In 1962, the Sternberg firm completed a new nursing home addition to the Mennonite Hospital in the town of La Junta in southern Colorado. This was a happy experience for Sternberg, working for a close-knit group that practiced the virtues of mutual assistance and caring for community members in need of support. The Stovall Care Center, completed in 1977, was the nursing home component of an ambitious planned community development project sponsored by Zion Baptist Church, the oldest black church in Denver. The 30-bed facility, according to its sponsors, has "a single level floor plan, emphasizing safety and efficiency, appealing home-like environment with comfortable lounge areas and a creatively designed dining area." Earlier phases of the development were a community center and a 100-unit high rise senior housing building. At the dedication of the Stovall Center, Gene Sternberg was honored for "his incomparable skill as an architect, coupled with his unfathomable humaneness." The design of public schools, those institutions which educate and deeply influence our next generation of young men and women, was a matter of lively interest and constant research for architect Sternberg. Throughout the years of his practice, starting with a small experimental primary school in Englewood in 1952, there were always one or more schools in the design process or under construction. Almost 40 in all, these included many sizes of elementary, junior high and high schools, located in the Denver metro area (Englewood, Littleton, Sheridan, Jefferson County, Cherry Creek District) and in small towns throughout Colorado (Carbondale, Sterling, Craig, Steamboat Springs, Nucla), Nebraska (Sidney, Kimball, Crawford) and Wyoming (Lance Creek, Lusk). Almost everywhere, in fact, except for the School District of the City and County of Denver. Sternberg was a fierce critic of the limitations placed on architects by Denver in the years he was designing schools. He maintained that these prescriptions resulted in schools designed not for students, nor for teachers, but for janitors. It amused him that the only way a school of his design got into Denver was when the small College View School District, where he had done a large school addition, was annexed into the city. In 1961, Sternberg decided to move his office to Littleton where he was welcomed by Houston Waring, the influential editor of the local newspaper, The Littleton Independent. His firm designed many buildings in Littleton, including two of the most important educational projects of Sternberg's career, Arapahoe Community College and Heritage High School (Littleton, Colorado).