All the Senior Dance Circuit Needs Is a Few Good Men

They threw a bingo and dancing party for senior citizens in an Arcadia hotel the other day.

There was the usual problem. Not enough men.

“I’m not too much into bingo,” said Marjorie Merola, a retired office manager from Temple City who wouldn’t give her age. “I’m a dancer. But there aren’t many people to dance with.”

A quartet of musicians had just launched into “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” and four or five couples moved energetically around the dance floor in a meeting room at the Embassy Suites Hotel.

The male dancers included two youthful sales representatives from FHP Health Care, the party’s sponsor, who had gallantly taken partners from the crowd.

Merola took stock of the people sitting at nearby tables. The handful of men all looked taken, with wives or companions sticking closer than skin on a potato.

“It’s the same old story,” Merola said. “Too many women, not enough men. All over the senior citizen circuit, it’s the same.”

When you become a senior citizen, you get ballroom dancing and bingo in large doses.

You also get a peculiar gender imbalance. According to U.S. Census estimates, American women over 65 outnumbered men in that age group by about three to two in 1988. Life expectancy for men is now about 72 years, while for women it is 79.

There’s nothing unappealing about these partnerless older women, health and census officials say. They’re just casualties of demographic happenstance. “It seems to go that way,” said Fran Rios, senior plan supervisor for FHP, which specializes in health services for seniors. “The women seem to outlive the men.”

That means that there are a lot of women sitting around, waiting for someone to ask them to dance. “The men either come with partners, they don’t know how to dance, or they’re too old,” said Merola, crisp and unsmiling in a summer dress and short gray hair.

Lela Marchica, a retired electrologist, said she frequents the San Gabriel Valley senior clubs. “I try to dance, but there’s no one to dance with,” she said grumpily. “So I sit like a wallflower.”

This, actually, was one of the better parties, most said, a welcome change from the church basements and community centers where most San Gabriel Valley seniors socialize.

“Very pretty, very elegant,” said Eufemia Vergara, 76, the wife of a retired hospital worker from Pasadena, giving the hotel banquet room an approving look.

A double row of chandeliers dangled from an acoustic-tile ceiling. Dining tables were arranged on felt-smooth carpeting; the head table bore a mountain of sandwich wedges and platters of crudites and fresh fruit. A lovely party, all agreed.

“And they give you gifts,” said Vergara, a petite woman with curly hair, holding up a plastic bag with some magnetic refrigerator stickers and a rubber jar-opener.

Between sets, the sponsors awarded supermarket gift certificates and some “gorgeous crystal earrings” to the bingo winners. Then the musicians, four part-time instrumentalists calling themselves The Leadmen, churned out some more old standards.

“We just try to play stuff that they’ll respond to,” said keyboard player Steve Fry.

Drummer Don Pedretti nodded appreciatively at the guests. “They started dancing right from the first tune.”

The musicians began a sprightly version of “The Lady Is a Tramp.”

“Great band,” said Louise Lewis, heading eagerly toward the dance floor with her husband, Bill. “Senior citizens get some good ones. But not like this.”

Sophisticates in the crowd had already noted approvingly that the group had played only one polka. Even better, the “Chicken Dance” didn’t seem to be in their repertoire.

“Most of the time they have to play it at least once,” said John Clough, 72, a retired quality control specialist and dancing veteran from Temple City. “You know, they put you in a circle and you go like this”--waving his elbows like chicken wings--”and then you wiggle down like this.”

The single women at the party said they were not looking for husbands. Grace Williams, a retired upholsterer from Pasadena, was particularly adamant about it.

Widowed for seven years, Williams, who wouldn’t give her age, is a regular on the senior citizen dance circuit, which includes weekly dances at the Pasadena Elks Lodge or the Pasadena Dance Club. She still talks glowingly about her husband: “A Southern guy . . . I fell in love with his Southern accent.”

Williams said she is just looking for entertainment. “A nice escort for dinner and dancing--that’s what I’d like,” said Williams, a cheerful woman in a pantsuit whose friends call her “Amazing Grace.”

“She’s so into everything,” said her friend Bernice Gregurich, 62, a retired federal administrator. “She’s so outgoing, always having fun.”

Williams reflected a moment. “Of course, you never know what might happen if the chemistry is right,” she said. She pointed at Gregurich. “But she’s the one who’s looking for a husband.”

By the time the band got to “Besame Mucho,” with the trumpeter and saxophonist putting aside their instruments to tap out a clip-clop bolero rhythm on Latin percussion instruments, some of the women were wriggling in their seats. Latin dancing is the most infectious kind, said Jackie Zurinskas, a retired pharmacy clerk, looking longingly toward the dance floor.

“I learned the mambo and the cha-cha-cha from my mother,” she said.

“It’s artistic and fun,” Merola said. “It really gives you a work-out.”

The Lewises, who had already won the grand bingo prize, a Sunday champagne brunch at the hotel’s restaurant, were out there doing a smooth backbeat glide, and Clough, a box-stepper, had hauled one of the female FHP representatives out onto the floor.

Some senior mixers aren’t as “couply” as this one, said Merola, who has been to a lot of them.

“I became single more than 20 years ago,” she said. “My children sort of pushed me out. I started out real rusty with the dancing. But at some of the senior clubs, you can find good partners.”

Marchica and Zurinskas stared at the dance floor.

“Find us a decent place to go,” Marchica said, “a place where the men wear ties.”