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Neighborly Communitiesby Kris Fell
The grassroots spirit of RiverWoods helpsanimate Exeter, N.H. Staff members Frank Crane and Judy Lamoureux; residents Barbara Corbett and David Corbett; and town planner Peter Dow. Photograph by Flint Born |
[ Also see To Help You Choose...
and How to Get Involved ]
What is it like having a retirement community for a neighbor? As the nation's 75 million baby boomers enter their fifties (the first of them reached that milestone in 1996), more and more of us will be finding out. According to the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA), in the two decades between 2010 and 2030, our population of 65- to 84-year-olds will grow 80 percent, and the group aged 85 and older will grow 48 percent. The population of those age 65 and younger, on the other hand, will increase only 7 percent.
One popular answer to housing the increasing ranks of older Americans, and attending to their health and social needs, lies in the nation's growing supply of continuing-care retirement communities (CCRCs). The number of CCRCs increased 50 percent during the 1980s and has continued to grow. Today, more than 625,000 older adults are served by more than 2,100 CCRCs.
CCRCs, in fact, are becoming America's retirement destination of choice, providing more attractive community living than did the sterile nursing homes of yore. "A CCRC is really not a high-end product, it's a middle- to upper-class product," explains Mary Alice Widness, vice president of marketing at Duncaster Inc., a life-care CCRC in Bloomfield, Connecticut. "People with a lot of money can do whatever they want. But people who have built a little nest egg can protect it. That's the security we provide." (For more information on CCRCs, see "To Help You Choose".)
And what can such communities offer their neighbors? Across New England, cities and towns report windfalls from the taxes paid, the jobs created, and the consumer dollars brought in by local CCRCs. Havenwood-Heritage Heights, for example, is the largest CCRC in New England. Its two campuses in Concord, New Hampshire, incorporate 430 independent living units and a 140-bed nursing facility; it is home to 650 retirees, and the employer of 320 staff members from the town. "Concord loves us because we bring in a lot of buying power," asserts Jane Hurst, vice president of the Heights. "You can imagine the economic impact we have for the town merchants."
Not-for-profit CCRCs typically pay their neighboring town a "shelter rent" in lieu of taxes to cover police, fire, and other services from the city. "Retirement communities are ideal because we contribute tax dollars and don't put much stress on public systems," notes Duncaster's Mary Alice Widness. "For example, we often build private roads and take care of our own garbage collection."
And in contrast to many other types of businesses, retirement communities are actively concerned with sustaining and often enhancing the environment. The prettiest, like Edgewood, near North Andover, Massachusetts, are set on acres of old farmland and woodland, and make an effort to integrate themselves into the New England landscape.
Walter Creese, Ph.D. '50, a retired architectural historian who lives at Edgewood, is a member of its architectural planning committee and gives lectures to fellow residents about the finer points of their community's design: its preservation of original farm buildings still existing on the site, and the way its long, low, white structures recall old mill buildings along the Merrimack River.
Creese, indeed, views retirement communities as a chance to carry on the great New England tradition of the utopian village society--epitomized by Brook Farm, the experimental community run by transcendentalists George and Sophia Ripley in West Roxbury from 1841 to 1847. Such places were built to house thinking people seeking a wholesome, simple life.
The older adults who live in CCRCs are often blessed with something the rest of America's population typically lacks: time. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, policy analysts Richard Danzig and Peter Szanton, in a Ford Foundation study of national service, concluded that older adults "may have more to give and more reason to benefit...than any other age group."
In New England, seniors are proving themselves to be great civic resources, volunteering time and talents in large and small ways to greatly enrich society at a low cost, and improving their own quality of life in the bargain.
For the past 10 years, for example, Judy Brainerd, a Duncaster resident, has spearheaded a pen-pal program that pairs fellow seniors with local third- and fourth-grade students, creating a flurry of mail between the retirement community and the neighboring Vincent Elementary School. "The teachers tell us it's a very good teaching tool for them," she reports, "because students don't have many opportunities to write proper letters these days, what with all they do on computers." Brainerd calls the project "very satisfying work, especially for those who can't get out but want to do something. It's wonderful for us to feel that we are still very much needed. The residents do so much here. We don't sit back after we retire."
When William Markey '46, A.M. '49, D '59, who taught French and Italian at Phillips Academy and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, retired to Edgewood, he planned to "play the piano for an hour every day, and maybe paint or do something artistic for another hour or two." Instead, he finds himself happily teaching English to Edgewood's Spanish-speaking staff members, most of whom live in neighboring Lawrence, a town whose population is predominantly Hispanic.
