Welcome to our new independent living residents

You may have noticed some new faces around Independent Living at the Westerly. Read on to learn more about three new members of our community.

Sheri & Charles Liles moved to Wichita Presbyterian Manor from their home in the Bayshore neighborhood, just a half mile west of our campus.

Both Charles and Sheri are from the Wichita area. They have been married for 20 years and have four children between the two of them. They decided to make the move to a senior living community because they were looking for more social contact.

Sheri worked for many years as a bookkeeper. After serving in the military, Charles went into law enforcement, serving in nearly every area at the Wichita Police Department over his more than two-decade career. In 2001, he served as the president of the Retired Officers Association.

One of his more interesting assignments was on the Family Crisis Intervention Unit, where he spent three years in the 1970s. Charles describes it as a groundbreaking program funded by a federal law-enforcement grant.

“Our job was to settle it the first time, and if we needed two or three hours, that was OK,” he said.

One interesting fact about Charles: He learned how to play the bagpipes when he was in his 40s and often played funeral and wedding gigs.

The Liles enjoy traveling together and have taken cruises to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean.

Charles said the most important thing is they both have a sense of humor, the importance of which he learned during his law enforcement career.

“For anyone in crisis response, humor is their survival tactic,” he said.

JB Scott grew up in Talequah, Oklahoma, but he’s been a Wichita resident since the 1980s. That’s when JB and his late wife Nellie moved to Kansas to be closer to her aging mother.

Before that, JB served in the Air Force for 21 years, and he and Nellie moved all over the place: California, Nebraska, Illinois, Alabama, and many other home bases.

He held many positions in military. His favorite was when he was based in Guam and working to monitor weather satellites.

JB worked at both Boeing and Cessna, retiring from the latter as a manufacturing engineer.

That meant surviving the ups and downs of the sometimes-turbulent aircraft industry. The second major downturn in JB’s career coincided with a decline in Nellie’s health, and he decided to retire to be with her during the day.

“I also had a good support group with family and friends and our church,” he said.

The couple always enjoyed traveling. They took a road trip across 18 states after JB retired from the Air Force. Later, they took a lengthy car trip to the east coast, spending three weeks exploring Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In Washington, D.C., they saw all the sights on a two-day bus tour.

While Nellie was still healthy enough to travel, they enjoyed visiting their daughter in Arkansas, their niece and nephew in Abilene, and Nellie’s sister in San Antonio.

They had begun to talk about moving to Presbyterian Manor before Nellie’s death. The couple was married for 54 years.

“She told me not to stay in the house by myself,” said JB. He stayed where he was for a while, but eventually reached out to Lisa Fetter, marketing director for independent living. She walked him through the whole moving process, which JB said went surprisingly quickly.

The best thing? No more yard work, which means no more allergy attacks.

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