PENNEY FARMS — As Penney Retirement Community celebrates its centennial year, Dick Dulaney is detailing his role in making the campus a place where neighbors are family and every moment is served with purpose.

After moving to Florida following his retirement, Dulaney and his wife were only making a short trip to visit a friend. That was until they drove by Penney. While his wife had her eyes wide open, Dulaney said he didn't pay much attention.

A month later, they did the same thing. And this time they made their first of many stops on campus.

"[The marketing department] said if we'd like to spend a couple days visiting we could. We came up here the third of December. Two days later, we drove out [and] we had signed an agreement to move."

After selling their home and everything in it, it would take them sixth months to officially move to Penney. But since getting there in 2017, Dulaney said it's been the best thing they ever did.

While he may be an avid golfer, service to the community is something he fervently enjoys. 

As the Campus Directory Coordinator, making Penney a neighborly community is his passion. Dulaney said that when he moved to campus, he noticed that there wasn't a resident index available. Someplace where residents could learn more about the people that made up the place they called home. He decided to change that.

"I created a database, a spreadsheet. And that's been used with a lot of different things since I started it about seven and a half years ago," he said. 

The log, featuring photos and contact information of more than 700 residents and staff in alphabetical order, sits in Penney's Hub where people can see it every day. 

Dulaney said they update the contact information every year, and the whole book every few years. It has been a nifty way for new neighbors to get to know each other.

"What happens is that when a person moves in, everybody gets it so they know the family. And when they see the family walking around the community, they [can] say hi."

Volunteerism is a huge aspect of Penney, with every resident required to have a strong commitment to serving others.

Dulaney said the serving spirit of residents is something that's kept him going, especially since he keeps track of it all. Dulaney created Penney's first volunteer log, a way to directly record resident's service hours. They have logged at least 156,000 combined hours so far, Dulaney said.

"We had several of our residents that put in over 2,000 hours a year, which is more than a full-time job," he said.

Dulaney is also the Benevolence Chairman at Penney Memorial Church and the current chair of the Resident's Aid Fund, a program that provides financial assistance to residents in need. Majority of the funds are donated through residents and the ministry.

"There's a statement, which is in this brochure, stating that they will never be told to leave if they can't afford to pay."

Penney has brought Dulaney a sense of comfort that he doesn't think he could ever find anywhere else. It's brought friends he'll never forget, memories sure to last and care that can't be replicated.

"There's no question in my mind now that we did make the right choice."