Life in a seniors settlement

RETIREMENT COMMUNITIES ARE INCREASINGLY BECOMING AN OPTION FOR HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN THE USA

Ken and Carol Pierick live in a city where you’ll never see a child's bike lying in front of a garage. That’s because you can only live here if you’re over 55. Ken and Carol, 71 and 70 years old respectively, live in Sun City, a retirement community on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. For the Piericks, Sun City is the “best place to live”—and it will probably be the last place they live.

Sun City is not a deep-rooted, diversely structured city; it is one big housing estate, conceived on the drawing board and conjured up from sandy earth within a few short years, and populated with single-story houses chosen from a catalog. Sun City is a dream world with lawns softer than carpets and golf carts humming along the streets with their quiet engines.

When the first Sun City was built for 46,000 pensioners on the outskirts of Phoenix in 1960, it was considered an act of sociopolitical good will for a generation in which many were injured from the war and exhausted from work; they wanted to enjoy the twilight of their lives under the Arizona sun, and Del Webb, the innovative property developer, made the cover of Time Magazine for building it. In 1978, another development was built to house 31,000 pensioners on the other side of the Sun City West highway, followed by Sun City Grand for a further 18,000 people in 1996. This is where Ken and Carol Pierick live.

Everyone here knows the Piericks. They can be seen out on their bikes and playing pickleball, a type of seniors’tennis played with wooden racquets and plastic balls. Ken is the founder of the photography club, the computer club and the table tennis club, and he plays in two bands, the Senior Moments and the Pepperonis. Carol regularly plays bridge with her friends, is in the sewing club and recently also joined a neighborhood support group.“When Carol lay seriously ill in bed, our fridge was overflowing with chicken soup from the neighbors,” recalls her husband, clearly moved by the experience.

DOWN TO THE LAST DOLLAR
Ken and Carol have been retired 15 years, and their ultimate retirement aim is: “On our last day, we want to have spent our last dollar.” Carol was a teacher and property broker, Ken a computer specialist until, at the age of 55, his employer made it clear that he was no longer needed. The Piericks took the payoff, sold their house, car and furniture and bought a twelve-meter sail boat.They spent five years cruising the Californian and Mexican coast; during the hurricane season they ferried cars from the west coast to the east and back again,“with nothing more than a suitcase in the trunk.” When they were tired of sailing, they sold the boat, traipsed around countless retirement communities and decided to settle in Sun City Grand, which they often leave to go on extended trips.

Most residents of Sun City belong to the baby boomer generation. This group encompasses those born between 1946 and 1964, when the western industrialized nations saw more babies born than ever before. Some 78 million Americans came into the world in that 18-year period. Since the turn of the millennium, this unprecedented wave of births has resulted in a wave of elderly people. But they are not the tired, worn out generations of the past; they are “active adults” whose most prominent members include people like Bill Clinton, Elton John and Madonna. The vast majority of baby boomers grew up in times of growth and wealth; they have internalized materialism and individualism just as their parents internalized shortages and family values. They are healthier and better off, and have a longer life expectancy than any generation before them.

THE BEST TIMES ARE STILL TO COME
They – like Ken Pierick – may have been thrown on the scrap heap at work, but for the economy as a whole they have such purchasing power and are such conspicuous consumers that industries ignore them at their peril: by 2020, U.S. authorities reckon there will be 97 million Americans aged 55 or over; 7,900 baby boomers reach this age every day, and market studies indicate that 60 percent of them plan to change residence shortly before or after they retire. They buy houses and cars, go out to eat and get their hair done frequently and deposit money in the bank. Before they need to go out and buy huge quantities of support stockings, walkers and feeding cups, they buy golf clubs, garden furniture and dumbbells. In this sense, Sun City is everywhere in the USA. There are hundreds of retirement communities, small and exclusive estates for a few hundred residents, as well as gigantically large ones like Phoenix’s Sun Cities, mostly in the warm south of the country. And the best times are yet to come.

It’s not the rich and the super-rich who live in retirement communities; they would never live in standardized houses built so close together. The retirement communities are home to America’s white middle classes, people like Ron Woodward (57). He and his wife have lived in one of Sun City Grand’s biggest houses for the past four years, and the couple could probably even afford a home in Scottsdale, Phoenix’s classiest district. Ron Woodward was a director at IBM, traveling around the world, and when the company offered him a “golden parachute” at the age of 51, he made the jump. But not back to Seattle. “A wonderful city, ideal for single people and families but not for a married couple of our age,” says Woodward. “In a normal city with a mixed neighborhood you get more isolated the older you get. You need to spend hours in the car to meet people of your own age with similar interests. In the end,many people have nothing left but alcohol or TV. ”In Sun City, on the other hand, he need only cross the street to invite the neighbors over, go for a swim with them, go out to dinner, play golf, take a language course at the university... Or go to the fitness center, just a few blocks away. Or visit the Sundome Theater, one of the biggest in the country, seating 7,000, where Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, Diana Ross and Chicago used to play—and still do. “We are a community of likeminded people who enjoy the same lifestyle," is how Ron Woodward describes it, “and the selection of red and white wines is better here, too.”

BEAUTY PAGEANTS TO PASS THE TIME
The residents don’t have to miss out on beauty pageants either, even though Sharon Austin (62), divorced, with four grown-up children and eight grandchildren, failed to win the “Ms. Senior Arizona 2007” title against 16 other women aged between 60 and 71, including one with five great-grandchildren.“At this age you don’t take it so seriously,”she comments philosophically. After all, there is so much more that’s important to Sharon Austin: her job as a notary; her women’s group, with which she travels around to retirement homes and children’s hospitals giving song and dance performances; her children and grandchildren, who she visits in the northern state of Wisconsin when the Arizona summer gets too long and hot for her; her collection of posters, photos and LPs of Elvis, who she saw perform live in her younger days, and to whom she will again devote all her energies soon—at an Elvis charity party to raise money for Alzheimer’s patients.

Sharon Austin moved into a rented house in the first Sun City a year ago. Her house is right next to the golf course, and sometimes she finds golf balls in her herbaceous border. “When I look out of the window in the morning, I see them all golfing and walking. It’s cleaner and quieter here than anywhere else, there is less crime and it’s cheaper, too. Everyone here is in the same situation: if someone needs heart surgery, they will find at least three people they know that they can talk about it with. I want for nothing here. And if someone thinks this place is a seniors’ ghetto, they only need to cross the street.We’re not living in the middle of nowhere here.”

“The only bad thing is that there are so many old people here,” is an old Sun City joke. But even that is out of date. The residents of Sun City Grand recently decided to allow people of 45 and over to live there—providing they don’t make up more than 15 percent of the new arrivals. At 94 years old, Helena Gumina is more than double that age. Her habit of hugging people by way of greeting instead of merely shaking hands earned her the nickname “cutie”in Sun City. She proudly had the nickname printed on a T-shirt she wears at the Independence Day celebrations on the 4th of July. Helena says she has no interest in marrying again: “I don’t think my husband would like me hugging other men.”

(Text: Stefan Scheytt, Photos: David Klammer)