Jo and Joe Hanson Interview, August J: June H: Joe O: Jo

Transcription

1 Jo and Joe Hanson Interview, August 2016 J: June H: Joe O: Jo J: Hello. H: Hello. J: Hi, this is June Hussey. It's this Joe? H: Yes, this is one of the Joes. O: And I'm the other Jo. J: I figured it was safe to say Joe since you are both named Joe. O: Right. J: Well, I'm glad that you're both able to join us. H: Thank you. J: My name is June, June Hussey. And I'm here in Tucson with Watermark. And so I will start out by thanking you both for being with us and explaining a little bit about why we do these calls and then I'm going to let you do a little bit of talking from there and then we ll get into some specific questions. So first of all I just wanted to share with you the reason we do these interviews and we do a lot of them all over the country with residents of our different communities and we like to, first of all, just get to know who you are a little bit and then find out what was going through your mind when you decided it was time to look for a retirement community, how you selected the one you did and a little bit about the life you're enjoying now that you ve moved in. And then what we do is, we find no two stories are alike. And every time we share them, we connect with people who may have never thought about retirement community living or they might just be in the beginning phases of going through the process and so when we connect them with other folks who have been through that process, it kind of makes it a little bit easier for them to deal with. So that's the purpose. O: Ok. J: And just, as a ground rule, we are recording this conversation so that we will produce an accurate transcript and just so you know, if you should say something along the way that maybe is too personal or you just don't want to be shared, just go ahead and say right then and there, "Hey, please take this part out," ok? H: Ok. J: Ok, very good. I'll let you each take a turn introducing yourselves and sharing just a little bit about who you are, maybe where you grew up, how you met, that kind of a thing. As much as you'd like to talk about and then we'll get into some more specific questions as far as when it came to the point of moving. So this would be more about your early life, your career, your interests, that kind of thing. So one of you can start. O: Go for it. H: Ok, I'm originally from Nashville, grew up there and went to college at Vanderbilt. I studied electrical engineering and met Jo, the other Jo there also. In I guess 76 we moved to St. Louis and we re there until about 98. And then moved Osprey, Florida in a subdivision, South Bay Yacht and Racquet Club. And we were there for the past 18

2 years and moved here on December 22nd. Go. O: You're done? O: I was born in Memphis but by the time of 10th grade I had been to 13 different schools and then my dad got laid off from that job and mother said, "Good, we can go home." So we went back to Memphis. So that's where I graduated from high school and then went to Vanderbilt where Joe and I met. My bachelor s degree was chemistry and then I got a Master s in environmental engineering. And I worked for Monsanto in St. Louis for 21 years doing hazardous waste cleanup and originally designing waste treatment facilities for Monsanto's plants back in the early 70s and then the last five or six years doing cleanup of old hazardous waste sites. And found out in late '96, early '97 that they were going to reorganize one more time and they were offering some nice packages if you didn't want to find a job so I said, "Ok." And we were sitting at the dinner table one night and Joe said, "Oh, we could retire to Florida." And I said, "Ok." He said, "Uh, uh." H: I was still working at the time. O: So he worked another year. I was downsized in May of '97 and then we moved here in the first of April '98. J: Nice. O: When I was a kid we lived in Miami, Pensacola and Jacksonville. My dad's brother lived in Hollywood and his son, my cousin Jim, lives in Jensen Beach now but they were in Pembroke Pines. So I've been around Florida all my life. I knew we did not want to be on the East Coast so we came to the West Coast and found Osprey or Sarasota area and loved it. We've been here all this time. J: How nice. What's not to love about Sarasota, right? O: Yes. O: Joe failed retirement and went back to work full-time but I'm doing volunteer stuff. I'm a master gardener through the University of Florida extension. My dad was at The Springs here, across the road or down the road. He died in January of '12 about five months after his hundredth birthday. J: Wow. O: The ombudsman had helped me a lot because I was having some issues with The Springs so at that time I promised them that when I didn't have so much skin in the game I'd come be an ombudsman. So for three years now, an ombudsman is a volunteer with the Florida Department of Elder Affairs and it's part of the Older Americans Act. So we visit all the assisted living, skilled nursing and adult family care homes. And there is like 115 of them in Sarasota County. And in the last three years I've probably been in 75 or 80 of them. J: Wow. O: We're both only children and all four of our parents went through the ALF, ECC, skilled nursing, that whole system. I've seen a lot. We've seen it all over the years. We don't have kids. A lot of our friends, when we started talking about moving said, "You're too young." I'm 65 and he's 67. But I see enough people in the assisted living places that I firmly believe that you need to go before you need to go. H: And we wanted to pick where we wanted.

