At first glance, it’s not unusual to see parents and adult children visiting one another at Sunnyside Communities. But look a little closer, and you’ll find something more specific happening across the three campuses. Adult daughters are choosing to live where their mothers once did—not just out of nostalgia, but because they saw what life looked like here and decided they wanted it for themselves.
In some cases, the roles have reversed. In others, they overlap. But what ties them together is the sense that, in a place designed for later life, continuity is just as important as care.
Judy Mone moved into Sunnyside just after the worst of the pandemic, at a time when everything still felt uncertain. Her husband had died. Her daughter, Sheryl Powers, had become her primary support. They tried another retirement community closer to Charlottesville. It didn’t stick. Six weeks later, Judy called and said simply: “Get me out of here.”
So they returned to Harrisonburg.
Sheryl chose the apartment. She picked paint colors to match her mother’s old bedroom. She hoped it would feel familiar—and it did. By the end of the week, Sheryl had applied for a job at Sunnyside. Judy moved in that fall.
“She’d always been social,” Sheryl said. “She needed more than what we could give her in the country.”
Now, Judy lives just floors above her daughter’s office. Their lives intersect in subtle, daily ways—an occasional lunch, a quick hug in the hallway, a safe place to stay when winter storms make roads impassable.
But more than that, Judy has made the place her own. She takes classes. She travels with friends. She attends events. She stops by less often.
“She got busy,” Sheryl said. “That’s when I knew—this wasn’t just where she lived. It was where she was living.”
Pat Harkins, another Sunnyside resident, also moved into a space with echoes. Her parents had lived in apartment 210—a modest unit with a mountain view. She and her husband Tom had spent decades just up the hill, in a villa on campus. When the apartment above her parents’ old place became available, they took it.
“We knew how well it had worked for them,” she said.
Her parents, Charles and Phyllis Jones, moved to Sunnyside in the 1990s. Over time, they moved through every level of care—independent living, assisted living, and eventually, the Health Center. When his needs increased, the staff made an unusual accommodation: they connected two assisted living rooms so the couple could stay close. One became their shared bedroom. The other, a living room.
“They always found a way,” Pat said.
Years later, Pat and her sister Barbara followed suit. Barbara moved from Northern Virginia in 2018. All three women weathered the pandemic together. What started as a retirement plan became something more: a re-creation of family, shaped by proximity, and by choice.
At King’s Grant, Judy King had been a familiar face long before she officially became a resident. For eight years, she visited regularly—eating meals with her mother, walking the halls, attending community events. Her parents had planned to retire there together, but her father died before the move. Her mother resisted, not wanting to leave her dog. Then came a fall, a broken knee, and a rehab stay that turned into something permanent.
“She was never unhappy here,” Judy said.
When her mother died, Judy didn’t want to lose the connection she had built. She joined as a Trailblazer. She kept coming to events. Eventually, she made the move herself.
Now in her own home on campus, Judy has found what she calls a “next chapter”—not a fallback, but a choice. After raising five children, losing two, and spending decades on a rural farm, she knew what she needed: a place where she already belonged.
“I didn’t think about any of this when I was in my fifties,” she said. “But my parents did. And I’m grateful they did.”
Linda Combs, too, found her way to Sunnyside through her parents. She didn’t live on campus at the time, but she lived nearby, and when her parents began struggling at their retirement community in Roanoke, she stepped in. It was Linda who coordinated their move. Linda who managed hospital discharges and medication changes. Linda who later wrote to the DMV about her father’s driving.
“He never knew it was me who reported him,” she said. “Sunnyside helped me navigate that.”
Eventually, her father declined dialysis and chose hospice care. The team sat with him—nurses, chaplain, provider. He made his own call. He died ten days later.
Her mother remained at the Highlands, then entered assisted living, then memory care, then long-term care. Linda was there for all of it. So was Sunnyside’s staff.
“They didn’t forget her. Even years later, nurses remembered my father,” Linda said. “That mattered.”
Now, Linda lives on campus herself—in a cottage with a view of Massanutten. She plays mahjong. She volunteers. Sometimes, she passes the rooms where her parents spent their final years. She doesn’t romanticize any of it. Caregiving was hard. But she still calls it the right decision.
“You see the full arc here,” she said. “And somehow, you find peace in that.”
Across Sunnyside’s three communities—Harrisonburg, Martinsville, Waynesboro—the stories echo each other. Parents come first. Then, slowly, sometimes years later, their children follow. Not out of obligation. Out of observation. They saw what aging well could look like. And they chose it, too.
It’s not just about memory. It’s about momentum. About seeing what came before and stepping into what comes next, with intention.
And on a day like Mother’s Day, when legacy and love are front of mind, it’s worth noting: some chapters don’t close. They fold gently into the next.