Faces of Kendal: Marian Thomas

Kendal at Oberlin is home to more than 300 people in their 60s and well beyond. They come from near (Oberlin and Cleveland) and far (Hawaii, Canada and elsewhere). The residents share many common values, such as sustainability and lifelong learning, and many have ties to Oberlin College. But each resident has his or her own unique story.

Meet Marian Thomas

Marian moved to Kendal four months ago from Kansas City and hit the ground running. No surprise, given that she is an Oberlin College alumna (her mother too) and that her son Peter Thomas, a mathematics professor at CASE, and his family are well established in Oberlin.

But moving to Kendal had been on Marian’s radar for several years, so she had other fingers, so to speak, in the Oberlin pie. She joined the Oberlin Book Group, a First Church gathering that met by Zoom and included a handful of Kendal residents.

And then there’s her musical vocation, which includes careers as church organist, choir director, piano teacher and harpsichord builder. It didn’t take long for Marian to connect with the rich Kendal musical community.

“I learned that my Oberlin ’61 classmate, Allen Huszti, had built his harpsichord from a kit workshop in Massachusetts. He was surprised to learn that I had built mine with a Hubbard kit too, and we were both surprised to learn that we had both played the organ at Church of the Covenant in Boston at different times. There have been many ‘small world’ moments here,” Marian wrote in her essay “What I’ve learned in Three Weeks of Living at Kendal at Oberlin,” to be published in the upcoming Eureka!, Kendal’s literary magazine.

On that note…

Marian’s moving van included a vertical grand piano and her handmade 7 ½ ft long two-manual harpsichord, which took her 300 hours to make. “I couldn’t leave them behind,” she says.

At a recent Sunday “Live Music at Kendal” concert (pictured here) Marian played the harpsichord thanks to an assist from five residents who moved her harpsichord to and from Heiser Auditorium. “I don’t see doing it again. In the future I’ll have cottage concerts,” Marian says.

She’s got more music dates on the calendar. A former pre-school music teacher, Marian has signed up as a volunteer at the Kendal Early Learning Center. She starts next week and plans to coordinate her weekly music activity with the center’s current theme. “If I can’t find music I’ll write a song. Plus, I have a bag of tricks with many different handheld instruments,” she says.

She’s also volunteered to play piano at Kendal memorial services and sing with the Kendal Choir.

And of course, there’s always impromptu music gatherings that pop up in resident cottages and in public spaces.

“I love music, I just can’t help myself,” Marian says.

And finally…

Marian sees moving to Kendal as a “new beginning” and like all beginnings it comes with some heartache.

As she wrote in her essay:

“I learned that even though I anticipate experiencing many joys and making new friends at Kendal, it is not easy to leave colleagues and friends after associating with them for 57 ½ years! As I sat at a table in Fox and Fell at the birthday party of a friend, I listened to everyone share stories and memories and it hit me that no one at Kendal knows any of my own stories or memories; it will take quite a while until that can happen for me, but I intend to live to at least 100, so I’ll have 15 years to create such stories and memories.”

In the past, Molly Kavanaugh frequently wrote about Kendal at Oberlin for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where she was a reporter for 16 years. Now we are happy to have her writing for the Kendal at Oberlin Community.

About Kendal at Oberlin: Kendal is a nonprofit life plan community serving older adults in northeast Ohio. Located about one mile from Oberlin College and Conservatory, and about a 40 minute drive from downtown Cleveland, Kendal offers a vibrant resident-led lifestyle with access to music, art and lifelong learning.