3 O: Since we don't have family around we wanted to know where we were going to be. J: Well, that's great. O: We looked at five other independent living facilities around here and we only moved five miles so this is kind of our geographic comfort zone. We still go to the same grocery and doctors and he's even closer to work now than he was. And of all the facilities we looked at, this one is probably the most active. Chronologically our median age is probably the same as most of the others but it's a much younger, to us, thinking, acting, things-going-on group. And we love it. J: That's great. So you've been there about a little over a half year then? O: Yes, we moved in December 22nd. We've been here almost eight full months now. J: And tell me about your apartment. H: Well, it's a double. I guess originally it was two separate singles. And essentially we didn't have to get rid of much furniture. It all fits well. We did get rid of our dining room. O: Big dining room table and buffet. H: That we never used. O: But we have about 1800 square feet and like you said we ve got all the furniture we had except for a few chairs and things. And we got rid of a lot of stuff but that's from accumulations from cleaning out two sets of parent's houses and living in the same house for 18 years. The stuff breeds. J: Yeah and so what did you do with all your extra stuff? H: We gave it to various organizations, our friends. O: Friends, we sold the dining room suite on Craig s List. I go to Venice every week and Treasures is the thrift store for hospice, our local Tidewell Hospice. And hospice, Tidewell, was really good with my dad so instead of going to Goodwill everything we take now goes down there. I sold a lot of smaller stuff on ebay over the last three or four years. A lot of it went in the garbage can. You know how that stuff, it's like I don't even know where this came from. J: Yes. So, did you know anybody when you moved in? H: Oh yes, there are several couples that were from South Bay subdivision that had moved in before we that we knew, three or four couples. O: Augenthaulers and Ben and Judy Adams. J: I've interviewed some of these folks. O: They were our greeters when we moved into South Bay 18 years ago. J: Oh wow. O: So we've known them since we got here, off and on, and they had moved around and hadn t been in South Bay for a while and then we heard they were up here. The Augenthaulers, our neighbors were two blocks down from us. Joan and Jerry Silvey lived in South Bay. And Sandy from church is here. I wouldn't say we were close friends or socialized with any of those people but at least we knew them. J: Right, and so now that you've been there about six months or so, has it been easy meeting other people? How much of your time do you spend there versus out and about? Talk about that for a little bit. H: Well, I'm still working full time. I work for a church nearby and so I'm out, I guess I put in about 43 hours a week at the regular job. So it's kind of nice hanging around here afterward. O: But he manages to get home in time for happy hour three nights a week.

4 J: Well, he's a smart man. H: Yeah. O: Between, you know, doing ombudsman time varies because if I'm just doing the quarterly visits it's not too much. If we get cases and complaints then I get busy. But I'm out and about every day doing something. I'm a master gardener so I teach classes for extension. But we hang out here. I'm on the maintenance committee. I m on the hospitality committee. H: I've been doing the closed-circuit television channel putting up announcements on that. O: It had been down. When he started working on it in July, it still had the announcement that the chillers were going to be down tonight but don't worry the temperatures going to be in the 50s. J: I guess that was an old message. O: There was a lot of old stuff on there because we didn't have anybody that knew how to or had time to update stuff. O: Being the electrical engineer, and he worked in TV when we first got married, he talked to Carmen, our new activities director, and she turned him loose. J: Perfect, perfect, put those skills to work. H: Yeah. J: So tell me about how it is, when you come home from work, coming home to The Fountains versus coming home to your house in Osprey, what is the difference? H: A few miles but it's I guess similar. It's home. It's great. O: We are not on the meal plan so we have to go get the cart to haul groceries in but that's minor compared to all the conveniences we do have. And just the people, the staff is wonderful. Like I said, we like this place because of the people and the residents are friendly and active. Being engineering nerds, we never were people that went and sought out socialization but since we've been here, we ve probably had dinner and met more people and done more stuff in the eight months than we had the last ten years, which is good for us. J: Good! And now, you're a gardener, but I read here in the bio they sent me that you were happy to give up yardwork at home, is that true? O: We had a big yard. Here we re on the first floor because I wanted to be able to go play in the dirt but I ve got containers and we have a much smaller area. H: Much smaller and we don't have to deal with grass. O: We don't have to mow grass and do all that. H: Trim trees, any of that. J: Did you do that yourself, trim the trees? J: My parents used to live in Florida and I remember my mom telling me the story of my dad trimming the palm tree. He was up on a ladder in a big black snake came out and said hello and he nearly fell off the ladder. H: Yep. O: They do that around here. H: I didn't have any encounters but it wasn't real pleasant getting up in the tree. O: We did have snakes in the yard but he never met one in the palm trees. J: Yeah, so you mentioned that some people kind of gave you a hard time about

