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Memento Mori: The “Death” ofYoungtownKevin E. McHugh a & Ann M. Fletchall aa Arizona State UniversityPublished online: 14 Jan 2009.

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Memento Mori: The “Death” of Youngtown

Kevin E. McHugh and Ann M. FletchallArizona State University

Youngtown, Arizona, was founded in 1954 as the nation’s first retirement community, presaging the originalSun City (1960) and subsequent proliferation of active-adult communities across America. Youngtown, whoseattractiveness waned owing to competition from more upscale, amenity-rich communities, suffered a fatalblow in 1998. Legal issues led to the loss of age restrictions, ushering in a swift and dramatic transformationof Youngtown from retirement enclave to working-class community, as Youngtown was overwhelmed bypowerful social currents coursing through the Phoenix metropolitan region: explosive population growth,suburban sprawl, Latinization, and voracious demand for affordable housing. We tell the story of the lifeand death of Youngtown as a retirement haven, including the response of seniors to the loss in communityidentity: out-migration, anger, depression, and eventual acceptance among older people who linger. Insular,freeze-frame dreams of community identity and stability common among seniors in retirement enclavesultimately prove chimerical in the face of urban change. The death of Youngtown as retiree haven, viewedin the sweep of shifting cultural attitudes about aging, may be a harbinger, the opening notes in a requiemfor de jure retirement communities. Key Words: agelessness, anti-aging, cultural attitudes, retirementcommunities, urban change.

Youngtown, Arizona, fue fundado en 1954, a tıtulo de primera comunidad de retirados de la nacion americana,presagiando la original Sun City (1960) y subsiguiente proliferacion de comunidades de este tipo a traves de losEstados Unidos. Youngtown, cuyo atractivo se desvanecio ante la competencia de comunidades de alta gama,ricas en amenidades, sufrio un golpe fatal en 1998. Las restricciones de edad se perdieron por cuestiones legales,introduciendo en Youngtown una rapida y dramatica transformacion de enclave de jubilacion a comunidadde clase trabajadora, una vez que la ciudad fue agobiada por el flujo de poderosas corrientes sociales a travesde la region metropolitana de Phoenix: crecimiento explosivo de la poblacion, desparramamiento suburbano,latinizacion y voraz demanda de vivienda economicamente accesible. Relatamos la historia de la vida y muertede Youngtown como refugio para el retiro, incluyendo la respuesta de los adultos mayores a la perdida de laidentidad comunitaria: emigracion, enojo, depresion y la eventual aceptacion del cambio y persistencia porlos mas ancianos. Los suenos de comunidades con identidades insulares e inmutables y estabilidad, comunesentre las personas mayores de los enclaves de jubilados, en ultimas resultan quimericos ante la faz del cambiourbano. Vista en el contexto de la avalancha de cambiantes actitudes culturales acerca del envejecimiento, lamuerte de Youngtown como refugio de jubilados puede tomarse como un presagio, las notas de apertura delrequiem por las comunidades de retiro legıtimas. Palabras clave: sin edad, anti-envejecimiento, actitudesculturales, comunidades de jubilacion

The Professional Geographer, 61(1) 2009, pages 21–35 C© Copyright 2009 by Association of American Geographers.Initial submission, May 2007; revised submissions, February 2008; final acceptance, April 2008.

Published by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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22 Volume 61, Number 1, February 2009

Y oungtown occupies a small corner in theexpansive western sprawl of the Phoenix

metropolis. It is a diminutive place, coveringless than three square miles, with a populationof approximately 3,000 residents in 2000. Lyingin the shadow of the White Tank Mountains,Youngtown is tucked between the larger settle-ments of Sun City and El Mirage (Figure 1).

What it might lack in size and status is morethan made up by its important past and ironicpresent. Many have never heard of Youngtown,Arizona, yet it played a groundbreaking rolein the postwar growth of the American SunBelt. Driving through the town, one mightnot guess that it began life as the nation’sfirst retirement community and inspirationfor Del Webb’s famed Sun Cities, which, inturn, were instrumental in popularizing themaster-planned community as a developmentparadigm in America (Romig 2004).

