ROCKLAND — Bartlett Woods Retirement Community hosted an open house Saturday, May 19, inviting the public to see recent changes. The open house was to showcase 24 new apartments in a wing that is now part of the main building. Other new features included a game room, media room, conference room and renovations to the dining area. The new wing represents a major expansion for the Rockland Retirement Community that took years of planning and building.  

The community was alive with residents, guests and staff. As soon as you walked in the door, soft piano jazz came from the sitting room and you immediately felt welcome and comfortable. Mike Fletcher manned the grill outside cooking up lots of hamburgers and hotdogs for the hungry people. This was not Mike’s first foray into the world of grilling.

“I did the first Bar-B-Q right here on this machine in 1999,” he said proudly.

Louise Knowlton has been a resident of Bartlett Woods for three years. She said she liked it so well, she was planning on staying another 30 years. We asked her what she thought of the new wing and all the expansion.

“It’s marvelous,’ said Knowlton. “They worked very hard and did a good job and I don’t think anybody can find a fault with it. I love it here. It’s wonderful because I have friends here. I went to school with this girl. The food is very good. It’s always very tasty. If you think you’d like to try a new dessert you just give the chef a recipe and he’ll try it for you. It’s really more like living in a big home. If you had a big house and all the servants in the world, that’s really what this is.”

Since we were talking about food I thought it prudent to seek out the chef and get a comment on his job. Aaron Prescott is the dietary director for Bartlett Woods and said that dietary director is really just another term for chef. It was a busy day for him. There was food and iced beverages on every floor, as well as, servers making the rounds with plates of snacks. Residents can choose to dine in the facilities dinning room for their regular meals, or take their meals in their apartments. I asked him to identify the hardest thing about his job.  

“Having 40 different palates and making them all happy is the hardest thing to do here,” said Prescott. “Lots of hard work and training under some really nice chefs was the key to making this job work for me. I think the most popular dish we do here is the crab cakes. They love them and I love to make them for them.”

Viginia Poletti is Bartlett Woods’ oldest resident at 102 years old. She celebrated her birthday las February. She was born and grew up in Rockland, lived in Florida and is now back home. We asked her what she remembered about Rockland and how she liked her present apartment.

“Well, it’s a lot bigger of course,” she said. “There’s a lot more people now and a lot more activity now, that’s for sure. I liked the school very much. I loved going to school and I went all the way up to graduation. I love it here. Everybody is friendly and it’s just a nice place to live. I’m very comfortable.”

Mary Eads is the executive director for Bartlett Woods. Though her day was very busy, she took the time to spend a few minutes with us anfd give her thoughts on the new addition, her staff and the residents.

“Bartlett Woods has been nestled in a quiet residential neighborhood in Rockland for 14 years,” she said. “We originally had 34 one and two bedroom apartments and we just added 24 new apartments onto the building. We took advantage of the time and also renovated some of our existing spaces like the dining room, the sun porch and our parlor which we’re really excited about because we like to host social hours.”

“We have the best residents,” said Eads. “It’s nice because they love being here, they treat us like family. They look to us like family and it’s the same with everybody that works here, it’s like family here. When you walk in you can feel that friendly atmosphere.

“Bartlett Woods has always had an outstanding reputation. I’ve been here for four years as the administrator and I’ve seen this whole project through. We’re better with the remodeling, but we still have the same philosophy, the same mission, our residents still feel the same in that we offer a residential setting verses an institutional one. And we’ve gone out of our way to continue that, so I don’t feel as though we’ve changed our philosophy or our mission and our goal is to continue that, so we all go on hearing good things about Bartlett Woods.”