5 thinking you were too young to make such a move. What do you say about that to other folks who feed you that line? O: Well, like I said I see enough people in my ombudsman work to know that so many of them say, "Oh, I wish we d done this years ago." You can't wait until one of you breaks a leg or has a stroke or gets sick and then you got to go find a place because you may not end up where you want to be because when you need it there may not be a spot for you where you want to be. And again we don't have brothers and sisters. We don't have kids. To us this is important that we, you know, we don't have somebody to make that decision for us if one of us gets sick or has a stroke so we wanted to be here. J: And were both of you on board with the concept together? Because a lot of times, one in a couple wants it and another does not. So how was that for you? H: Yes, absolutely we both agree on this. O: I don't know what prompted it. One night, four years ago, three years ago, we were sitting after dinner and I don't know how we even got to the subject of how much longer did we want to stay in this house and we both said, "Oh, maybe five years." And we got a little ahead of schedule and moved in three. You know, we're happy we re here. H: This apartment became available kind of unexpectedly for us. We moved the timetable up. O: We were on the waiting list for a villa but we really wanted to be out there and Phyllis, one of the sales girls, came up and called us one day and, "There's six couples ahead of you on the waiting list for a villa but we have this two-bedroom apartment on the first floor. Why don t you come look at it?" And we thought about it, the people who had been here had been here a long time so it all needed updating so I got to pick the kitchen cabinets and the colors and the flooring and it's what we wanted and we told Phyllis, I think this was on Wednesday night, Wednesday evening, and we said, "Oh, let's talk about it. We'll get back to you Monday." And I think before we got home we had made the decision. J: Oh, that's nice. O: And now that we're here, we re glad we re in the main building, the Town Center and not in a villa. J: You're happy with your choice. H: Yes, definitely. J: Good. Now, have you two, being engineers, always been sort of the planning type, think ahead type people? O: I think that comes with it. His dad was an accountant. My mother was a bank teller all her life. We both, you know, were H: Trained that way. O: Trained that way, yeah. I was a project manager when I was working so we planned and having been through what we went through with both sets of parents and wills and trusts and all that stuff we have just done it. J: That must be a great feeling to have that all taken care of and know you are well situated. H: Yes, it is. O: And again I see people when I go in facilities that don't have powers of attorney and healthcare surrogates and it amazes me. I guess being an only child one thing I found out in our cases, a lot of times the problem is the families, not families but how ill-

6 prepared families and people are when they get in this situation. J: Yeah, I know. It's as though if they don't think about it it's not going to happen. O: That's right. They are in denial. J: Yeah. O: And I see too many siblings and children fighting and arguing. We don't have that issue because we don't have them. But families are weird and we both just have always thought ahead and planned I guess. J: Now, this is more of a personal question, you're both from Tennessee but neither of you have an accent, why is that? H: Well, the other Jo moved all over the world. O: Like I said I had been to 13 different schools by the time I was in the 10th grade. We lived in Miami, we were in Germany three years, we were in Pensacola, we were in Jacksonville. I don't have that. H: And I worked in broadcasting so I tried to drop the accent there. J: You had that Broadway voice. So what did you do in broadcasting? How did you fit that in with your career, was that your career? H: At the beginning I worked for a television station right after graduation. I worked at the campus radio station and a couple of commercial stations in the city. O: On-air. H: While I was in college and the TV gig three years after graduation. O: Working in sound and audio engineering at the TV station. J: Got it, got it. O: His dad was from Minnesota so he kind of got it. H: Kind of a hybrid. J: And you met at Vanderbilt, did you take the same class, did you have the same professor, how did you meet? H: We met, there was a group of different kids that would meet for dinner every night so that's where we met. O: Now, he was in engineering and I was in science, chemistry but I don't think we ever had any classes together. J: Well, that's a pretty small school, right? J: Well, great. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you think is important for people to know about making the decision or choosing the right place or timing or anything of that nature? O: I think you need to look. Again, I go in facilities, every facility has got a different personality. You know sister facilities that belong to the same company can be totally different and I think you need to look around and talk to the people and see what's there. I will say again, I firmly believe you need to go before you need to go. H: And just come and visit and talk to people. See how happy everybody seems to be here. J: Good, ok well that's a great note to leave it on I think. I think we've covered most of the bases and taken up enough of your time I suppose. So thank you both again very much for sharing your story with us today and all that great insight too. H: You're welcome, glad to do so. J: Ok, well, you enjoy the rest of your day there in Sarasota and I will sign off with

7 another thank you. O: And it's one o'clock where you are or two o'clock? J: It is just a little after one, ten after one. We're three hours. This time of year we're three hours. In the winter we are only two hours because we don't change our clock. H: You don't change your clock, right. Well, you have a nice afternoon. J: It's a source of perpetual frustration knowing what time it is anywhere. Alright, well nice meeting you both and you take care. Thanks again. H: You're welcome, bye. J: Bye now.