Client Success Stories

100 years young
In Bonita Springs, Florida she was the featured artist at a special showing of her art which she created during the second half of her life — 50 years worth. She’s 100 years young and still independent.

Katharine Lund was born in 1904 in Barre, Vermont. As a child, she and her sister were given paper and pencil on which to draw.

Katharine was able to draw with little mistake, but her sister Laura needed to erase so much that she ended up with holes in her paper.

As an adult, Katharine worked for many years in the jewelry business where she met Clifton Lund, the owner of Lund Jewelers at Copley Square in Boston.

They married in Scotland in 1964 and moved to Fort Myers Beach, Florida in the 1970s.

Katharine and Clifton enjoyed their beach home on stilts, one-half block from the Gulf of Mexico.

They traveled extensively, including a trip back to Scotland and Norway so she could meet Cliff’s family.

At home they’d enjoy after-dinner walks along the beach collecting boxes full of shells she still treasures.

Katharine enjoyed gardening and still has many beautiful plants and trees surrounding her home.

When she was younger she made her own clothes and enjoys crocheting yet today. She has donated over 50 baby blankets to the local hospital.

When she and Cliff had first moved to the area, friends introduced Katharine to the Fort Myers Beach Art Association and she painted with the group of 40 artists for many years until her husband became ill.

After Cliff passed on, Katharine soothed her grief by designing and painting greeting cards of which her husband had always been so proud.

From then on, Katharine lived totally on her own in the home she had known for 40 years. She and her husband never had children and her only relative lives in Massachusetts.

Then in December of last year she fell at home and was not found by a neighbor for over a day.

She was transported to a local hospital and before they would release her, she was required to have 24/7 care.

A hospital social worker referred Katharine’s attorney to Right at Home of Southwest Florida, Bonita Springs, and the attorney hired Right at Home for companion and homemaker services. A skilled nursing company is also used.

Her first large painting after returning home was of a green frog with a great big smile. She says it is her good luck charm. She continues to paint almost daily.

“I owe long life to seeing the beauty in nature,” she says, adding, “It is also important to keep active and keep yourself happy when life seems difficult.”

One of those happy days for Katharine was when she was released from the hospital to return home. And it was both a happy and proud day on the occasion of her 100th birthday when she received a card from President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.

“The reward of long living,” she says “is being able to have been friends with so many people of all ages.”

She has good memories of the old friends and feels just as fortunate, at 100, to be making new ones.

That includes Right at Home caregivers who “share my ups and downs and provide me good home-cooked meals!”

She says “Right at Home means everything because it means being able to live at home.”

To her fellow seniors, she gives this advice: “Look at the moment, not too far ahead.”

A “must,” she says, is a “good sense of humor and a little spunk.”

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