January Regional Senior Housing Directory 2018  |  The Senior Reporter     7

was difficult for me.”
Gordon has three meals a day at 

Westwood. “The waitresses are 

just wonderful. It’s better than 

being in a restaurant. They give us 

a published menu and ask us what 

I want. I love the soups. There’s a 

tablecloth and cloth napkins. You 

are lucky if you ever get a paper 

napkin,” he laughs.
“There are four of us who sit at a 

table. We get along very well,” he 

adds. He always sits with the same 

group. “The older gentleman at 

my table is 104 (years old). I think 

that’s pretty remarkable. He’s pretty 

sharp too.”
Gordon continues, “Once a week 

they come in to clean the apartment, 

and they do our laundry if we want 

them to. And I don’t have to shovel 

snow.”

Charlotte Moyer

Other photos that can be used 

include Front entrance after sunrise.

jpg and Welcome Rework.jpg
Charlotte Moyer has lived at 

Ecumen Lakeshore in Duluth for 

three years.
Both in their 90s, Charlotte and 

her husband, John, had been very 

active their entire lives. John had 

loved the Boundary Waters, and in 

retirement they had become avid 

golfers and dancers. “We had a 

cabin. We did everything we ever 

wanted to do,” Charlotte says.
“On December 6, 2014, John fell 

coming out of a grocery store, 

and he went into rehabilitation at 

Ecumen. At that point, our lives 

changed,” Charlotte explains. “I 

saw he wasn’t recovering from 

his hip break and arm surgery. 

The apartment where we were 

living didn’t have a bathroom that 

was wheelchair accessible, so I 

knew we couldn’t go back there. I 

thought the best thing for us was to 

move over here.”
The move was a relatively smooth 

transition for them. “We had 

downsized twice before—once 

to move to Arizona and after 32 

years there, to move back to Duluth 

into an apartment,” she says. “We 

have five children. When they get 

together and pool their talents, 

nothing is impossible. They took 

over and moved us over here. 

The one fault about this single 

apartment is the closets are too 

small. So my son went to Ikea and 

bought a wardrobe and set it up into 

the bedroom, and that was perfect.”
She talked about other parts of the 

transition “We had to give up the 

cars, and that was hard. I have 

Charlotte Moyer has created a warm atmosphere 

in her apartment at Ecumen Lakeshore in Duluth, 

combining family heirlooms with furniture that 

fits the one-bedroom apartment setting.

Gordon Richardson relaxes in the Fireside Room 

at Westwood Assisted Living in Duluth.

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