50 Plus: Couple finds less noise, more friendly people in smaller town

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Warren Tillapaugh, 77, began working at his father’s independent grocery store in Albany, N.Y. at the age of 6.

He said he’s been working “from the time I could reach the top of the counter.”

This was before cash registers became automatic and displayed the exact amount of change.

“If the price came out to $7.40, they would pay with a $10 bill and you needed to make the change,” he said. “I did that before I went to school.”

Did the customers trust him?

“The atmosphere in a grocery store is totally different than what you’d find in Fairfax.”

~Warren Tillapaugh, on Lynchburg

“Of course,” he replied. “I grew up in an atmosphere where everybody was trusted.”

“Nobody locked their car, nobody locked their house,” Tillapaugh said. “It was a much more comfortable time.”

Tillapaugh moved to Fairfax County in 1972 to work as a general manager at a Morgan Millwork Company plant in Alexandria, Va.

After they both retired, Warren and his wife, Rochelle Tillapaugh, moved to Lynchburg from Fairfax County in March of 2008, after purchasing a house in Bedford County, to be closer to family for medical reasons.

Both said they were happy with the medical care in Lynchburg. “At Fairfax, you’re just a number — here they show compassion and concern and give wonderful care,” said Rochelle Tillapaugh.

They also wanted a one-story house in a rural area.

“I prefer the country to the city,” said Warren Tillapaugh. “I like to hear the cows, I like to see the sunset.”

Rochelle Tillapaugh said she hears the cows when she takes her dog out in the mornings.

Though he’s been here for less than a year, he’s already started volunteering within the community. In Fairfax, he volunteered at Capital Hospice of Northern Virginia.

“I jokingly referred to myself as the vice president of transportation,” said Tillapaugh. “I delivered nurse’s supplies … anything a nurse would need.”

Now he volunteers once a week at the Centra Hospice House in Lynchburg, where he’s been working on a volunteer medication delivery system.

Terri Layne, volunteer coordinator at the Hospice House, said, “He’s a wealth of valuable information since he started a similar program in Fairfax.”

Tillapaugh continues to volunteer at schools by mentoring with elementary students in the same way he did before in Fairfax. “I need the school environment,” he said. “I just love to go to school.”

Last school year, he spent every Wednesday morning mentoring second-grade students at New London Academy.

“I started in first grade, then I got promoted to second,” he said. “If I keep going, I might get to third grade.”

He volunteers because he believes “you have to give something back.”

In Fairfax, he said, he has seen changes towards individualism with people’s priorities focused too often and too much on themselves instead of neighbors, work associates and the community.

“I see less of those changes in Lynchburg,” said Tillapaugh. “Some of that comes from established families who grow up here and stay here.”

In a small town “(there is) much less noise, the people are more friendly,” he said. “The atmosphere in a grocery store is totally different than what you’d find in Fairfax.”

“It reminds me of my younger days.”