For 125 years and counting, the Windmere has been serving our aging neighbors in northern New Jersey with love and excellence.
As a minister to a growing community of elderly residents, Rev. Reinder D. Drukker was aware of an imminent need to provide long-term care for aging members with no children or support system. In an era before Social Security or Medicare, Drukker – along with a local newspaper publisher, another minister, and another civic leader – set out to apply the principles of the Christian faith to the needs of their local community.
With the physical, financial and spiritual support of leaders and neighbors in the region, the Windmere was founded in 1895 and subsequently built on Iowa Avenue in the Lakeview section of Paterson.
In its earliest years, the Home was a wooden dormitory where residents shared in the housework, grew their own vegetables, and even supplied their own milk from the Home’s cow.
The spirit of a shared community remained constant as the Home expanded to accommodate a chapel, dining room and kitchen. By 1945, it is estimated that 350 residents had lived at the Home in its first 50 years of existence.
When proposals for the construction of Interstate Route 80 threatened to cut through the Home’s property, it was time to evolve even further. In 1960, the Home moved to nearby North Haledon, where it remains today.
Since then, both the needs of the community and the provisions of the Home have grown in countless ways. Amazing medical advances have led to longer lifespans and the ability to care for our neighbors in ways too complex to imagine in the past. Hundreds of regulations now govern those complexities and detail the many responsibilities of homes like ours.
Through it all, the generosity and faithfulness of the Windmere community have provided for building expansions, higher resident capacities, and increased levels of care. In our first 50 years, we served approximately 300 people. Today, we serve over half that amount at any given time.
More impressive than all the improvements are those things that have remained rock solid through the years: the values and selfless love that motivate generations of individuals and families to devote themselves to the ministry of the Windmere.
That heritage of Christian love, inherited from our Dutch forefathers, sustains our efforts today as we proudly serve older Americans from many traditions and backgrounds. From our residents to our employees, and from volunteers to Board members, we are all united by a mutual commitment to each other and to the vision first set forth 125 years ago.