Founded in 1954, Youngtown existed fordecades as a quiet blue-collar retirement haven.Close-knit residents enjoyed fishing in its smalllake, Wednesday night potlucks, and othertrappings of an active retirement lifestyle, assupported by de jure age segregation. In 1998,a lightning bolt struck Youngtown. Legal issuesled to the loss of age restrictions, and its homeswere opened to people of any age. Profound de-mographic change soon followed, as its modesthomes were found attractive by working-classfamilies, many of whom are Latino. Throughout-migration and death, Youngtown’s elderlypopulation has waned. The conspicuous signproudly proclaiming Youngtown to be thefirst retirement community in America wasremoved. A half-century after its founding,Youngtown as retirement community has died.The town is reborn and, ironically, is now livingup to its name.

When its retirement identity was deniedstate protection by legal sanction, Youngtownfound itself highly vulnerable. The town wasquickly consumed by social currents coursingthrough the Phoenix metropolitan region, mostnotably explosive population growth and sub-urban sprawl, Latinization, and demand foraffordable housing in a region of escalatinghome prices. We meld humanist and criti-cal approaches in telling the story of Young-town’s founding and chronicling its dramaticdemise, drawing on Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s(1969) model of death and dying as a heuris-

tic in framing responses and coping strate-gies among seniors to the loss in communityidentity. In some fashion, Youngtown’s experi-ence is unique and its transformation especiallydramatic, yet its trajectory points to shiftingcultural attitudes about aging, community, andplace. It is to these broader issues that we turnin the final two sections of the article.

The Good Old Days

In 1947, “Big” Ben Schleifer, a charismatic Rus-sian immigrant plagued by asthma, moved fromNew York to Arizona to bask in the healingpowers of sun and aridity. Youngtown’s cre-ation story springs from Big Ben’s visit with afriend in an elderly care facility in Rochester,New York. Ben was struck by the empty, lifelessdays and spirit-crushing loss of independencethat awaited many Americans in their lateryears. He vowed to change this fate, “to buildthe kind of place where elderly people could livecomfortably and economically without havingto sacrifice their freedom and independence”(Youngtown Land and Development Company1959, 2). His quest began in negotiations withFrances Greer, a widow who owned a 320-acre cattle ranch fifteen miles northwest ofPhoenix. With support from Clarence Suggs,a financier and home builder, Schleifer gainedMs. Greer’s confidence, purchased the ranchfor $48,000, and formed the Youngtown De-velopment Company (Sturgeon 1992). Young-town was born and given a name to signify, inthe words of Schleifer, “that the town wouldbe associated with youth and ambition,” a place“to make elderly people not feel old” (Schafer1979, 6–7).

Youngtown’s beginnings were quite mod-est, and its cluster of small ranch-style homesstood relatively isolated amidst cotton fieldsand undeveloped desert northwest of Phoenix.A tight-knit community developed “organi-cally,” as Schleifer purposefully left Youngtowndevoid of formal organizations and recreationalinstitutions, opting for a “do-it-yourself op-portunity” rather than a “ready-built package”(Youngtown Land and Development Company1959, 59). Schleifer believed that Youngtown-ers, due to their relative isolation, would have astrong incentive to organize their own com-munity functions. His intuition proved cor-rect, as they did so with much success. Soon

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Memento Mori: The “Death” of Youngtown 23

Figure 1 Youngtown’s location within the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Youngtown featured a range of social clubs andevents, such as the Ladies Tuesday Night CardClub, Wednesday night potlucks, and a Satur-day night social.

Lot sales reached 210 in 1955 and then stag-nated (“Early settlers of Youngtown” 1974). Aspot on Dave Garroway’s “Wide, Wide World”segment of the popular television show, TheToday Show, in late 1957 provided valuablenational exposure, increasing awareness ofthis new retirement lifestyle (“Youngtown re-flections” 1979). Garroway took viewers toYoungtown’s third birthday celebration andshowcased the talents of residents in choralsinging and square-dancing. This national pub-licity sparked more interest in Youngtown. By1959, it grew to encompass 1,400 residents, twochurches, and incipient commercial develop-ment (Youngtown Historical Society 2002).

