Is Charlottesville, Virginia a good place to retire?

I wrote this article about my parents in 2014. They are both gone now but I find myself in those same happy shoes these days, enjoying the fruits of our labor and feeling blessed to have wound up in such an extraordinary place. I would love to help you find your last, forever home in Virginia’s piedmont, the perfect place for the rest of your life!

It’s time. Your career has run its course, your children have flown the nest and for the past few years you’ve been thinking about what is to come. Perhaps it’s Florida for you with easy winters, boats and shuffleboard. Perhaps it’s a townhouse in the city with coffee shops around the corner, theater and opera on a whim. Perhaps you’ll settle as close as you can to the grandkids.

In the late 1970’s, contemplating retirement after 30 years in the navy, my mom and dad, stationed at the Washington Navy Yard began taking long weekends, investigating those parts of the country that looked promising. My mom had been a navy wife following my dad from port to port, moving thirteen times with five children. It had been a hectic life, glamorous at times, certainly full of adventure but never had there been a home. She had never seen a tree grow. Her dream was a place in the country where she could have a horse. My dad wanted nothing more than to help make her dream come true.

They looked in New England and felt the winters might be too cold. They looked in South Carolina and felt a bit too northern for the south. They looked here and there, taking long weekend trips till they planned a short two hour drive towards the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and discovered Madison County. I was in my 20’s in California and my mom started sending me photos of beautiful farms which had old farm houses in need of renovation. Most were completely out of reach financially, (over $150,000) but I could tell the excitement was building. One day I got a call telling me that they had purchased the old Graves home place in near Rochelle. It had an old brick farm house on 22 acres with a big red barn and a pond full of bass and bluegill. They would call it St. Clair, a family name.

Last week I was visiting my Dad. Two of my sisters were there. As we sat in the living room of this elegant home that has been in our family for more than 30 years now, we started going through the scrap books. There are my mom and dad, wonderfully fit with barely a hint of gray, posing with a pitchfork, beaming. The before and after pictures are striking as they turned “this old house” into their beautiful home. There is my sister’s wedding album, and mine with the big white tent set up next to the house. There are the grandkids floating on noodles in the pool, now in their 20’s and 30’s with kids of their own. There is my mom on Henry, her wonderful Morgan horse that she loved for 20 years and rode all over the hills and mountains of Madison County. There are Gus, Muppet, Tess, Joe and Meg, all the lucky dogs that lived happy, full lives at St. Clair.

My mom passed away from a sudden stroke this past January. She and my dad had been married 60 years, 30 in the Navy and 30 on the farm where they spent the rest of their lives. St. Clair was a magnet that brought my four sisters and me to Virginia every summer for our reunions and eventually to live close enough for an easy visit, fifteen minutes for me. Thirteen grandchildren will have life time memories of summers at St. Clair and each of us knows that this charming little place in the country answered perfectly for a happily ever after for Mom and Dad.

You may be planning for the rest of your lives now. My plans are shaped by my parent’s example and the knowledge that this chapter can be the main course, especially if it contains the elements of challenge, growth and romance. For me it will be a place in country, near the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.