Appreciating what we have in CY

By Dee Sanders
As Bob and I prepare to leave Cooper-Young, I am finally writing the letter I intended to write shortly after we arrived here two years ago and realized what an amazing place we had landed in. When a job transfer required us to move to Memphis and leave South Carolina for the first time ever, you can imagine how anxious we were. We had never stepped foot in Memphis! After hours of online research, we arrived in town on a Sunday afternoon. We had to find a home before we left on Tuesday. I had come across the CY neighborhood and CY Festival websites before we arrived to house hunt. We still felt like we needed to look around, and we did: Collierville, Bartlett, Germantown, and even Mud Island. We kept coming back to a little house on Young Avenue, and it chose us.
The first weekend we were in town we volunteered at the neighborhood water stop for the St. Jude Marathon. There we made the first of our very great friends. At every stop along this journey of two years in “the hood”, we have been continually welcomed, excited, and entertained. We have made lifelong friends, and as our dear Maggie Cardwell said to me, “Cooper-Young is like Hotel California. You can check in, but you can never check out!”
Oh how we hope this is true, because we will certainly be leaving a part of our hearts here. We want everyone to take a minute and truly appreciate where you are. We cannot imagine how we would have dealt with leaving our family and friends without the support of this neighborhood. We leave with heavy hearts and great thankfulness for the chance to have been Cooper-Youngians! Remember, you are blessed to be here. It is a special, special place!