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Sunday, Jul. 06, 2008

These good neighbors are the real deal

Advertising companies have tried for years to paint clients ranging from insurance companies to pharmacies as good neighbors. They know we all have a warm and fuzzy image of what a good neighbor is and that we'd all like to have one.

They also know most of us think that kind of relationship disappeared with the advent of automatic garage door openers, ending that brief moment of interaction with people as we walked from the driveway into our homes.

Somebody forgot, however, to tell Roger and Katheryn ”Kibby“ Kidwell that those days are gone.

Families living along one street in the Copperfield subdivision in south Lexington know the Kidwells have reinvented the good neighbor policy, and they are eternally grateful for it.

Claire Hundley, who lives next door, said Kibby Kidwell, knowing a neighbor with back problems had had a load of mulch delivered, organized six or seven neighbors, who gathered at 7 a.m. and dressed his beds in about an hour.

Carolyn Duncan, who lives across the street, said the Kidwells dress up for Halloween for the children and have the best-decorated house at Christmas.

Heather Ferguson, who also lives across the street, said Roger Kidwell, 73, built goal posts out of PVC pipe for a miniature football field her son Clay has in her backyard.

And then, of course, there is the homemade sourdough bread that Kibby Kidwell, 72, brings to the door occasionally on Saturday mornings, and the tea parties she hosts for the children.

”This was supposed to be our second house,“ Ferguson said. ”We were going to move again to a house with a basement. But we're not leaving. Why would you get a basement when you can have baked bread and goal posts?“

The Kidwells, though, don't understand what all the fuss is about. In fact, they think the spotlight should be focused elsewhere.

They moved to Copperfield in 1993, after Roger Kidwell retired from Norfolk Southern Railway in West Virginia.

Immediately, Kibby Kidwell started creating her gardens both in front and behind the house. The garden in the rear, which has several seating areas, pathways and a pond filled with very large goldfish, has become the talk of the neighborhood.

”People may be out walking,“ Kibby Kidwell said, ”and they will come around to the back to see the garden. If I have something, I'll dig it up and hand it to them.

”I think they call me the "flower lady,'“ she said laughing.

She has become quite famous.

”If I tell people my in-laws live where the flowers are, they know immediately where I'm talking about,“ said Suzanne Kidwell, their daughter-in-law.

One gardener sharing plants with others may have been the ice breaker, but that act of kindness has blossomed.

”If they know someone who needs help, they will help in any way,“ Hundley said.

”They just like people,“ Duncan said.

In October last year, Rick, the Kidwells' son and Suzanne's husband, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Eight days later, he was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident.

”He couldn't walk,“ Kibby Kidwell said. ”He lived for two and a half months after that, and our neighbors all around us fed us the whole time.

”We have the nicest neighbors that anyone could have,“ she said.

A neighbor gave her a basket of tulips on her birthday in February, and Heather Ferguson brought Roger breakfast on Father's Day.

”They sort of infuse other people with the spirit of sharing,“ Hundley said. ”They get us all going and doing things that we may not have done without them.

”We are better neighbors because of them,“ she said. ”They are so good to us.“

Kibby Kidwell thinks the opposite is just as true. ”I'm about the luckiest person in the world,“ she said. ”They are like my kids.“

Most of the time, when we talk about our neighbors, we talk about the bad ones. The good ones are often underappreciated or overlooked.

That doesn't happen along one street in Copperfield.

The rest of us should make sure it doesn't happen on our streets either.