Who We Are.
We began our journey over 25 years ago with dreaming of owning an inn. Life happened and we got busy raising a family, working, and moving around the country while living life! In the summer of 2019, we made an impulsive visit to the Norman Rockwell property in Arlington, VT that was for sale. We had not even known that he lived in Vermont – let alone that his home and Studio was now an inn that was for sale. From the moment we drove over the covered bridge and soaked it in, we knew that we had found our next chapter! By the end of 2019, we became Vermonters and renamed the property “Rockwell’s Retreat”. Of course…. we hadn’t anticipated a worldwide pandemic and lockdown to start our new life – but it gave us the gift of time to renovate, reimagine and to create our vision.
Why do you do what you do?
We really love to bring people together. Every guest we meet gives us something different – a new perspective, great conversations, new connections. And we are so lucky we get to do this in such a beautiful setting. We love sharing the history of one of most iconic artists of all time, and we are also always learning something new. Whether it’s meeting a former model of Norman’s or sharing stories with someone very young that was never exposed to his art or his life. We also love seeing the transformation of guests who arrive frazzled on their first day here and leave completely relaxed and refreshed.
What was it that prompted the change in your journey?
It was always our vision to make it happen, but we never thought we could really pull the pieces together. After our son left for college, we got to thinking “what’s next”, and “why wait”. What were we waiting for? We do think it involved a lot of luck of being in the right place at the right time. We almost canceled the visit to the inn thinking it was too far-fetched – and we didn’t want to get our hopes up. But we are also both Pisces – so we jumped in – all in! That kind of spontaneity doesn’t always work for us…but we think it did this time!
Kevin & Sue Harter
Owners of Rockwell’s Retreat
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Is a life goal important to you and how would you define this?
I’m not really sure that we had “life goals”. I know that we have always been really focused on our little unit of our family, which always comes first. But we have held close to keeping to what we wanted, and what we didn’t want. Our jobs at the time were pretty grueling, and Kevin was able to leave and become the full-time innkeeper, groundskeeper, fixer upper and just all-around doer of everything. I (Sue) have kept my full-time job – but I have experienced that one change fuels the ability to make other changes. It has helped me take chances and make other big decisions more comfortably. I ended up leaving the job I had at the time and have been trying some new opportunities and taking more chances.
Why is it important to follow your dream and what have you share from this?
I think back to when we first wanted to own an Inn, and it’s pretty funny how naïve we were. Not only did we not have a penny to our names, but we were just starting out and hadn’t experienced life yet. We tried to win an inn with an essay contest (twice!) as we didn’t see another way to make it happen. I think that you live the life that you have, when you have it, to the best of your ability at every stage, and opportunities unfold. We followed our dream not in a clear linear path. We had a lot of pivots and turns along the way, while learning a lot in different industries. I know that my (Sue’s) endless business travel has sure helped us layout the vision of what we wanted the experience here to be like. It’s still a work in progress but we wanted to create a place that we would want to visit.
Where do you go from here, what does the future hold?
If you have ever watched the old “Newhart” show you know that there is always more to do. From trees coming down, to the neighbors’ cows or horses on the loose, to building a barn (right now), to bathroom redo’s, to every possible thing that could happen – it happens! So, it keeps us on our toes! We want to get more involved with our community and maybe expand to hosting some events that we have passion for; like maybe a gravel bike event next year – since we are right on the most beautiful dirt road on the Battenkill River. And we are thinking about doing some small intimate events – like pop up concerts in our field or readings or art events or talks in the Studio. We want to make Rockwell’s Retreat a place where people come back to every year. Or multiple times a year – in each season!
