"Ageless Dreamer makes elderly couple's wish come true" - Foster's Daily Democrat, July 19, 2006

Posted: September 5, 2006

Copywrite used with permission from Foster's Daily Democrat.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

By DEREK CUNNINGHAM

Democrat Staff Writer

The Ageless Dreamer Foundation made Winthrop and Alice Loring's dream come true with a ride in a vintage automobile to a picnic at their former Berwick home Tuesday afternoon.

BERWICK, Maine - Alice Loring held a straw sun bonnet and a sentiment from the Maine Legislature in her lap as she and her husband, Winthrop, sat in the spacious back seat of the 1936 Packard, waiting to be driven to their old home and the places they remembered from their years living in town.

The convertible sedan, owned and driven by antique car collector Francis Hall, would have only been a few years old when Alice, 86, and Winthrop, 88, were married 67 years ago. The car would have been decades away from being considered an antique when the couple moved into their home in Berwick in the early 1940s.

The Lorings have long since moved out of town - first to California, then to Rochester, N.H., then Barrington and finally the Riverside Rest Home in Dover - but Berwick is the place they came back to see last week with the help of the Ageless Dreamers Foundation, a nonprofit helping people over 70 see their dreams come true.

The Lorings moved into the home on Thompson Hill shortly after they were married, and lived there for 18 years. Winthrop said they put a lot of work into the house.

He remembered Berwick as a quietly, "homey" place to live. It was the place where they started out, he said. Every year, he and his wife would roam the woods behind the old farm and pick blueberries, he recalled. The bushes were spread all through the woods off Thompson Hill road. They continued to pick berries year after year, only missing the years he was in the service. They visited the blueberry bushes on Thompson Hill after they moved as well.

The most dramatic thing he remembered there was the time his oldest son got lost in the woods. A huge search party went out to look for the boy, and they finally found him under a bush near a wall.

Caroline Lazzaro works in the rest home where the Lorings now live. She said she had been talking with the couple about their time in Berwick and recalled Winthrop saying how much he would love to get back there. She got in touch with the Ageless Dreamers Foundation, who arranged it.

The day started with the Lorings and the organizers meeting in the basement of Berwick Town Hall as the tan, shiny Packard waited outside. State Rep. Rick Burns presented the couple with a legislative sentiment honoring their long marriage. After the presentation, the Lorings walked out hand-in-hand to the car.

The couple settled in the backseat as Hall, the Packard's owner, acted as chauffeur. The couple drove around on the town's back roads and out to their home on Thompson Hill.

The day ended with a picnic on the Little River catered by Savory Starts. Winthrop used to swim in that river when he was younger, he recalled, as it was close to his parents' house.

"I had a dream that I'd find a place to live and it was there," Winthrop said about his old Thompson Hill home.