Leisureville

This is a response to Andrew D. Blechman’s interesting, entertaining, misleading and well researched book, Leisureville.

I am one of the Villages baby boomers that you refer to in your book. My bio goes like this: I am a college graduate from Western New York. I have been a social activist since high school. Active in Local politics all of my life, community volunteerism was piled on top of a full time job in the auto industry, raising two children and being active in my union. I helped other parents in our school district raise over $400,000. to provide extra curricular activities for my children’s school, when the “Greatest” generation refused to pass budgets to support them. I have served on the boards of several not for profits and leadership councils, served dinners to the less fortunate and on and on. We are the first generation of women expected to juggle all of the balls. We have gladly and successfully done that.

I object to the notion that we have moved into this community to escape some social obligation that Andrew feels we owe his children. I looked carefully for suggestions from the author as to how we young retirees should behave. We have been pushed into early retirement to allow greedy corporations to employ younger workers at reduced wages and benefits. I got the feeling that his answer was vaguely that we should live above retail stores, in small apartments in urban areas, so we can baby-sit, chasing our children’s careers around the country living near, but not with them until we are ready for nursing homes, and hopefully early deaths so not to use too much of the limited resources that our gracious children benevolently bestow upon us. The only social activism I hear the author participating in is the selfish pursuit of playgrounds for his children.

I could easily have taken another job after my company pushed us out, competing with younger workers, but with unemployment at record levels, is that really what would be best for our country? I could have remained up north in my 3000 square foot home where I raised my family, on a fixed income struggling and complaining about paying ever increasing property taxes, and voting on your children’s school budgets, but is that really what would be best for my community?

I have taught social commitment to my children and am happy to pass the torch to them. I am more than willing to help and mentor, but it is their turn to take the wheel. We are not a society that values our elders, or learns from history. We tend to cast off and disregard our past and are therefore doomed to repeat mistakes. I feel that my choices have a better chance of not repeating the mistakes of the last generation, who held the reigns too long and mentored too little. That is not checking out.

I wish intergenerational planned communities existed like the Villages. Sun, safety, similar interests are the things that drew us to the villages, not the absence of children. Authentic is a word that the author used to describe the community where he lives, but accidental would be more descriptive. Haphazard development is how our suburbs have erupted. The city people that could afford it, escaped to the suburbs, leaving only those that could not afford to move to struggle in poverty in our urban centers. They took their tax base and cheated the inner city schools out of diversity and funding, never looking back. Talk about social conditions that ruined our traditionally urban neighborhoods, look to the suburbs. We Americans should realize that the only way to provide successful communities for the future is to plan them. There is no hope for success in the accidental way our communities now emerge. We have the ability to plan new communities but have only done it on a small experimental scale. It may take an intergenerational Village to secure the successful community of the future. There is the topic for your next book Andrew.