Retiring to Homes of the Young

There appears to be some disagreement here about the merits of spending your retirement years in a young person’s town--and a temperature-challenged town at that--where college students harangue you to lift weights at 6 a.m. and the windchill burns your ears even in March and your wardrobe had better feature gold and red if you have any self-respect at all.

“I suppose you think it keeps you younger,” postulates Virginia Roth, 77 and ever on the go.

Her friend Helen Eggleton takes the opposite view. “Maybe,” she says with a mock groan, “it just makes you feel your age.”

Then again, Eggleton is 80 and still working out at the Iowa State University gym three mornings a week. She’s also taking a class on energy policy and studying the book of Genesis. If that’s feeling your age, most of us would take it--and gladly. To get there, however, we may have to redefine retirement, as a growing number of seniors already have.

In a trend that delights gerontologists who aim to keep us all active longer, dozens of retirement communities have popped up near universities in recent years, even in towns decidedly lacking the sun-and-golf allure of traditional senior citizen meccas.

Selling intellectual stimulation, interaction with youth and a hefty dose of nostalgia as well, the communities attract aging alumni and retired faculty drawn to the idea of rounding out their lives near the campuses where they spent so many good years. They’re proving fantastically popular.

The Green Hills complex near Iowa State where Roth and Eggleton live added 40 new townhomes last summer to meet surging demand. Retirees have filled communities near Dartmouth, Cornell and the University of Virginia as well. Projects also are underway at Stanford, Princeton, Penn State and the University of Michigan, among others.

The success of such ventures scarcely surprises Gary Small, director of UCLA’s Center on Aging. He can sum up their appeal in a sentence: “It’s a joy to reexperience your own youth.”

Not that retirees are acting exactly like carefree college kids.

Seniors Soak In College Experience

Here at Green Hills, a bland beige complex of 138 condos connected by bike path to Iowa State, seniors dine on meatloaf and cucumber mousse--not a can of Jolt cola or bag of Doritos in sight. They still read the comics, but now they use magnifying glasses. And when friends gather on a Tuesday afternoon, chances are it’s not to toss around a Frisbee but to take the shuttle to the podiatrist.

“You have to go in with the attitude that you know you’ll be with older people,” said Waldo Wegner, 86, an Iowa State alumnus who lives at Green Hills with his wife.

Rather than try to relive his college days, which included standout play on the basketball team and All-America honors in 1934, Wegner says he tries to “just enjoy [Green Hills] for what it is.”

And for what it offers.

Donning the requisite red and gold, the Wegners take the Green Hills van to nearly every Iowa State Cyclones basketball game. More than 80% of Green Hills residents have some tie to the university, and most join the Wegners in seeking out connections with the campus, taking pleasure even in offering themselves as subjects for gerontology research.

So while the Green Hills social calendar includes such typical retirement home fare as a place-mat workshop in the arts-and-crafts room, it also offers a trip to Moliere’s “Tartuffe” at the university theater. A monotonous workout video drones three mornings a week in the Green Hills multipurpose room. Or retirees can pop over to Iowa State for a 6 a.m. exercise class set to twangy country music and led by undergraduates studying physical therapy.

“My wife was really concerned about moving here because she was afraid we would be with old people all the time,” says Roger Lawrence, 77. “But you don’t have to be.”

Indeed, the chance to interact with the younger set is a huge draw, here and in similar communities.

The traditional retirement complex resembles “a land-based cruise ship with no real direction or purpose,” where seniors are isolated from the world, says Leon Pastalan, who directs the National Center on Housing and Living Arrangements for Older Americans. By linking to a campus, a retirement community challenges seniors to remain engaged, whether they’re talking education policy with undergraduates or trying to puzzle out why anyone would pierce an eyebrow.

As Wegner puts it: “Living around a university town keeps an old guy and an old lady on their toes.”

The reverse is true as well. Living near a retirement community forces young people to confront, and discard, ageist stereotypes.

Thus, Iowa State senior Ami Baas was astounded to see grandma-types tackle the weight machines with competitive zeal in the exercise class she teaches retirees. “She was going all out!” she marveled as one white-haired senior completed a circuit.

