There’s a saying in basketball: The best two minutes of any game are the last two minutes. The energy shifts. Players dig deeper. Moments that seemed impossible suddenly happen.

Director of Life Enrichment Tara Pierce at The Cedars in Chapel Hill uses that metaphor when she talks about the people she serves every day.

“This is the end of their game,” she says. “And I want them to win.”

It’s a striking way to think about a life plan community. And for the people who actually live at The Cedars, it turns out to be exactly right, even if they didn’t expect it to be.

Ask Tara Pierce or almost any Member what makes the programs special, and they’ll say a version of the same thing: The Members drive it.

The Classical Concert Series, now more than two decades old, started in a Member’s living room and has grown into one of the community’s most beloved traditions. The ukulele band formed during the pandemic when neighbors started picking up new instruments and simply kept going. A Member with deep ties to university faculty launched the “Joys of Learning” series, bringing professors and thinkers from both UNC and Duke directly into the community. Another Member with a passion for cinema leads the film series, not just screening movies, but guiding scholarly discussions afterward.

Bill, who has called The Cedars home for 6½ years, now gives an annual Kentucky Derby talk that draws a crowd every spring. He didn’t propose it through a formal process. He mentioned it to Tara.

“She’ll try anything,” he says. “She’s very open to suggestions, very positive.”

Pat puts it even more directly: “It’s not if, but how.” When a Member has an idea, the conversation at The Cedars isn’t about whether it can happen. It’s about how to make it happen.

The Surprise of it

Judy has been at The Cedars for two years. Before she moved in, she had a sense of what to expect: a safe, comfortable place, well-located, financially sound.

She didn’t expect to learn chess. Or pick up the ukulele. Or find herself in a short story discussion group with retired professors, scientists and artists who see literature from angles she’d never considered. She didn’t expect to be sitting close enough to world-class chamber musicians to watch their fingers on the strings, in a room with acoustics so good it feels like a private concert.

“I am very surprised at the vibrancy,” she says. “What we have here in this phase of life.”

She pauses, then adds something that might be the most important thing anyone considering a life plan community should hear:

“I don’t know that people expect the community and activities to be so inviting and important in your life. I think it’s something we should let people know.”

A Community That Evolves With Its Members

Tara Pierce has worked in senior living communities across the Southeast. What keeps her at The Cedars, she says, is the membership itself.

“They have inspired me to keep evolving for them,” she says.

That evolution looks like a lot of things. Like summer concerts on the Great Lawn, where Members spread blankets with their grandchildren and listen to live music steps from their front door. Like themed French wine dinners where the culinary team transforms the dining room into something you’d expect in Paris. Like the annual staff talent show, where every department performs for the community, a celebration so anticipated that some participants spend months preparing for their moment on stage.

The community also extends beyond its walls. Behind the property, a network of marked trails winds through the woods, passing a wildlife pond. A quiet gift for Members like Bill, who grew up in western North Carolina surrounded by national forest and never wanted to lose that connection to nature.

Still Playing

What Tara loves most, what clearly drives her, is the surprise of it. The moment when someone who thought they were winding down discovers they’re just getting started.

“Maybe they think this is the end, they’re going to slow down,” she says. “And then they make a connection that either reignites a passion they’ve had their whole life, or they pick up a ukulele and realize they never knew they loved music.”

She tells the story of four Members who, upon meeting, discovered they had all grown up within a few blocks of each other in a small town in New Mexico. Strangers in a new place, suddenly connected by a shared street, a shared past.

“All the apprehensions about this quarter of life,” Tara says, “just fall away.”

Pat, who arrived uncertain 16 years ago and has since built programs that have outlasted her own expectations, puts it best:

“I’m a happy camper. And I have a couple more ideas.”