aging & wellness
passion
projects Retirees keep their minds and bodies active with favorite hobbies By LEAH BERRY and MORGAN CARTIER WESTON Photography by JOHN MICHAEL SIMPSON
timber to treasure
Dick Eyestone grew up in the small town of
Washington, Iowa. “My father was what I would describe as a farm carpenter,” he says. “He did basically whatever he could to make a living.” Dick went to work with his father, building and helping to make repairs, when he was 12 years old; he worked every summer and holiday until he was 22. Dick graduated from Drake University, then spent four years in the Coast Guard during the Vietnam War before earning his master’s from The University of Iowa. “I worked for everything from Fortune 500 companies to high-tech startups over the next 30 years,” he says. Dick and his college sweetheart, Linda Eyestone, relocated from Iowa to retire in Black Mountain, North Carolina, in 2004 and eventually moved to Galloway Ridge to be close to their daughter in Hillsborough. “We wanted to be in a genuine retirement community,” Dick says. “And, in particular, a life plan community.”
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It doesn’t hurt that there’s also a woodworking shop on-site at Galloway Ridge. Dick put his carpentry skills to use, picking the hobby back up after he retired – he still has a shop at his Black Mountain home, too, where he’s “been at it for 20 years,” he says. “I had grown up as a carpenter, so working with wood was pretty natural, and I had a familiarity with power tools. It’s scary, if you’ve never run a table saw, to turn it on. It’s pretty natural to think, ‘I could lose a finger!’” Dick has embarked on a number of projects at Galloway Ridge, including rebuilding a rather sizeable birdhouse that sits outside the community. He calls it a “bird condo,” as it has 12 nesting spots and weighs nearly 50 pounds. “Birds don’t like to nest if there’s an old nest in there,” Dick explains. The old birdhouse had been there since 2008. “You’re supposed to take it down every year and clean it out, but the old one never came down.”
This group of Galloway Ridge retirees – Dick Eyestone, Jim Crescenzi, Eilean Yates, Mary Hackman, Ginny Lentz and Norm Christensen – finds joy in their hobbies, from crafting birdhouses and fine woodworks to making musical instruments and arranging flowers.