Twins games.”
“We’re pretty close knit,” confirms Evans. “We like to get together and do things. The hardest part is the ones who leave us.”
