I've finally moved away from the crt and now have Dell 30" displays at all locations running 2560x1600. They're absolutely beautiful for viewing 2x 8.5x11 pages side by side, which is a lot of what I do.
Sorry to hear about the difficulties that your parents faced
You are right about those 30" Dell displays. It's really what I should have gone with instead of the cheaper 1920x1200 U2412M. Don't get me wrong, the U2412M is a great monitor.
But 2560x1600 at 28-30 inches is exactly what I need, and reading 2x pages side-by-side is a lot of what I do.
It's too bad that those large 16:10 Dell monitors are priced much, much higher than 16:9 1440P widescreens and even 4K monitors. Because 16:10 and 3:2 really cleans up for text-based work at any size, including large.
Lesson learned: buy what you need, and don't apologize.