Thus too, a 92-year-old patient taught Deon Wingert, 25, a thing or two about school spirit. Although her mind and body are ragged now with age, the woman watches every Cyclones game on TV, hooting and cheering with gusto. “I couldn’t possibly have as much school pride as she does,” says Wingert, who works as a Green Hills nurse while he studies at Iowa State.

Even as students come to realize there’s more to retirement than rockers, the intergenerational relationships help seniors learn their own strength.

“Because older people are part of our society, they tend to buy into our stereotypes, the most common one being: ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ ” says David Peterson, associate dean of the gerontology center at USC. Joining in college activities helps boost retirees’ self-esteem.

That’s why programs like elder hostel, which brings seniors to college campuses for a week or two of study, have exploded in popularity, attracting 350,000 participants each year, Peterson says. USC’s elder hostel, for example, offers courses on the film industry and the history of Los Angeles. At UCLA, seniors can audit undergraduate classes or join the Plato Society, where they’re assigned to research a topic--philosophy, say, or poetry--and share their findings with fellow retirees.

Communities Have Drawbacks

The new retirement communities take those programs one step further, allowing continuous immersion in college life.

Of course, returning to college after a half-century away does have its drawbacks. Students wearing sweats to class? The home economics major in decline? Development choking off fields where the undergraduates of the ‘30s played baseball? The changes can bewilder--and disappoint.

“When I came back here,” 89-year-old Edward Waldee says, looking up from a newspaper in the Green Hills library, “I felt like Rip Van Winkle.”

Still, most alumni try to refrain from criticizing the way their alma mater has evolved. They may not get it, but they’re glad at least to see it, to feel a part of the bustle of today’s college life.

“There are always things you can’t understand,” Wegner says. “Sometimes you just have to gulp twice and swallow it.”

That kind of restraint pays off: One undergraduate at Lasell College in Newton, Mass., says she loves talking with retirees who plan to live on campus because it is “like hearing from your grandparents--without the lecture.”

Scheduled to open early next year, the Lasell venture takes the notion of on-campus retirement a step beyond most programs. The college has appointed an academic dean for the retirement community; she will keep each resident learning for life, whether through classes, volunteer work, field trips or mentoring.

It’s just the kind of program that experts predict will reshape our views on retirement as the population of older Americans doubles to 70 million over the next three decades.

“If you ask a kid, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up,’ that’s a serious question. But if you ask, ‘What do you want to be when you retire,’ you get a blank stare, because no one has expectations of how retirees can be of value to themselves or to society,” Pastalan says. “Universities have traditionally been agents of social change, so they’re the right organizations to give meaning to retirement.”

Only a small percentage of senior citizens live near a college, and fewer still nurture connections to campus. But Pastalan, an architecture professor at the University of Michigan, identified close to 100 university-linked retirement communities for a recent book on the subject and says they’re becoming ever more popular.

Some, like the project in Princeton, have no official ties to a college but take advantage of a prime location near campus to attract alumni. In other cases, universities initiate the developments. Stanford, for example, plans to build 388 retirement condos as a for-profit venture near its medical school. Alumni from North Carolina State and the University of Florida are pushing their alma maters to do the same.

Old Loyalties, New Donors

However they’re tied to universities, retirement communities make plum targets for alumni fund-raising. They’re often quite expensive, so it’s clear residents have money. And participating anew in college life tends to revive old loyalties.

“There are huge benefits to the university to being linked to us,” Green Hills administrator Felicia Anthony says. “Wills, endowments--a lot of gifts come their way.”

But many residents say they get more than they give.

At 86, Iowa State graduate Alice Murray finds herself cheering the women’s basketball team at every home game, attending operas on campus and taking a class in genetics at the university’s College for Seniors. She volunteers at an Iowa State welcome desk and will tour Spain this spring with fellow alumni. Retiring near her alma mater, she says, has been wonderful.

“There’s a different kind of spirit here. It helps keep you young. It’s such a warm, friendly, enthusiastic community.”

The bottom line, Murray says, is this: “I’m an old person. But I don’t feel old.”