Most people remember specific details about the house they grew up in. The way the dark wood paneling of the living room shone after it had been polished. The old fashioned wallpaper hanging from the kitchen walls. The shag carpet that covered the floors.
For many, these are simply distant memories of a house they once loved and will never see again.
But for many neighborhood residents, these distant memories aren’t so far away — that’s because they’ve chosen to return to their childhood homes.
Each person who decides to move back to his or her original home has different motivations and reasons to do so. Some move back for pure convenience, while others just love the house and neighborhood.
Betty Gasch, a wife, mother and grandmother who works part time at a dentist’s office, decided to move back to her childhood home after her mother passed away.
“The location is very good within the metroplex and it was convenient,” Gasch says.
Cynthia Whisennand, a high school librarian, says she decided to stay in the same house because it was part of her roots. She moved in with her grandmother when she was four, and the house is still in her grandmother’s name.
“It’s a continuation of tradition. I’m a big believer in tradition,” she says.
George Theriot, a financial adviser with Bank of America, decided to buy his original Lakewood home from his parents after living in Highland Park for a couple of years. The hard part was convincing his wife.
“I’ve always loved
Theriot’s wife wasn’t the only woman in the neighborhood who needed convincing.
In 2003, Gigi Eckstrom got the chance to move back into her childhood home. But it took awhile to decide if the move would be right for her family.
“We had to think about it for a long time. It’s kind of weird to live in the house you grew up in,” she says. “But as we started freshening it up, we decided it was actually really great.”
Just like Theriot, Eckstrom cites the love of the neighborhood and fond memories as the reason she decided to move back into her old house.
“Part of the beauty of the house is that so much of it is the same,” she says. “The lake is still here, and so many of the people are the same.”
She says she loves looking out onto her yard and seeing the huge silver maple tree that her parents planted when her brother was born. She looks forward to the days when her son can play in the tree’s shade.
After making a few changes such as redoing the floors and repainting the rooms, living in her childhood house hardly seems weird to Eckstrom.
“It feels comfortable, and I feel it has changed enough that we’ve made it our own,” she says.
While Eckstrom, Whisennand and Gasch have made few changes to their homes, Theriot says he’s changed almost everything.
“All new kitchen, new roof, new deck, new fence. You name it, we’ve redone it,” Theriot says.
Because these residents have lived in the neighborhood for so long, they’ve seen plenty of changes in the area.
When Betty Gasch was born into her
“You could even go swimming in
Because younger people are moving into the neighborhood, she says, the area continues to thrive.
“It’s growing and flourishing. There is a common goal to have a nice place to live, to work, and to raise our families; even get old.
“It’s a community that has rebirth, which is great.”
But rebirth doesn’t mean that old memories go away. Many residents who continue to live in their childhood homes or move back to them do so because of what it brings back to them.
“Everywhere you look, you see little reminders of fun things you’ve done and people you’ve loved,” Eckstrom says. “We celebrated Christmas day at this house when I was kid, and we have kept that tradition. We all spend Christmas day here, and we’ve had the same menu. We even kept the same dishes.”
Theriot agrees.
“It was really, really special to watch my kids play football in the front yard like I did when I was in kid,” he says. “It’s pretty hard to describe how special the feelings really are.”
