SHREWSBURY, Vt. (WCAX) – A building dedication at Spring Lake Ranch in Shrewsbury now honors a Super Senior whose journey from surviving the London Blitz to directing the mental health facility spans nearly nine decades.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re 92, you\u2019re bound to have many memories.<\/p>\n
Michael Wells has pages and pages of photographs, but very few of the time when his life could have ended in an instant.<\/p>\n
Wells was just 6 when German bombs rained down on London during World War 2, as described by famed CBS radio broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. \u201cA half an hour ago I could read street signs in the flash of anti-aircraft batteries,\u201d Murrow said.<\/p>\n
Murrow sent dispatches of the London Blitz back to listeners in America. Wells lived it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne bomb landed about as far away as the stairs out there. But it blew out like that, rather than that,\u201d Wells recalled. Fortunately, the bomb just made a big hole in the ground. \u201cEverybody experiencing the same thing, I just assumed this was normal.\u201d <\/p>\n
Wells was a sickly child, and that carried on to adulthood. He joined the English Army, ready to fight in Korea, but it was not to be. \u201cI wanted to serve, I never told them I had any problems,\u201d he said. A severe case of pneumonia ended his tour of duty.<\/p>\n
Wells married Phyllis, an American.<\/p>\n
Reporter Joe Carroll: What did you like when you saw him? <\/p>\n
Phyllis Wells: Everything.<\/p>\n
Reporter Joe Carroll: How about the English accent?\u201d she was asked.<\/p>\n
Phyllis Wells: That helped!<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised that she said yes,\u201d Wells said.<\/p>\n
He had been a bit of a wandering soul before they met. At 25, the Englishman made his way to New England, taking a job at a mental health facility in Shrewsbury called Spring Lake Ranch.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018We\u2019ll take you on, $10 a week, plus room and board. Come whenever you want,\u2019\u201d Wells recalled them saying. \u201cAnd I thought it was a nice thing to do for a couple of months, a change of scene, change of country, change of environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phyllis would meet her future husband at the ranch while visiting a friend. It was the perfect job for Wells and he instantly fell in love with Vermont. <\/p>\n
For Phyllis, it took some time to warm up to living in the sticks. \u201cI cried a lot the first year or two,\u201d Phyllis said. \u201cI had never dealt with country living, the road didn\u2019t get plowed beyond the main house, and we lived considerable beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wells worked his way up to director. Phyllis was the bookkeeper. \u201cAnd a lot of both residents and staff, through the years, are our best friends,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been very lucky and an enormous amount of chance, and it just came out of God knows what,\u201d Wells said.<\/p>\n
Their long history at the ranch, marked more by hard work than luck, recently culminated in a special honor at Spring Lake Ranch. Surrounded by family, a building where staff and residents gather is now called Wells Commons.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I thought it was perfect,\u201d Phyllis said. \u201cAll that fulfilled everything he wanted to do in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good, it\u2019s just plain good, it\u2019s very nice that they did that,\u201d Wells said.<\/p>\n
A sign of a life well lived.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 WCAX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHREWSBURY, Vt. (WCAX) – A building dedication at Spring Lake Ranch in Shrewsbury now honors a Super Senior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,180596,380,180595,16,15,8698,27481],"class_list":{"0":"post-568949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-michael-wells","13":"tag-shrewsbury","14":"tag-super-senior","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-vermont","18":"tag-wcax"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115545818078238634","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}