Lorrie Winslow, chief executive officer of The Lincoln Home, sits beneath a portrait of Lillian Albie Nash, one of the organizations founders, in her Newcastle office. A Waterboro native, Winslow knew little about the area before moving to Lincoln County with her husband in 2020. (Sherwood Olin photo)
Lorrie Winslow is much more comfortable talking about what she does now than what she has done in the past.
The executive director of The Lincoln Home in Newcastle since 2020, the Wiscasset resident said she is delighted to lead a team of professionals who are “basically the ones that do the hard work.”
“I’m the one who steers the ship, but not the person who makes it work,” she said. “I need to keep it on course. So I guess I’m like the pilot of the boat.’”
Before moving to Lincoln County, Winslow said she had limited familiarity with the Midcoast. For years, while living in southern Maine, Winslow and her husband, David Hurd, had passed through the region annually as they had made a tradition of a holiday shopping trip to the Camden area.
Born and raised in Waterboro, Winslow attended Massabesic High School and then obtained her teaching degree from the University of Maine Orono. Her original career plan was to be a special education teacher. Later, deciding she wanted to enter school administration she entered the University of Southern Maine in Portland pursuing a master’s degree.
During that period, one of her professors took her aside and encouraged her to consider forgoing education for work in the nonprofit world. She took the advice to heart. Graduating in 2006 with her master’s, she went to work for a nonprofit focused on continuing services for minors attaining legal age. Almost nine years later, she was recruited by NeuroRestorative, a for-profit company specializing in residential care and rehabilitation services for patients who had experienced As the company’s state director of services, Winslow was responsible for overseeing operations and building out programs.
“I absolutely loved what I did for NeuroRestorative,” she said. “I built programs. They had two residents in the state when I first came on and when I left, we had a clinic that was serving most of southern Maine and 12 locations in Maine and New Hampshire.”
According to Winslow, the position was professionally fulfilling, but it required long hours and national travel. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the form of a government mandated shutdown in March 2020, it prompted a change of direction.
At the time Winslow and Hurd both worked intense jobs that required a lot of time and travel. By then, Winslow’s two sons were grown and out of the house and the couple had downsized from a house to a spacious condominium in Scarborough.
During the week they worked hard and on weekends they would socialize with friends. With COVID-enforced isolation, the couple realized just how much their lives revolved around work and social events.
“All of a sudden, we’re home in a condo where somebody else mows the lawn,” she said. “You maybe have a pot of flowers on the deck, but there’s nothing, right? And you’re not going out to dinner with your friends, because all the restaurants are closed. It was crazy … our lives revolved around so much social and work that there wasn’t a lot going on at the condo.”
During the shutdown, the couple got outside and did a lot of things they hadn’t done in years, which was wonderful, but Winslow said it also prompted a rethinking of her and priorities.
“That’s when I started looking again,” she said. “I didn’t feel like we were getting the needs met of the staff, which meant that the residents living in our homes were not getting their needs met. It was a constant balancing act, and some of the things, the choices that a for-profit makes, I didn’t agree with and so I made the choice that it was time for me to go back to the nonprofit world.”
Looking about for opportunities Winslow found the opening at The Lincoln Home and applied for it. She just had a feeling about the place, she said.
“I had a great interview with Karen Filler, our (board) president,” Winslow said. “I loved the phone interview I had with her. Then we had a meet and greet out here in the screen porch and I fell in love. I drove home and I called my husband on the way home and I said, ‘If I don’t get this job, I’m going to cry.’”
Tears, however, were not necessary. In short order, the couple sold their Scarborough condo and moved to Lincoln County, renting an Airbnb for a year while they looked for property to buy. At the time, in the shadow of COVID, the housing market was very challenging for buyers.
“We didn’t expect our condo to sell quite as quickly as it did,” Winslow said. “We came in with the idea that we were going to buy an older home and do some renovation and everybody from New Jersey, New York state, Massachusetts, California, all decided they were going to buy an older home at the same time. We lost seven houses in the first four months of looking. It was crazy.”
