Written by Juanita Fox
I first met Larry and Christine McHenry in July 2023 when we pitched the idea of sharing their story on the Garden Spot Village website. They lived in Denver, a 20-minute drive north from Garden Spot, and were very engaged on campus as members of the Radar Screen.
We chose them because they were taking full advantage of the opportunities they had as members of the Radar Screen. They visited Garden Spot Village often, using the Wellness Center, swimming in the pool, taking walks, playing pickleball, eating at the Harvest Table, etc.
I enjoyed learning more about them as we planned and captured their story for the Garden Spot Village homepage.
In March 2025 I was greeting attendees at a Friday afternoon Open House when they walked in the main entrance and excitedly told me, “Kelly called! We are #3 on the list!!” They couldn’t wait until Garden Spot Village was home.
In August 2025 I learned through the grapevine that Larry and Christine had moved to a cottage at Garden Spot Village. It had been a busy 60 days for them, but when I called to ask if I could take a photo of them in their new home just a few days after they moved, they quickly said “Yes!”
“Please come in,” Christine invited as she opened the door.
I expected to find boxes of stuff to be sorted, but everything was in order.
“Isn’t our home just perfect?” Christine asked.
“We feel like we are on a forever vacation,” Larry added. “It’s like we’re at an Airbnb at the beach.”
As we chatted during my impromptu tour of their home, they couldn’t stop talking about how easy the moving process had been and how much they loved their new home.
They pointed out closet doors in their hallway that transformed a bookshelf into useable storage. At their request, members of the Wood Shop had built custom doors for the shelves so they wouldn’t have to dust knickknacks. The Garden Spot renovations team painted the doors to match the rest of the home during the renovation process.
They pointed out their flooring choice and how they wouldn’t have chosen it, but Amanda Feeg, interior design consultant, highly recommended running one flooring type throughout the whole home because it would make the home feel larger and the light color would make the home feel brighter.
“Look,” Chrstine pointed from the sunroom towards the front door, “it makes our house look huge!”
Larry and Christine also hired Beyond the Fork in the Road, a local moving company that specializes in helping people downsize for a move to a retirement community. Beyond the Fork in the Road made the move seamless for them.
“Beyond the Fork in the Road met with us, helped us measure our furniture and determine which pieces we could keep and which pieces we should replace,” Christine explained. Based on the measurements, Larry and Christine chose to replace the majority of their furniture and invest in smaller, more versatile pieces.
When moving day rolled around, Beyond the Fork in the Road made it easy.
“They marked everything in our home with colored tags and moved it perfectly into our new home,” Chrstine explained.
“They packed and unpacked everything,” Larry added. “We just needed to take care of ourselves. The moving process was so easy.”
Two weeks into moving to their new home at Garden Spot Village, Larry and Christine are connected and thriving. Because they were so involved while they waited for a home, they had a ready community as soon as Garden Spot Village was “home.”
Note: If Larry and Chrstine look familiar, it’s because they are featured in marketing materials! The Marketing Team shared their story on gardenspotvillage.org in the fall of 2023. Larry was featured as one of many Garden Spot Village volunteers in the “Looking Outward” article in the Fall/Winter 2023 issue of Destination. The following spring, they were featured on the cover of Destination magazine. Their photo also appears on a variety of brochures.