Founded in 1975, the Blue Ridge Christian Homes is a small, not-for-profit, family owned and operated assisted living facility with live-on administrator and family. Operating on the Christian principle of honor from the Fifth Commandment (Honor your father and mother), we provide a broad range of healthcare services with an age-in-place philosophy.

In 1969, the founder, Clyde Bender, an Amish dairy farmer, sustained a farming injury that rendered him unable to work for the summer. A missionary and fellow farmer invited him on a trip to Haiti to feed the poor and hungry. His life was never the same as he continued to travel to Haiti, often for months out of the year, and his desire intensified to do mission work in the U.S. In 1972 Mr. Bender opened a children’s home in Stuarts Draft, Virginia, and by 1975 he also started the Blue Ridge Christian Homes to care for the elderly. Both the elderly and the children lived on the same property with the Benders and the operating dairy farm.

Mr. Bender’s vision was for his family to reach out and help another family in the community. The elder person moving into Blue Ridge can feel a part of “one family helping another”, rather than being admitted to an institution. The elderly are provided a campus and mini-farm setting with a “live-on” household and environment of crops, animals and community identity of growth and involvement. This is very different from a feeling of being “housed away”, unproductive, and disengaged from the community.