Dr. James (Jim) Hughes has lived and worked all over the United States as a physician specializing in pediatrics. He and his wife Gillian are enjoying retirement at Harvest Hill where he can be found walking the beautiful trails surrounding the community every morning at dawn.

Dr. Hughes graduated from high school in Exeter, New Hampshire and earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford before joining the United States Navy. After primarily serving on an aircraft carrier in the Far East for three years he was discharged and attended Harvard Medical School, graduating “cum laude.”

After graduating Dr. Hughes joined a Johns Hopkins University project as an assistant professor in the medical school and school of public health while studying pneumonia in children in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata), India. He returned to the United States, spending two years with Dartmouth Health before leaving to run a private clinic. He also helped develop a new HMO in East Lansing, Michigan and joined the Georgetown University HMO in Maryland which Kaiser Permanente bought. He spent 18 years with Kaiser Permanente in Washington D.C. and found time to earn a Master’s of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Dr. Hughes and his first wife of 56 years had four children, a daughter, and three sons. Together he and his wife Gillian are the parents of five children including her daughter. After retiring from medicine he and Gillian moved to Vermont and built a house on Lake Fairlee where they lived for 25 years before making the move to Harvest Hill in 2022.

Dr. Hughes and his wife have always been interested in the arts and Gillian is an original founder of the Parish Players theater group in Vermont. He has been in over a dozen performances with Opera North and did a reading of the play “Copenhagen” with other Harvest Hill residents at the First Congregational Church in Vermont where he is a member.

Dr. Hughes combined his love of pediatrics, theater and the arts into entertaining children reading from the “Harry Potter” book series, over Zoom to an elementary school in Vermont.

“My greatest pleasure is reading to children. I have been reading aloud to school kids for over 20 years,” Dr. Hughes said. “When I put the offer out to read books aloud at Harvest Hill the residents who said they were interested chose ‘Harry Potter,’ too. I have a pretty faithful following here, “ Dr. Hughes said.

If you are considering a new retirement lifestyle Dr. Hughes says there is so much to love about Harvest Hill from the beautiful natural surroundings to the great dining options, numerous activities, and all the live musical performances.

Marylin has deep ties to the Lebanon community where she has lived most of her life, raised her four children, and owned and operated the oldest business in town with her husband of 60 years. When it came time to move to a retirement community she never considered anywhere else but Harvest Hill.

“This is a very comfortable place and the food is really good,” Marylin says.

Marylin and her husband Leo owned Lebanon’s oldest business, Hildreth’s Hardware, which was established in 1856. The original store was destroyed in a fire in 1903 and rebuilt. Marylin and Leo began managing the store for her father and assumed ownership of it in 1965. The building narrowly escaped being destroyed by fire again when a blaze swept down the street it was on. Several businesses burned but the fire stopped just short of the hardware store. After Marylin and her husband retired their son followed in their footsteps and took over managing the store.

Several of Marylin’s friends at Harvest Hill remember Hildreth’s Hardware.

“It was a huge hardware store and very well known. If you were doing any kind of home repair, Hildreth’s is where you went first,” Marylin says.

Marylin chose Harvest Hill because she always knew, “it was the place to be.” Centrally located in the town she has always called home, Harvest Hill offered her the services and activities she was looking for in a retirement community. She moved in two years ago, stays active going to exercise classes three days a week, and enjoys playing board games and doing arts and crafts.

“I don’t sit around. I like to stay busy,” Marylin says.

Marylin is looking forward to spending time with her four children and their families who live nearby for the holidays.

Mary and her husband came to Harvest Hill 15 years ago, having lived in the Upper Valley for over five decades. The community offered the services and amenities they were looking for in the place they had called home for so long.

Originally from Somersworth, New Hampshire, Mary graduated from the MacIntosh Business College in nearby Dover with a secretarial degree and worked as a secretary in the human resources department for the Internal Revenue Service. After she and her husband got married in 1963, they moved to Worcester, Massachusetts where she worked for another IRS office until they started a family.

Mary is actively involved with her church and has served on several committees over the years. She is part of a group that makes mission quilts for the underserved and has personally sewed 50 backpacks every year that are filled with school supplies donated by the congregation and shipped to children in some of the poorest nations around the world.

Mary has always liked to travel and every September she and daughter Judy go to Maine to volunteer for the annual New England Parkinson’s Ride, which raises money for the Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Research Foundation. They staff one of the rest stops for bicyclists participating in the ride.

Right after moving to Harvest Hill Mary became involved with the resident newsletter and served as the editor for 12 years. She enjoyed working on the computer and overseeing article assignments, layout and design. Mary has since handed off her newsletter editorial duties to someone else but still contributes by attending community events and taking photos for it.

