Memories Stored Here

It’s all there behind the door, in a climate-controlled room in Laguna Woods that few are allowed to enter. The legacy of an entrepreneur’s vision. The cherished mementos of a community. Photos from the 1971 tournament of the Shuffleboard Club.

“The biggest thing you can do to preserve an archive is to keep people out,” said Marjorie Williams, the keeper of the collection. “People bring things in with them. Insects, dust--goodness knows what all.”

If Williams is protective, it’s because this is her labor of love. Her world. A world full of history. The history of Leisure World.

Tucked inside one of America’s most unusual communities is one of the nation’s most unusual archives.

Developer Ross Cortese’s first Leisure Worlds in Orange County redefined retirement living and helped popularize gated communities across America.

In the early 1960s, life after work was seen as a slippery slope that ended at the door of an old-folks’ home. Cortese, a high school dropout turned home builder, was looking for a market niche when he hit upon what was then a radical idea: Life after work was a time to start living.

“In a hundred years, I’m sure what we did in the past here will be illuminating to people,” said Evelyn Shopp, president of the Leisure World Historical Society, which began assembling the community’s archive in the mid-1970s.

“I don’t doubt that there will be very real uses for the information we’ve gathered. . . . I’m just not sure right now what they are.”

Much of what’s here is the stuff of everyday life. There are files from the hundreds of clubs that are the social glue binding Leisure World together. The Boccie Club and the Retired Nurses. The Art Assn. and the Audubon Society. The Camera Club, the Rock and Gem Club and the Snooker Club.

There are banners and flags that flew at parties and parades three decades ago. Boxes stuffed with colonial costumes from a 1976 play put on by the Daughters of the American Revolution. A block of petrified wood found during the construction of a local reservoir.

There are drawers full of yellow newspaper clippings and black-and-white photos. Videotapes of “Leisure Worlder of the Month” presentations. Audiotapes with the oral histories of early residents, including “the pioneers” who were the first to arrive in September 1964.

On one shelf is the personal scrapbook of Dorothy Coffin.

“I have no idea who she is,” Williams confessed.

Williams has been collecting obituaries of the more than 3,000 residents who have died since 1990. Not surprisingly, the list of dead tends to be long in a community where the average age is 77.

But mementos of those lives are well-preserved here.

Behind the door with the sign that reads “Authorized Personnel Only,” the temperature is always 70 degrees, and the humidity is steady at 50%.

The room is regularly sprayed for bugs, and the bulbs overhead are covered with sleeves that block ultraviolet light.

“The object of any archives is to preserve what’s there for 300 years,” said Williams, 76, a retired high school teacher. “Almost everything here is irreplaceable.”

Family members doing genealogy research are allowed to use the archive. So are probate lawyers. Once, a contingent of Japanese visitors seeking insight into the Leisure World concept stopped by.

People routinely bring stuff to Williams, hoping she’ll put it in what she calls “the vault.” She rarely does.

“I collect nothing but Leisure World,” she said. “I turn down many, many nice things that belong somewhere, but not here. If someone has a collection of Danish bells from a person who once lived here, I have to tell them, ‘Well, that’s nice. But it’s not enough of a connection.’ ”

Frank Prophet’s collection certainly belongs here, and Williams is glad to have it.

Prophet was a longtime entry-gate guard known for the handmade signs he lashed to his tennis racket and waved in front of drivers.

“Smile.” “Think Snow!” “Considered Driving School?” “Old Age Isn’t for Sissies.”

Dozens of the signs have found retirement on a shelf, along with Prophet’s battered aluminum racket.

Besides being picky about what she keeps, Williams doesn’t hesitate to get rid of items. Her motto: No duplicates.

She has a large collection of china embossed with the Leisure World logo, which, in the beginning, was provided at community clubhouses. Somehow, she ended up with 52 coffee saucers, so she is selling the extras.

“I had one vegetable bowl, and someone mistakenly sold it,” Williams said. She winces and wonders whether she will ever find another.

“I’m still grieving over that,” she said.