Behind Duane and Marilyn Kirking’s garden gates sits a brick patio, with a Mexican chiminea fire pot in one corner and a large white pergola shading a dining table. Flower beds complete the picture, which a neighbor told them reminded her of Tuscany. | J. Adrian Wylie
Marilyn Kirking says that the first time she and her husband, Duane, saw their future home in the Abbot neighborhood, “we didn’t even bring our checkbook.”
The two young pharmacists had just launched their Ann Arbor careers, Marilyn at University Hospital’s outpatient pharmacy and Duane as an instructor at the College of Pharmacy. But it was Labor Day, 1980, and they were facing one of the most challenging real estate markets in recent memory: interest rates were at double digits, and inventory was tight. “Houses sold before they even got on the market,” Marilyn recalls.
Fearing they would not be able to buy, the couple had already rented an apartment close to campus. But after touring the bungalow kitty-corner from Abbot School, they put in an offer the next day. It was cheaper than Burns Park, which many friends recommended, and they liked the proximity to shopping, transportation, and I-94.
Four and a half decades later, they’re now retired—Duane as a professor—but they’re still the center of the action. Mainly situated between Maple, Dexter, and Miller roads on Ann Arbor’s far northwest side, the Abbot neighborhood is child-friendly, with wide, shaded streets shielded from busy traffic. During an hour on the Kirkings’ porch, several pairs of children walk past while kids ride by on their bikes. Others laugh and shout while playing outside the school, where a summer program is underway. Dog walkers and other strollers pass by, and a trio of goldfinches flies overhead, on their way to perching in a big oak tree.
From there they have an ideal view of the Kirkings’ hidden treasure: behind the garden gates sits a brick patio, with a Mexican chiminea fire pot in one corner and a large white pergola shading a dining table. Flower beds complete the picture, which a neighbor told them reminded her of Tuscany.
There’s a European note to their transportation routine, too. In the years they worked at the university, they never purchased a parking pass but walked out to Miller Rd. to catch the bus into town. They share one car, and a favorite pastime is walking.
During the pandemic, “we met a lot of people that we had never met before,” Marilyn says, either strolling the sidewalks or on their porches. That’s when they learned that “we’re not the oldest, or the longest” in terms of neighbors, Duane says.
For Duane, who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, and Marilyn, who comes from rural Kentucky, Abbot has made them feel welcome at graduation and block parties. They return the welcome every Halloween.
Long before inflatables were a trend, they placed a giant grinning pumpkin topped with a witch’s hat on their front lawn. It became a favorite spot for parents to take photos of kids in their costumes—first with cameras, more recently with phones.
The first neighbor children in those photos are grown. Now some now bring their own kids to take pictures, too.