Mary Redd: A Texan’s home at Shirley Meadows

Mary was born in San Antonio, Texas, to parents who were migrant farmworkers and taught her that family always comes first. 

Three months after Mary met Charles, the love of her life, they were married. “Yes, it was love at first sight for both of us,” says Mary. 

Mary spent 21 years working with bilingual and ESL kids. Mary partnered with a nonprofit called Urban Gardens and started a garden in raised beds at the neighborhood elementary school and taught kids how to plant, care for, and harvest their own vegetables. When it was time to harvest their bounty, they read “Stone Soup” and made a soup and salad out of everything they grew. 

After a lifetime in Texas, one phone call from Mary’s daughter, Athene, changed it all. Athene and her husband Ash had moved to Massachusetts with her job seven years prior and now were expecting their second child. Athene was also worried for her parents, who had lost everything they owned in Hurricane Harvey. It had taken them three years to rebuild. Her daughter did not want them to experience another catastrophe or health crisis, and she wanted them to be closer to her. 

A few days after that call, Mary and Charles put their house on the market, and within a couple months they were on the train heading to their new home at 2Life’s Shirley Meadows. 

For 47 years, Mary’s husband was her soulmate. They had a couple of wonderful years together at Shirley Meadows, enjoying their grandsons Jax and Kenzo and a host of new friends. Her husband had always wanted to learn to play the guitar, so she bought two guitars so they could take guitar lessons together. When he needed a medical bed, she moved their queen-size bed into the living room next to his so they could sleep in the same room. She spent 14 days in the ICU with him before he passed. 

When she returned to Shirley Meadows from the hospital, Claudia, a fellow resident, greeted Mary and her daughter with a big hug when she saw them coming into the lobby. Even though she had only had brief, friendly encounters with Mary and her husband in the lobby, to Mary’s surprise, Claudia attended her husband’s memorial service and military honors and helped at the reception. 

Shortly after Mary returned home to Shirley Meadows, Claudia, recently widowed herself, looked in on Mary and from that first visit their friendship blossomed. They discovered they had much in common and started quilting together. “We would sew, laugh, grieve, cry, enjoy wine, and sew some more,” says Mary. They turned Mary’s daughter’s childhood Mickey Mouse curtains into quilts for her grandsons. 

When her neighbor Judy, a master seamstress and now her close friend too, saw Claudia and Mary working on their quilt, with Judy’s help, Mary took on another project: turning an 80-year-old silk fabric pieced together by Mary’s mother-in-law into a long cardigan. 

Mary will always miss Texas, its big skies, freeways, and barbecue. But Shirley Meadows is home now. 

“Everybody knows and helps each other. It’s like one big family,” says Mary. “I feel very blessed, very complete. I’m here to stay.”