Tired of Reading Same Old Stories

* In the nine and a half years that I have been reading The Times as a resident of Leisure World, having moved from Pennsylvania, your implied characterization of this community has been that we are a gaggle of doddering old fogies sitting around waiting for the angel of death to take us.

In the recent coverage of our leap into cityhood, you showed a picture of a voter at the polls propelled by a walker. You featured a photograph of a 91-year-old anti-city council candidate who had as much chance of winning as I have of becoming an astronaut. (She finished dead last in the polling.)

In your reference to the name of the new city, you say, “ . . . the closest thing to rustic woods . . . is a few old sycamores.” We have thousands of trees, bushes and other vegetation which we jealously and zealously husband.

Your quoting a Wisconsin academic--what does he know about us?--that “[we] have just made [ourselves] a separate society who don’t have to be involved with the surrounding communities or anything” is specious reasoning.

On the contrary, our desire to become a city or part of a city is to become more involved with the other municipalities and to have a voice in the determination of our future. Yes, we do think of our future!

We are not a sedentary lump of geezers “living out our final years playing shuffleboard and bingo.” We have more than 240 clubs and associations encompassing every kind of physical, intellectual, philanthropic, social, academic, athletic and, yes, political endeavor extant.

We have our own stables, we play tennis and golf and shuffleboard among other games. We have a state-of-the-art fitness center. We have a computer group of nearly a thousand, with a waiting list. I could go on and on.

I challenge any conventional community, including Los Angeles, to demonstrate an awareness and involvement--70% voter participation in this election--in politics and community affairs that we here do.

We have successfully governed ourselves for 35 years with an aggregate budget amounting to $50 million. Most of those against cityhood cited our success as a reason for not incorporating. A city with a budget of around $3 million will not in any way overwhelm us.

We are the youngest city in California, if not demographically, at least spiritually and enthusiastically. Just watch us go!

You should have more respect for your elders, especially when they are younger than you.

I myself am a member of the board of directors of our homeowners association and thoroughly involved in our community.

SY WELLIKSON

Laguna Woods

* When those to whom our younger neighbors look for information and guidance, such as professor Mike Hunt of the School of Human Ecology (whatever that means) of the University of Wisconsin, receive a totally erroneous picture of those of us who choose to live in senior communities, it is time to set the record straight.

Hunt and his colleagues should leave their ivory towers and visit residents in communities like Leisure World. They would find that they hardly “just made themselves a separate society” and, “they don’t have to be involved with the surrounding communities or anything.” We may live in a gated community but we are at least as knowledgeable and concerned about our immediate and wider geographic entities as are our younger counterparts living in gated and ungated communities without age restrictions.

We are deeply concerned about what is going on around us. Leisure World residents proved that by voting to direct their own fate rather than to continue to be ignored by politicians who regard us as docile old duffers.

To further shatter the delusion that we seniors isolate ourselves, Hunt and his pontificating professors should look at the remarkable involvement of the thousands of Leisure World residents who volunteer their time, energy and expertise in schools, hospitals, libraries, museums, performing arts centers and religious and charitable organizations, to name but a few of the beneficiaries of their high level of participation.

Unlike Hunt, we seniors who choose to live in age-restricted communities know the real world. We live in it.

MATT SCHWARTZ

SYLVIA SCHWARTZ

Laguna Woods