By Kenneth S. Allen
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
Pliny the Elder said it 2000 years ago, and it is just as true today: “Home is where the heart is.”
For the last 36 years, Ernie and Carol Marion’s hearts have been in Charlotte. But for a while, the Marions were hearing the siren call of Florida, with its abudance of retirees.
However, the couple had some doubts. Two of their three children still live in Charlotte, Florida is far away, and it is hot.
“Then we started thinking about the hurricanes,” Mr. Marion says. “And then this newspaper (The Erickson Tribune) started coming to the house. At first, she [Mrs. Marion] was the one reading it, then I started. And then we found out that an Erickson community was opening here. We came over to look, and the rest is history.”
After talking with Retirement Counselor Lydia Hill and taking the virtual tour, the Marions joined the scores of people who have made an initial deposit to get on the priority list in preparation for moving to Windsor Run.
Continuing the good life
The decision means the couple can continue living a life they began putting together back in the early 1970s. Mr. Marion was a manager with the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C.; Mrs. Marion was raising three children in their Silver Spring, Md., home.
“We were getting pretty tired of the big city,” Mr. Marion says. So they began looking for alternatives.
“I had a supervisor whose son lived here,” Mr. Marion says. “He told me Charlotte was a big city without big-city problems. If I moved there, I’d never want to leave.”
And so in 1972, Mr. Marion was able to transfer to Charlotte. The family bought a house in the Cotswold area, with its mix of neighborhoods, schools, and shopping districts. All three children grew up there. Eventually Mrs. Marion got a job at the nearby Harris Teeter grocery store (“It was so close I could walk to work some days”) and stayed there 22 years. Two of their children still live in Charlotte, and the Marions have strong ties to their church and other organizations.