Arriving at a scheduled showing for a house in Gardiner in February 2021, Winslow and Hurd were told the house was put under contract while they were en route to view it. Frustrated, they went to lunch with their Realtor. While dining, Winslow spotted a brand new listing for an unfinished cottage with five acres attached in Wiscasset.
“That Maine Real Estate listing was like the bane of my existence at that point,” she said.
They jumped on it, urging their realtor to help them take a look. Following a little hardball, Winslow and Hurd ultimately closed on the property in August 2021.
“It wasn’t going to be finished until June, supposedly,” Winslow said. “I said ‘It’s got five acres. Let’s go take a look.’ So we went over there and we basically made an offer over (asking) and gave him six hours to make a decision.”
Officially founded in 1926, The Lincoln Home is one of the last free-standing, nonprofit senior care communities in Maine. As such, it receives no federal or state dollars. Donors, residents, and a generous endowment help keep the lights on.
Residents who come to The Lincoln Home may need some assistance with medications or mobility, but by and large they are older, independent people who may not need much in the way of daily medical care.
“Some people need a lot of activities or daily living support,” Winslow said. “Some people need some memory cues. It’s a balance. Our biggest thing is about keeping everybody active at what they can do.”
According to Winslow, one of the biggest things The Lincoln Home offers its residents is an active community to engage in. There is something for residents to do every single day, ranging from guest speakers and musical performances to exercise classes and artists workshops and more.
“It’s been really interesting to me and really rewarding to see families go ‘This is what I want for my mom and dad,’ or ‘This is what I wanted from the difference in being home alone,’” Winslow said. “Maybe you see your family two or three times a week, but the only noise you hear is the television. It’s not the same. Every single apartment is their own and they have as much independence as they want. We meet people where they’re at and that’s nice.”
Almost everyone who comes to The Lincoln Home has a connection to Lincoln County. Some are locals who to stay in or near their community. Others have family locally and want to live closer. Whoever they are where they are moving from, nobody comes to The Lincoln Home without a healthy prescreening process, one that usually includes a home visit and interviews with Winslow herself.
“I don’t even know if we’ve had a resident that doesn’t have a tie of some sort to the Lincoln County,” she said. “Generally, it’s ‘My family’s here’ or ‘We’ve vacationed here our whole lives.’ ‘We’ve lived here our whole lives.’”
As a nonprofit, The Lincoln Home focuses on delivering the services it provides without the motivating power of maximizing a return. Still nonprofit does not mean no money, and in her role, Winslow is constantly reevaluating to see what can be done better for less.
Over the last two years a memory care unit The Lincoln Home established in the former Harbor View Cottage across the street was shuttered. Closing the memory unit was a difficult decision, Winslow said, but the cost and effort of supplying the level of care necessary for 24-hour care for 12 residents drained precious resources away from The Lincoln Home’s primary mission.
“We were doing our best to provide that vibrant lifestyle, but at 12 residents and a staffing pattern that equals what’s here at The Lincoln Home, at 40 residents, we still couldn’t do it, or do it really well,” Winslow said. “And memory care, when it’s end stage, needs a medical focus that we can’t provide.”
The closing of the Harbor View Cottage coincided with a $2 million renovation in 2023 that added six more living units to the building. Currently all of the apartments are assisted living units. The designation allows an easier transition as residents become less independent.
“It just seemed more seamless and more natural for a resident that they will never have to move from our independent apartments into our assisted living apartments,” Winslow said. “Now we’re all assisted living, and it all depends on how independent you are.”
In the immediate future, Winslow is looking ahead to formalizing plans for The Lincoln Homes’ centennial anniversary. Although the formal date used for the home’s founding was 1926, Winslow said plans for a major celebration could be pushed into 2027 where it could serve as standalone event. Not only are there a couple of the other organizations celebrating big anniversaries this year, there is some reason to think the founding year was actually 1927, Winslow said.
Whatever the case, Winslow is delighted to be where she is. Retirement is coming into focus a ways down the road, but for the immediate future she is right where she wants to be.
“The Lincoln Home is like the place you want to work, especially if you have a heart for nonprofits,” she said.
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