A promotional publication printed in cele-bration of Youngtown’s fifth anniversary, in1959, provided a forum for residents to baskin uniqueness in being the first and only retire-ment community in America. The publicationbrims with praise of the town and the busy livesled there, the quintessential example of whatgerontologists later termed the “busy ethic” in

retirement (Ekerdt 1986; Katz 2000). An es-say therein provides answers to the rhetoricalquery: “What is Youngtown?” Responses re-mind contemporary readers that Youngtownwas truly ground-breaking at the time:

It’s the place where people killed Loneliness,instead of dying from it.

It’s a place that proves people must be busy tobe happy.

It’s a place that proves there’s lots of life in oldfolks yet!

It’s a revolution against the fear of old age. Fearhas become Fun. Old Age equals Enjoyment.

(Youngtown Land and Development Company1959, 5)

Youngtown’s success caught the eye of DelWebb Company vice president for develop-ment, Thomas Breen, who convinced the com-pany owner, Delbert Eugene Webb, to financeand build a large-scale, golf and recreation-oriented community named Sun City, whichopened its doors 1 January 1960 (Freedman1999). With the wild success of this initial SunCity, developers and marketers rushed to create

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senior communities and “active adult” lifestylesto attract this new class of mobile consumerscalled retirees (McHugh and Larson-Keagy2005). The plethora of amenity-rich communi-ties for retirees, preretirees, and empty-nesterswe see today across America are derivative fromthe original Sun City model that was inspiredby little Youngtown.

The Winds of Change

Youngtown was incorporated in 1961 and de-veloped a city government, its own police force,and a town hall. By 1969, its residents ben-efited from businesses and services found inmany small towns, including a post office, li-brary, hospital, shopping center, and a bank(staffed, of course, mainly by younger nonres-idents). Youngtown’s vitality waned, however,in the 1970s as its once active residents aged inplace. The town ceased to support an indepen-dent newspaper, and in later anniversary pub-lications, rather than being portrayed as livelypeople, the elderly were relegated to reminisc-ing about the “good old days.”

During initial sales, homes in Youngtownwere sold exclusively to people fifty years ofage and older. There existed, however, an over-sight in Youngtown’s housing contracts fromthe start: There were no provisions for age re-strictions in the original deeds, legal clausesthat would have prevented those younger thana certain age from moving in. Thus, after inher-itance or vacancy, homes could be sold and in-habited by younger people, and over the years,some younger adults with children trickled intotown. To stem the tide, a group called SaveYoungtown for Retirees (SYR) was formed in1974, and engaged in lobbying efforts withthe state to preserve their age-restricted status.SYR emerged as the “most militant and vocifer-ous [retirement] group” in Arizona (Andersonand Anderson 1978, 8). Two families accusedSYR members of harassment and, later, twomembers of SYR were charged with trespass-ing and assault in attempting to force anotherfamily to leave Youngtown (Anderson and An-derson 1978).

By the 1980s the number of younger resi-dents had reached a critical mass, promptingYoungtown to enact a senior citizen zoningordinance. To implement age-overlay zoning,which sets a minimum age requirement for en-

try, Youngtown had to either receive writtenapproval from 100 percent of property owners,or prove that all properties had been intendedfor, used, sold to, or rented to seniors. Vol-unteers canvassed the town. The drive proveddifficult, as canvassers were unable to solicitcomplete approval and could not document theresidential history of every home. Youngtownforged ahead nonetheless, implementing anage-overlay ordinance in 1986 (Ellison 1997).

At the start of 1990, Youngtown began inearnest to enforce its age ordinance. “Under-age” residents who had moved to Youngtownbefore 1986 were allowed, but not encouraged,to stay. Those who did not meet this clause wereforced to sign agreements stipulating that theywould soon move out (Law 1990). Several fam-ilies filed complaints with the U.S. Departmentof Housing and Urban Development (HUD),claiming discrimination. HUD forwardedthese complaints to the U.S. Department ofJustice, which dismissed them in September1990. It was determined that Youngtown’soverlay was within federal guidelines of the FairHousing Act, which stipulates that 80 percentor more of residents must be seniors, and alsothat the homes in question had previously beenoccupied by older residents (Sexton 1990).

In their defense, the town attempted torationalize age restrictions by arguing thatYoungtown lacked infrastructure for children.The town code enforcer was quoted in theArizona Republic newspaper: “It’s a very bor-ing community. To grow up here would givechildren a very warped idea of old people. Andthe only thing for them to do is to go feedthe ducks” (Law 1990, A2). One young per-son explained her rationale in choosing to set-tle in Youngtown: “We moved here for thesame reason the retirees did: quiet and safety”(Nelson 1999, 2).

