Harbor Chase
Camellia at Deerwood
We are back out on the road on a Monday morning for two visits planned at Harbor Chase communities. At Dr. Phillips in Orlando, their enthusiastic activity director Chelsie found the perfect resident to cruise and croon – Eileen. Eileen is an energetic woman in her mid-80s whose whole life and lineage are built upon breaking female stereotypes. Her great grandmother marched in suffragette parades! She had pearls of wisdom about healthy aging and staying active and relevant, even if it means just bagging groceries. Her message was loud and clear: stay relevant and do something!
We then cruised to Jacksonville for another visit at Harbor Chase of Mandarin, where we met up with Garrett, who runs the programming at their community. He’s an iN2L magician. Two gentlemen named Walt and Larry King (his nickname was Larry King Alive) joined us to cruise and croon. They had plenty of stories of growing up in various parts of the country and meandering life journeys to Florida (are there any residents who Florida who were born here?). The Harbor Chase communities are gorgeous. They’ve been a great partner of ours for many years, and the Chelsies and the Garretts of the world are the true stars of the show. They both rode in the van and had marvelous things to say about working for Harbor Chase.
We also visited Camellia at Deerwood in Jacksonville, an eclectic community that has done a great job of integrating iN2L into their programming. Here we did our cruising and crooning indoors, and several of their memory care residents cruised with the iN2L driving simulator. That interactive experience always delights me in memory care as people come to life through a virtual driving machine. You can see the memories flowing through their spirit. It’s fascinating and rewarding. Kudos to Jennifer, their rec therapist who knew the residents, knew their stories and obviously makes a difference every day.
