Philadelphia Couple Creates Retirement Haven in Roanoke

by SANDRA BROWN KELLY

Last fall, Jim and Pat Kermes settled into a South Roanoke home after living several years in Philadelphia. The Roanoke place had been altered and expanded to accommodate antiques and other special furnishings and a large art collection.

Jim and Pat wanted their retirement place to provide the right flow for entertaining and even to duplicate some aspects of their Philadelphia place, especially a master bathroom Jim had helped design.

Bob Fetzer, owner of Building Specialists, the Roanoke company enlisted to do the Kermes’ house project on Wycliffe, visited the couple’s Philadelphia home to see first-hand what they wanted to recreate at their Roanoke place.

The project took about six months to complete. E-mail was the main mode of correspondence, said project manager Daniel Hurst. Jim and Pat also made almost weekly trips to Roanoke to check on the project.

“We had 29 roundtrips back and forth in an eight-month period,” Jim said.
The couple, married for 38 years, had lived in 10 houses and several communities when they began casting about for a place to retire. When they found it, Pat said she wanted everything done to the Roanoke house before they moved into it.
In 2002, Jim announced his retirement as president and CEO of Glenmede Trust Company. Pat’s stint as president the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Women’s Board was due to end in 2003. The children, a son and a daughter, ages 33 and 24, were long gone from home.

The house in Philadelphia was larger than they needed, Jim said.
The couple already knew Roanoke. They have friends in the Roanoke Valley and had explored the area on drives from Philadelphia to their vacation home in the North Carolina mountains.

“Our first screening point was its medical capabilities. We also liked the economic vitality of the biomedical research area announced in Roanoke,” Jim said.

“I was impressed by the vibrance of things in Roanoke,” Pat said. “It is multicultural, more so than you would anticipate for a town its size.”

Pat also found the Roanoke area to be “a little mecca for artisans,” a good fit with her volunteer work in Philadelphia and with her plans to stay involved with art.

Pat had joined the Women’s Board in 1997, after moving to the Philadelphia area from Chicago. Her professional background is in nursing, specializing in pediatrics and cardiology. She also ran her own business, a needlepoint shop, in Chicago.

During the three years Pat was president of the Women’s Board, she and her group raised $600,000 in annual gifts and pledged $500,000 toward the Pennsylvania Academy’s $50 million capital campaign, according to a 2003 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper.
That article referenced the couple’s pending move to Roanoke last fall.

The house Jim and Pat purchased in Roanoke was a two-story brick with a full basement and a large attic. For many years, it had been home to a family that reared 15 children. The attic had been a boys’ dorm. The house was large, but the space allocation wasn’t quite right for Jim and Pat.

They needed a dining room that would accommodate a special table for 12 that the couple had had built. The house also needed kitchen facilities that would stand up to lots of entertaining; it needed abundant wall space for Pat’s extensive and eclectic art collection, and the couple wanted a greenhouse for growing orchids. They have almost 100 orchids.
Walls came down. New walls went up. Two fireplaces were added to bring the house total to four, still short of the six fireplaces Jim enjoyed in their previous house. “I like fire,” he jokes.

A major part of the project was the reconfiguring of the breakfast-dining-kitchen area.
Jim can now sit by a fire and watch Pat work in the kitchen that boasts a professional Thermidor stove. She’s the cook; Jim’s more the cook’s companion. In Philadelphia they hosted an annual gathering the first Sunday in December that had grown to 125 guests, and Pat did all of the cooking for it.

They say they do not know if they will entertain on that scale in retirement, but just in case, Pat had two dishwashers installed.

The kitchen-dining area’s new design also included moving an exterior door a foot to accommodate a hickory and pine corner cabinet built in 1830 in the North Carolina-Tennessee area.

Most of the antique pieces Jim and Pat have collected date to the early 1800s, but they own several from the mid- to late 1700s. They are especially proud of a tiger maple desk that has its original hardware and finish. It is displayed in the home’s foyer.

Jim and Pat take little credit for the selection of their antiques or for their home’s interior design. “We both hate to decorate,” Jim said.

Fortunately they became friends with Sam LaPoma, a Orlando interior designer, when they lived in Florida 30 years ago, Sam planned the Roanoke house interior as he has those of all the houses his friends have owned since he met them.

Sam has even rearranged Pat’s Santa collection and another of tiny chairs into museum quality displays in the couple’s basement.

Art is displayed everywhere in the home, most prominently on the walls of the second floor’s new long hallway.

Pat set up an office on the second floor near a sitting room; Jim’s office is in the attic, which also includes a room for their daughter when she visits.

Their granddaughter, their son’s child, has been provided a special play area complete with playhouse in the basement.

Jim and Pat have settled well into Roanoke and already gotten involved in the Roanoke Fine Arts Museum. They still drive the Roanoke-Philadelphia route regularly, however, as both remain involved in their former community. They are weaning themselves away from Philadelphia in increments, similarly to how they approached retirement.

“These are obligations we had. You don’t sever all ties because you move,” Jim said.
Pat is co-chair for the Women’s Board’s 2005 USArtists fundraising project and travels to Pennsylvania about three times a month to work on it. Jim is a member of the board of Pitcairn Company, parent of Pitcairn Trust Company, a position that requires a trip back about every two months.

The drive, Pat says, “keeps you young and happy.”