It's For the Bairds
A great school, hedge apple trees and a family-friendly atmosphere make Brentwood South the perfect place for Tom and Brooke Baird to raise their three children.
For Tom and Brooke Baird, living in Brentwood South is more than a home; it’s homecoming.
“I grew up here in Brentwood South and probably lived here for more than 10 years,” says Tom, whose life is steeped in family tradition. He works as director of sales and marketing for the Concrete Company of Springfield, a family-owned business started by his great-grandfather in 1947. Tom and his wife, Brooke, moved to Brentwood five years ago. At the time, their daughter Kaitlyn, who is now 10, started school at Eugene Field Elementary, which just happens to be the same school that Tom attended.
“The school wasn’t the reason we moved here, but Field Elementary is an International Baccalaureate school, and Spanish is part of the regular curriculum at a young age,” says Brooke, an accountant who also owns the Whistle Stop Café in Ash Brook Hollow. “Field offers a different style of education, and we have been happy with it.”
With the addition of five-year-old Thomas V and Tanner, 3, the couple moved up a block to their current home, a 5,200-square-foot dwelling that boasts six bedrooms, a large backyard and ample room for entertaining.
The Bairds were lucky that their new home didn’t need a lot of work. They removed the carpet on the first level to expose the original hardwood floors and added a full bath to the finished basement.
In the front yard, Brooke and Tom love the shade provided by two hedge apple trees. “We engage the kids and have them fill up buckets of hedge apples in the fall,” Brooke says. “They are softball-sized, so they play with them and I sometimes sell them at the Whistle Stop Café.”
Long walks, bike rides and playing in a neighbor’s yard is common in Brentwood South. “This neighborhood is very family-friendly, and people will stop by to say hi and talk,” Brooke says. “We are not so close to the neighbors that you can see them in their bathroom, but we are close enough to be neighborly.”
