By Kelly A. Shue
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
As residents of New Orleans, the arrival of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 motivated Earl and Claudia Davis to join an Erickson Priority List as soon as possible.
“We had wanted to move back to [the Washington, D.C.] area for a while,” says Earl. “Our daughter Cheryl and her husband Bob live in Alexandria, Va., and were instrumental in getting us interested in Erickson living.
We first visited Greenspring in 2001 and had been receiving The Erickson Tribune periodically ever since. “When a wild lady named ‘Katrina’ made a surprise visit to New Orleans, we boarded up and evacuated the day before she hit the area. After a few days in motels in Georgia, I took Claudia and our three cats to move in with Cheryl and Bob. That’s when we took a tour of Greenspring and signed up on the Priority List. It looked as though it would work out great, since I needed some time to go back to New Orleans, see what was left, fix it, and put our house on the market.”
Flexibility is key
One of the most advantageous benefits of joining the Priority List is the flexibility it gives people to transfer their “join date” to any of Erickson’s growing number of communities while still maintaining their place in line. After almost a year of waiting on the Greenspring Priority List for the apartment home they wanted, Earl and Claudia learned about Riderwood by watching the weekly infomercial about the community.
“We followed up online to find out more details,” says Earl. “We visited Riderwood for their luncheon and took a tour of the community. Sally Sager, our retire ment counselor, was very helpful, and we were impressed with the friendliness of both the residents and the staff. The buildings and grounds were neat, clean, and very pleasant. During that visit, we selected the floor plan that we liked and had our priority information transferred to Riderwood.”