Younger residents were attuned to thefortress mentality showcased by elders in themidst of the battle. Said one person quotedin the Arizona Republic, “Who do they thinkthey are? They act like kids are so bad. Weren’tthey kids once? If they don’t like us, maybe theyshould put a fence around themselves and nevercome out” (Reid 1993, 1). A young woman whogrew up in Youngtown remembered when, asa teenager, “older residents would purposelybump their carts into her at the supermarket orcut into line at the candy store in front of her

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Memento Mori: The “Death” of Youngtown 25

and her young friends.” She expressed her feel-ings: “It was like being a Black person and be-ing moved to the back of the bus” (Kelly 2001,B1). After hurtful comments from seniors con-vinced her to leave Youngtown, a mother said,“I had always tried to instill in my sons a deeprespect for their elders, but it is difficult. . . . Itis very much obvious that we are hated” (Sexton1990, B1).

The Axe Falls

With the 1990 decision, many senior Young-towners breathed a sigh of relief, and placedtheir faith in the age overlay ordinance. Thesaga was far from over. In 1996, sixteen-year-old Chaz Cope, seeking refuge from an abusivestepfather, moved to the home of his grand-parents, Lynne Rae and Jerry Naab, in Young-town. Aware that their familial duty put them inviolation of the age ordinance, the Naabs noti-fied the city council of their grandson’s pres-ence (Ruelas 1996). The city stipulated thatChaz must depart by 1 January 1997. TheNaabs applied for a zoning variance. Their re-quest was denied, and the Naabs filed a com-plaint with the state Attorney General’s Office,claiming violation of their civil rights (Barrett1998a).

In October 1997, Arizona Attorney GeneralGrant Woods found the age restrictions inDistrict 12, where the Naabs lived, to be inviolation of state law. Again, to pass muster ac-cording to state law, age-restrictive ordinancesmust be approved by all property owners in thedistrict, or the property must always have beenoccupied by seniors. In the case of District 12,neither criterion was demonstrated. The 1986canvassing effort did not elicit approval fromall homeowners in the district, nor did the drivefind that all the homes there had been occupiedby seniors prior to 1986. The Attorney Generalordered the repeal of District 12 age overlay,and stated that initial results of their probe in-dicated questionable legality for the remainingdistricts in Youngtown (Ellison 1997, 1998).

Four representatives of the attorney generalwho attended the 9 October 1997, Youngtowncouncil meeting to explain Grant Woods’s find-ings were pummeled with criticism. Emotionsran high. One resident compared Youngtown’splight to the crucifixion of Christ (Ellison1997). On behalf of the attorney general, theyasked Youngtown to suspend its ordinance,

and provided an opportunity for the town todocument the legality of the remaining seniorcitizen overlay districts (Ellison 1997, 1998;Barrett 1998b). On the last day of June 1998,the town council voted unanimously to repealage restrictions, claiming that this was “whatthey [were] bound to do under the law” (Ellison1998, A1). A rumor circulated that the councilmembers and their friends owned rental prop-erty in Youngtown, and they knew that onceYoungtown was opened, property values wouldincrease. Standing to gain financially, councilmembers may have chosen not to fight the at-torney general’s ruling. Today, Youngtown isopen to habitation by people of all ages.

Many seniors felt angry and abandoned bythe loss of age restrictions. Some departed forthe childless streets and greener pastures ofnearby Sun City. The elderly exodus openedthe doors for many more young people tomove in, attracted by Youngtown’s affordablehomes. Soon after its age restrictions werelifted, housing prices in Youngtown soared.During the period between 1996 and 2001,the median sales price increased by more than70 percent, from $47,500 to $81,500 (Madrid2002), the latter still well below the medianhousing value for Phoenix.