"I started this about six months ago," Markey says. "The director asked me if I would be willing, and it sounded right up my alley. It's been a very gratifying experience because I can see my students improving in the language. The administration lets me choose the hours, and it's all done on company time. And the people need it desperately. If the husband and wife are both Spanish-speaking, and much of the town is, too, then this is one of the few places they can learn English.
"It's a learning experience for me also," he continues. "I'd never taught English, and I hadn't used my Spanish in 50 years! So I'm boning up and learning as I go along. Now I'm going to start the opposite thing, a beginning class in Spanish for the residents. Since we're near a city that is so predominantly Spanish, people should be able to communicate in simple, practical ways." Then he adds, "I didn't really have a history of volunteering before, but I have all this baggage in my head, and I might as well use it."
As volunteer docents for the university of New Hampshire's Sea Grant Program, Barbara Corbett and her husband, David, Nf '65, teach schoolchildren to appreciate the aquatic inhabitants of New Hampshire's rocky coast. As cochairs of the Social Responsibilities Committee at RiverWoods at Exeter--an active CCRC in Exeter, N.H.--they are known as catalysts for a myriad of volunteer programs. "We want to make sure that RiverWoods is not an island in Exeter," explains Barbara. "We want to be part of the town and do for the town."
Though only four years old, RiverWoods has already demonstrated its sense of social responsibility. Frank Crane, its president and CEO, notes, "As our community began to evolve, the issue of social awareness began to grow." Now residents participate yearly in a masters' road race in which the proceeds go Exeter's recreation department. And a RiverWoods yard sale this year raised $5,000 to be awarded as scholarships to students at Exeter High School, with preference given to students who work at RiverWoods. "That's a logical way for residents to contribute," explains David Corbett. "When you come here, you usually downsize your belongings--a houseful of articles, kitchenware, clothing--to fit into an apartment. The yard sale provides us with the opportunity to unload some of our possessions for a good cause."
George Olson, Exeter's town manager, reports that RiverWoods staff and residents have created and continue to maintain public walking paths--including a handicapped trail that accesses the Exeter River--and that the town received a large chunk of the funds needed to clean up Exeter's waterfront as donations from RiverWoods residents. He says he is happy to be a part of the growing dialogue between the retirement community and the town. "One of the very first problems we had when we were building the facility was that we were unable to get a caution light at a particularly unsafe intersection here," he recalls. "After about the third resident called me saying, 'Can't you do something about this?' I gave him the number for the local department of transportation and said, 'Give them a call.' Lo and behold, one week later the light goes up. I learned from the get-go that the people who were planning to come here were going to contribute in some very practical ways."
"Exeter was sort of waiting for RiverWoods," Olson explains. "It's definitely a win/win situation--a retirement community that really grew out of a grassroots effort--and that spirit continues today."
Some new england retirement communities are even becoming models for the world. "Havenwood-Heritage Heights has hosted the mayor and municipal officials of Akita, Japan," reports Jane Hurst. "They wanted to find out how you manage a retirement community. In Japan they don't have anything like this. They were just amazed to see how you blend a nursing home with a retirement community, and the progression through the system under a continuum of care.
"We've also hosted groups from Poland and from Russia, through the Bridges for Peace program," Hurst continues. "They say the Russian social structure has crumbled, and they don't have the concept of volunteerism. They're dying to know how to get people involved."
Any community would benefit from having more elders like Barbara Roche, a retired teacher and psychiatric social worker living at Havenwood-Heritage Heights. Five years ago, she relates, she walked down the road to the local elementary school to offer her services. "You see so much about children not knowing how to read," she explains, "so I went over to the school that's only a mile away to find out if I could be useful there. The teachers were glad to have me, and I've been there ever since.
"I started by coming in and reading to the children. Then I discovered that I didn't like what we were reading, so I set up an ethnic reading program with the librarian's help--books about Eskimos, and Sweden, and all kind of places. And I was very pleased, because a number of children then wanted to take the books out of the library after I'd read a part to them."
Now, in addition to volunteering at her retirement community's health facility, Roche puts in seven to nine hours a week at the school. "What do I get out of it?" she asks rhetorically. "Oh my goodness, my eyes sparkle. I come away smiling. I know I'm doing something for someone else, and that's the best way to live."