Park Manor

by Bob Millard

Tucked quietly into a cul de sac at the end of a winding tree-shaded drive in a nice old Southwest Nashville neighborhood stands an inviting 148 apartment, 7-floor retirement community called Park Manor. The entrance is meticulously landscaped in flowers and shrubbery. Still, if you didn’t already, you might never know what was there.

No historic marker proclaims Park Manor as a landmark in the regional retirement home development. Nor is it widely advertised that since the founding of Presbytery Apartments, Inc., the nondenominational residence for active, independent seniors has been a nonprofit mission of the Presbytery of Middle Tennessee for the past 45 years this April.

Presbyterian residents of Park Manor include, from left, Ethel
Metcalfe, Wayne and Mildred Whitt.

Surgeon and hospital developer Dr. Thomas Frist, Sr. and other Presbyterian leaders, J. Hugh Knox and Trinity Presbyterian Nashville minister Dr. Thomas Barr, were leading forces in visioning, planning, and building of Park Manor Presbyterian Apartments, Inc. Among these, Dr. Frist is recognized as the “driving force” behind development. Frist, Knox, and Barr lobbied the idea through the old Presbyteries of Nashville and Columbia.

During the 1950s Dr. Frist chaired the Tennessee State Commission on Aging. Toward the end of the decade he saw a growing need for retirement housing for financially stable retirees who faced all the same problems of aging as did the less fortunate, for whom he felt most retirement villages were being built at that time. The idea was to provide what Nashville’s evening paper, The Nashville Banner, called “Luxury living on a budget.”[ref. Banner p.6, 11/24/59, “Luxury Living On Budget Presbyterian Apartment Aim”]

The selected site was at 115 Woodmont Blvd. and located near medical facilities, churches, social clubs, and the actual neighborhoods from whence he envisioned many residents coming. Nashville did provide most of Park Manor’s early residents. Today they come from all over.

Working with architects, Mrs. Alden Smith, a 16-year board member, guided interior and exterior design. Centerpieces were social spaces, primarily a two-story “club wing” including a 300-seat dining room, large private dining rooms, and a country club-sized great room hosting social activities. Each floor has a parlor where residents often gather for bridge games. Other areas, all aimed at the active retiree, and planned to help keep them active, socially, physically, and intellectually were foreseen.

A board of 15 directors was elected, chaired by Dr. Barr. Westminster Presbyterian Nashville carried much of the active load through completion. As it continued, the board was comprised of well-known Presbyterian lay leaders — men and women. Knox chaired the board’s building committee. In December, 1959, the hilly 6.7-acre wooded lot was acquired. Visioning and planning began in earnest in early 1960, and in December of that year land clearing got under way. John H. Stetson of First Presbyterian Church Nashville, was named first executive director of Presbyterian Apartments, suggesting the name Park Manor. Finish costs were about $2.5 million.

My mother, Mrs. Leona S. Millard, has lived at Park Manor since the early 1990s. Though she reared me and my siblings in a Presbyterian Church until I was 10, Mom is by profession, disposition, and probably genetics old country German Lutheran: proof positive that no denominational threshold exists for residency. Despite coping more than 20 years with the effects of a stroke, she stays active, taking her daily walk around the complex, as do others. She seems to know and be known by a great many residents, many of whom I also know, several of whom being some of the finest elder members in my own congregation, Nashville’s Second Presbyterian Church.

One would have to try hard to become isolated here. (One man I had briefly worked for during college tried hard to fend off acquaintance. Still, everyone knew him as the grumpy old toot who, despite his outward irascibility found a companion there, married, and moved out to set up household again.)

Among Park Manor residents there are many interesting stories. One of Mom’s first neighbors was a lovely 102-year-old, Mrs.Ewers, who had lived years in China, as a daughter of Presbyterian missionaries. She regaled us with wonderful stories of Pre-Revolutionary China, and mesmerized my daughter Anna with beautiful carved and painted miniatures retained from those days.

In like kind, Anna’s mother dressed Anna as a toddling pumpkin, a Hershey’s kiss, and a variety of angels and fairy princesses for annual reverse trick-or-treat visits at Halloween. A generous, outgoing child, Anna is remembered as the blonde little girl moving methodically through the elegant main dining hall giving candies to all residents, whom she called “Grandma Lonnie’s friends.” Exuberantly diligent, she jumped up from dinner when new ‘friends’ came in. One year when she was still quite small, she suddenly realized her bucket held only a few more candies: chocolates, her personal favorites. Nonetheless, Anna smiled and gave her last bits to the latediners. “Happy Halloween,” Anna said. She waited politely as the ladies cooed at her costume and kindness before wordlessly holding out her little hand for chocolates back.

Much has changed since the July 1, 1962 grand opening. But one thread runs true. Residents have found Park Manor homey and full of friends. I know my family has.