Mary enjoys being involved in community life. She is the president of the Residents’ Association and is currently serving the last of a 3-year term on the APD Lifecare Board of Trustees. She also oversees the Trading Post, a community swap shop of sorts where residents can trade items and she donates unwanted items to local area thrift stores every couple of months.

When she is not volunteering in the community Mary is a regular for exercise class four days a week and Scattergories on Sundays. To relax she enjoys quilting, listening to music and reading. Her favorite genres are thrillers and mysteries but says she has “too many favorite authors to list.”

“What I like best about living at Harvest Hill is the food and activities. No shopping, cooking or cleanup and with all the activities you can stay as busy as you want to be,” Mary says.

Lois Clarke has been a resident of Harvest Hill for the past 14 years. Originally from Great Britain, she grew up with a brother, Bill, and sister, Margaret in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. She moved to Canada where she met her husband Malcolm and they lived in Massachusetts, then Pennsylvania, before settling down at Harvest Hill to be closer to their daughter in New London, New Hampshire.

For 11 of her 14 years at Harvest Hill, Lois spent considerable time and effort interviewing fellow residents for the in-house newsletter, Hillwinds. She has since retired from writing, feeling like it was time for someone else to carry on.

“Eleven years was a long time doing Hillwinds,” Lois says. “I loved it, but it was tiring having a job with consistent deadlines. I would sometimes do as many as five interviews a week and they generally took up my whole afternoon.”

She also spent considerable time gardening, growing flowers on her patio and found it very rewarding but is now content to admire the efforts of other resident gardeners while she takes it easy. She enjoys playing a weekly game of Scattergories with fellow residents on Sundays then finds it “a real treat” to retire to her apartment to watch movies. She enjoys a wide variety of films and television series and viewing them in the comfort of her home.

Lois typically starts her days with breakfast and carrying on a childhood family tradition of reading.

“My family always read at breakfast and lunch,” Lois says. “Never at dinner, though. That time was reserved for conversation.”

She and her friend of the past 13 years, Nancy, regularly meet every evening in the dining room, sometimes joined by another long-time friend and residents they invite to join them for great food and good conversation.

“There is no reason to eat alone here,” Lois says. “If someone asks to join your table and you have an empty seat, the answer is always yes.”

Lois says it doesn’t feel like she has lived at Harvest Hill for the past 14 years and means that as a compliment. She stayed so busy that she hardly noticed the time passing. She feels fortunate to live in such a comfortable community with a lovely apartment that overlooks the gazebo and courtyard next to a huge maple tree, being able to relax, play Scrabble on her computer and read as much as she likes. As the phrase goes, “Life is good.”

Carl came to Harvest Hill a retired magistrate after a long and illustrious career in the Navy where he served around the world and was a part of historical events that helped shape the United States.

Born and raised in Norristown, Pennsylvania, after graduating from high school Carl moved to Rhode Island where he earned a history degree from Brown University. He was a member of the Navy ROTC program and after graduation served four years in the Mediterranean and Caribbean and as the junior engineer in charge of the engine room on a ship that was part of the naval blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Carl married his wife Nancy in Massachusetts before being transferred to California and serving aboard the U.S.S. Ticonderoga in Southeast Asia at the start of the Vietnam War. When he was released from active duty they journeyed to Pennsylvania where he earned his juris doctorate from the Dickinson School of Law and moved to Rhode Island to practice corporate law.

Carl decided to rejoin the Navy in the Judge Advocate General’s Corp which took him to Norway, New London, Florida, Washington D.C., Scotland and Italy. In his second career with the Navy, he served as a staff lawyer, a lower court military judge and coordinated U.S. military activities with the Italian Ministry of Justice. In his last year of active-duty Carl served as a special assistant to the general counsel of the CIA.

“I had a great time with it,” Carl says of his long and unique Navy career.

After retiring from the Navy, Carl and Nancy stayed in Virginia where he was a state magistrate until 2000. They spent three years exploring new places to call home before settling on Orford, New Hampshire where they lived for over 20 years. Carl served as the town Treasurer for nine years, was a library trustee and a member of the Conservation Commission.

Carl is new to Harvest Hill, having moved from another senior living community for the bigger apartments, numerous walking trails, great food and wonderful staff.

“I see a smile everywhere and they can’t do enough for you,” Carl says of the Harvest Hill team. “They all know my name and are happy to help you with whatever you need.”

Carl stays busy walking the beautiful, wooded trails surrounding the Harvest Hill community, attending the group Brainteaser game, concerts, and the book read-aloud group. Besides the great location where he can walk to his primary care doctor’s office and the abundance of fun outings and activities, Carl says another reason he loves it at Harvest Hill is the food.

“It’s all so good and I really enjoy it,” he says.