Ruth Boyd has lived independently her whole life. The youngest of six children, she was 5 years old when her mother passed away, and she largely raised herself. She married and raised two children in Chester. After her husband passed away nearly a decade ago, she spent five more years living on her own.
That changed when Ruth turned up at her daughter’s house with a black eye, having suffered a fall. Her daughter picked up the phone and made an appointment at Lucy Corr for the next day.
Ruth already knew the place — or knew of it. She had started working at the Chesterfield County Courthouse in 1959, back when, as she put it, “there was not a lot here.” Then came word of a beautiful new place called Springdale, going up alongside the county’s other new offices.
For decades, Ruth said, her thoughts about it never wavered: “I’ll never live there. I can’t afford it.”
‘It is perfect for me.’
The visit changed her mind. A team member showed Ruth and her daughter the apartments at Springdale, Lucy Corr’s Independent Living, and walked them through everything the community offered. Ruth was taken with the building’s architecture, as well as a particular apartment. She put money down to reserve it, still unsure she could manage it.
Her family found a way. Her grandson, a senior advisor at Capital One, laid out the math: her house was paid off, the market was at its peak, and she could sell. She got far more for the home than she’d expected.
Ruth had considered other facilities over the years, but in her mind, she kept coming back to Lucy Corr. “It has worked out beautifully,” she said.
A visual person with an artist’s eye — and a longtime HGTV fan — Ruth planned every piece she would bring before she moved, arranging her space with care. “I don’t have a lot of antiques. I don’t have a lot of expensive furniture, but I have an ability to put things together,” she said. The result impressed the staff enough that they now use her apartment to show prospective residents. “It is perfect for me,” she said.
Her favorite spot is the front-facing balcony, where she looks out across the building’s two wings and lets her thoughts run wild. “I like to think I live in a dream world, I guess,” she said.
An extended family down the hall
Ruth’s days are as full as she wants them to be. A monthly brochure lays out the options: morning walking groups, dominoes on Mondays and Fridays, bingo, movies in a theater outfitted with recliners, a putting green, raised garden beds and monthly restaurant outings by bus.
“It’s just been one thing after another to do,” Ruth said. “They keep adding to our list.”
She has sold her car (the Lucy Corr bus takes her to the grocery store on Fridays) and found her community from Chester United Methodist Church transplanted alongside her. When she moved in, one couple from her congregation actually lived at Lucy Corr. Now there are 11 parishioners at the facility, with five more on the waiting list.
But it’s the closeness that means the most. Ruth describes the people she’s met — a Virginia state historian she shares breakfast with, a grandfather who watches his professional-ballplayer grandson on TV — as an extended family. When she needs camaraderie, it’s never far. “If I wake up and want a hug, I can open my door and go to most any door,” she said. “It’s just so nice.”
A welcome last move
Like many of her neighbors, Ruth came to Lucy Corr knowing this would be her final move. If the day comes when she can no longer live independently, care is already close. “We can just walk down the hall to Assisted Living,” she said, “which is really nice to know.”
As a continuing care retirement community, Lucy Corr offers Independent Living, Assisted Living, skilled nursing care, rehabilitation and memory care support on one campus, along with adult day center programs — allowing residents like Ruth to remain in the same community as their needs change. In the meantime, dedicated staff and clinicians are consistently available to meet her in-the-moment needs.
Ruth measures her decision to live at Lucy Corr not only by her own contentment, but by what it means for her children. “I’m blessed to be here,” she said. “And they are also blessed, because they both are raising their own families, and they know that I’m well cared for.”
