When Life Throws You a Curve ...

At an age when most people are looking forward to enjoying retirement, Dixie Reppe was, quite literally, just starting to sharpen the pencils for her first “real job” in more than 30 years.

After a series of physically debilitating strokes forced her husband to close his commercial real estate business, Dixie was just shy of 60 when she realized “I needed to get a job.”

Fortunately for her, she had spent several decades honing her fundraising skills while chairing events for several non-profits in the Tulsa area. The first, a 3-day radio ‘operathon,’ helped her realize “that [raising money] isn’t rocket science,” Dixie says. “You can strategize all you want, but the most important thing to remember is you have to ask.”

A bit of luck came Dixie’s way when Tulsa’s YWCA, where she had volunteered, began looking for a new development director. She jumped at the chance despite the fact that she had never held a formal job in that field or any other since she left teaching soon after college to raise her children.
“I kept thinking my boss was going to come in and tell me what I was supposed to do,” she laughs. “But after a week, I realized he wasn’t going to. I was sitting in my office sharpening and re-sharpening my pencils with no idea how to get started.”

Taking matters into her own hands, Dixie began calling everyone she knew in Tulsa’s development profession and inviting them to lunch. Her question: What do you do all day? She must have learned plenty because when the executive director left, she was tapped to replace him.

Yet, while Dixie’s career was on an upward trajectory, her husband’s health continued to slide, and she began seriously considering the advice of friends who had moved to Inverness Village – join us. Attracted by the community’s LifeCare promise, Dixie and her husband, Rod, moved to Inverness while she was still working for the YWCA.

“It was pretty nice to come home from work and meet my husband in this big, nice dining room and have people bring my dinner to me,” she says.  Her husband, who died in 2008, benefitted from the increased mobility and socialization that living in Inverness’s apartments afforded him. “I really think I was able to keep Rod for a few extra years because of our move here,” she says.

Dixie benefitted from the move, too. Her network of close friends, who call themselves the Ya-Ya’s, made sure she didn’t isolate herself for too long after Rod’s passing, sometimes getting downright pushy, she recalls fondly.  “If I’d have been in a house by myself, I don’t know if I could have picked myself up quite so easily.”

Maybe giving back was on Dixie’s mind when her services were needed for Inverness Village’s 2010 Spring Fling, following the departure of the community’s development director. The work of many resident volunteers and new ticket sales and fundraising strategies combined with co-chair Bebe Campbell’s talents in the hospitality arena to make the Fling a real success. It raised over $20,000 for Inverness Village’s benevolent fund.

These days, Dixie still retains several volunteer positions, but makes sure to enjoy time for herself, too. Between regular exercise sessions, frequent trips to cultural and sporting events courtesy of Inverness Village’s busses, and dinners spent listening to the “amazing stories our residents have to tell,” Dixie says her life “is the most balanced it has ever been. Before this, I was going a little too fast. Now I make sure to slow down and listen.”