Ten years after visiting the property of Mrs. Beatrice Breckenridge Cushman Waugh as a potential site for an OPH home near Cleveland, the Presbytery’s Committee on Services to the Aging still hadn’t forgotten about it. In 1969, the committee was approached by the pastor of Windermere United Presbyterian Church, who suggested that Mrs. Waugh might be interested in bequeathing her property for the purpose of a retirement community.

The property was bequeathed in 1971, and after six years of fundraising, the project broke ground in 1977. The

 community received over 700 responses and 672 preapplications in the five days following the announcement.

            When it was dedicated on June 24, 1979, the campus consisted of two connected apartment buildings with 75 units each, 44 ranch-style homes, a community building and a health center. Describing their first year, executive director Dr. James Banks wrote, “A bright spot in all of our lives has been the development of community. … To borrow a remark from a resident, ‘I came here alone, now I am not alone.’”