Life centered on community

A couple found more than sunny winters when they moved south from Maine.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published July 2, 2007

	Richard and Kathryn Riley stand for a portrait with their horses Rio, left, and Atilla outside their home in Trilby last week
[Times photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes]

TRILBY – Richard and Kathryn Riley live the retirement dream of a new group of baby boomers: They traded the blustery winters of Augusta, Maine, for the sunshine of west-central Florida - and then some.

Four years ago, the couple paid $170, 000 for a mid century Florida ranch house and an 11-acre swath of land big enough for a couple of Paso Fino horses.

They bought in Trilby, a tiny Old Florida town nestled in the hilly landscape not far from the Hernando County line.

Named for a popular Victorian novel by George du Maurier about 1870s bohemian Paris, the town is remembered mostly for the boom days when three railroads converged here, including one owned by transportation tycoon Henry Plant.

The Rileys added a screened porch to the rear of their modest home so they could take in the sunsets, big sky and cow pasture through a frame of mossy live oak trees.

They built a horse barn and planted a small garden.

They came to love Florida the way they had once loved Maine.

But their retirement, which included caring for Kathryn's ailing elderly parents, didn't stop there.

"It evolved into sharing and working to better our community, " says Kathryn, a retired teacher and legislative proofreader in her late 50s. She now works as the office manager for the Little Everglades Steeplechase.

Propelled by a long-held Yankee ethic that the town hall is the center of everything, the couple joined forces with other caring neighbors to create the Greater Trilby Community Association.

The nonprofit group has so far organized an annual children's safety rally and a memorial garden for missing children, as well as a local access office with the Department of Children and Families "where people who need assistance can register with the state, " says Richard, a retired state government computer expert who also launched a community Web site filled with news and history of the town www.trilbyfl.com.

The Rileys acknowledge that they might be perceived as outsiders.

"We understand we're newcomers; we're not trying to say, 'This is how we do it up North, ' " Kathryn explains.

Says Richard: "We're just asking, 'How can we improve our community?' "

The couple also embraces the diversity of Trilby, which has about 2, 000 residents.

The area is largely populated "by good earnest citizens with basic jobs, " including neighbors who collect scrap metal, drill wells and work in air conditioning repair, pest control and construction, he explains,

One hot afternoon in June, the couple sat on the porch cooled by ceiling fans, with cattle grazing in the distance beneath mountainous white clouds that seemed to float through a sky as blue as Caribbean water.

Richard, who sports a beard and wire-rimmed spectacles and was wearing a T-shirt that declared "I do my own stunts" (a gift from Kathryn after a recent spill from a horse), pointed into the distance at a neighborhood where a home with 10 acres was on the market for $750, 000, "but then over there, " he said pointing another direction, "you'll find mobile homes in poor repair and wooden shotgun houses left over from the railroad days."

The Rileys also helped launch a monthly newspaper, The Greater Trilby News, a three-page stapled collection of news and local tidbits that included details of a new country western gospel service at the local Methodist church, a Father's Day cemetery cleanup, a breakfast at the Trilby Masonic Lodge, the opening of a new thrift store and a photo of the paper's publisher, Herb Green, perched on his red tractor.

On the front page of the current issue, there's news of an old-fashioned Fourth of July picnic at Trilby Manor Park next to the Mount Olive AME Church.

The most prominent of Trilby's July 4th picnics was held back in 1915 and attended by three Florida governors. According to Scott Black, Trilby's historian, who wrote an account in the Trilby News, the event featured a barbecue, baseball game, music by the Zephyrhills band and the Trilby Glee Club, and refreshments from the ladies of the Baptist and Methodist churches.

Between 1, 000 and 1, 500 people attended.

The goal of this year's picnic, Kathryn explains, is more basic: to bring people to the sometimes overlooked town park for a day of hot dogs, sack races, clogging and horseshoes. The Rileys, along with a large planning committee, have been meeting for months to organize the event, which is being sponsored by a long list of local businesses.

The Rileys say that moving from Maine to Pasco County was a big adjustment, mostly because the most desirable seasons are completely opposite (summer in Maine is bliss; in Florida it's sizzling).

The couple initially migrated to Pasco to help care for Kathryn's parents, who lived in Zephyrhills. The move, they say, especially buying a house and land in the Trilby countryside, has been a source of great happiness.

"We do love it down here now, " Kathryn said one afternoon as they mulled the softness of the Central Florida landscape and compared it to the rock-and-pine cragginess of Maine.

The best part, they say, has been the people they've met, the community they're working to improve.

Says Richard: "We didn't come here to retire; we came to live out the last one-third of our lives as fully as we can."

[Last modified July 1, 2007, 21:25:45]