Connie Flanigan Boase: Making a Difference

A Shaker Heights native, Connie Flanigan Boase graduated from Oberlin College in 1946 and returned to Oberlin in 1958 to raise her children. She taught in the elementary school and worked in her family’s manufacturing business until she was widowed in 1979. Connie moved into Kendal at Oberlin on Oct. 5, 1993 and became the first KORA secretary. And by 1996 she had met and married fellow resident Paul Boase.

older adult in swimming pool

Connie’s personal involvement with Kendal from the start as a Founder meant she took what we did very seriously and wanted to have a real impact on things that could improve the quality of life for our residents.

Barbara Thomas, Kendal at Oberlin’s Executive Director

Although Connie made generous dollar contributions to Kendal at Oberlin, she also donated smaller “things” over time that helped make a difference. She played a critical role in the building of our swimming pool, ensuring that folks on oxygen (like herself) were able to use it. But on a smaller scale, she contributed a bathing suit wringer, safer floor tile, and a pool lift chair when regulations required that Kendal install one.

Connie had an eye for seeing where Kendal could make improvements in operations and often put dollars toward capital projects, such as replacing the automatic doors at the apartment entrance. She enhanced therapy services, donating a recumbent bicycle and a Balance Master, and contributed toward walkway snow blowers. She gave dollars to a new van and later toward our first Prius “green vehicle” for personal transportation.  A table tennis enthusiast, she helped purchase a new high-quality table for the apartment alcove. 

Today, Connie Flanigan Boase’s bequest for Kendal at Oberlin continues her personal Kendal priorities in perpetuity. She is still making a difference in Kendal lives.

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