A comparison of four decennial censuses(Table 1) confirms that the demographic pro-file of Youngtown is in flux, transforming fromretirement enclave to working-class suburb.The share of Youngtown’s population that issixty-five years of age and older dropped from71 percent in 1970 to 50 percent in 2000.The under-eighteen population rose from 2percent in 1980 to 9 percent in 2000, andbetween 1990 and 2000, its under fifty-fivepopulation increased by 48 percent. Young-town’s Hispanic population doubled duringthe 1990s, and has accelerated since 2000. Aspecial census conducted in 2005 indicatesthat Youngtown’s population doubled to

Table 1 Selected population statistics forYoungtown: 1970–2000

Variable 1970 1980 1990 2000

Total population 1,886 2,239 2,542 3,01065 years and older 71% 69% 58% 50%Under 18 years 1% 2% 6% 9%Median age N/A 71.6 N/A 65.3White non-Hispanic 98% 98% 93% 87%Hispanic 1% 1% 6% 13%

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6,163, owing largely to annexation of a newlyconstructed subdivision of 783 single-familyhomes, Agua Fria Ranch. The 2005 special cen-sus reports total population for Youngtown;characteristics of the population are not avail-able to confirm officially the dramatic increasein younger people and Latinos since 2000.

Senior Response

The changes taking place in Youngtown tooka toll on its established identity as a retire-ment enclave. Aspects of Youngtown that pro-vided elderly residents with a sense of placeand identity—age and ethnic homogeneity andfamiliar neighbors—were disappearing beforetheir eyes. Youngtown was quickly becom-ing a very different place. It is instructiveto look deeper into this watershed period inYoungtown’s history to reveal challenges facedby residents in a place undergoing dramatictransformation.

To this end, we conducted in-depth inter-views with eleven current and former retiredresidents of Youngtown.1 All had come toYoungtown before the age restrictions werelifted, their arrivals ranging from Elsie’s in1959 (she was underage when she came withher much older husband) to Allen’s arrivalin 1998. Three of our interviewees—Shirley,Kathy, and Ray—relocated to Sun City. Ourconversations, one to two hours in length, re-vealed personal biographies, views of commu-nity and community life, strength of attach-ments in Youngtown, and reactions to eventssurrounding the loss of age restrictions andcommunity change. To present a view from thestandpoint of newcomers, we also interviewedseven younger residents of Youngtown, includ-ing the mayor, Bryan Hackbarth. All seven ofthese younger residents moved to Youngtownafter 1998 (see Table 2).

Interviewees were identified via the snow-ball sampling method. Starting from initialcontact with the city manager’s office and theYoungtown Historical Society, we were putin contact with persons who might be willingto participate in our study. These were oftenactive members of the Youngtown commu-nity or residents who had been active in thepast. At the conclusion of each interview, weasked interviewees for referrals to others whomight wish to share their stories. We conducteda total of eighteen interviews and discerned

Table 2 List of interviewees

Name Year to Youngtown

1 Elsie Richardson 19592 Dorothy Covington 19723 Shirley Miller 19794 Alberta Hall 19855 Kathy Wier 19856 Dot Schmidt 19877 Betsy Simmons 19908 Jack Simmons 19909 Wanda Donahue 1995

10 Ray Madsen 199511 Allen Pickering 199812 Bryan Hackbarth, 1999

Mayor of Youngtown13 Carlos Alfaro 200114 Jenny Alfaro 200115 Felicia Salazar 200116 Tenille Ross 200217 Renae Anderson 200318 Jason Phillips 2003

patterns in response to Youngtown’s past, theloss of age restrictions, and its transformation.All interviews were audio recorded, with in-terviewee consent, and later transcribed. Con-fidentiality and anonymity has been ensuredthrough the use of pseudonyms. Also, we at-tended council meetings and other town func-tions and explored archives in the YoungtownHistorical Society.

Members of a community often meet the re-alization of vulnerability by invoking copingstrategies (Adger 2000). We draw on ElizabethKubler-Ross’s (1969) model of death and dyingas a heuristic in illuminating coping strategiesamong seniors who faced the “death” of Young-town as a retirement community. In her her-alded book On Death and Dying, Kubler-Rossidentifies five stages that a terminally ill patientcan pass through: denial, anger, bargaining, de-pression, and acceptance. She recognized thatterminally ill patients do not necessarily fol-low a linear march through all five stages;rather, these may be characterized as copingmechanisms put to variable use when timesare tough (Kubler-Ross 1969, 122). In talkingwith Youngtowners, and culling through andinterrogating the interviews and transcripts, wediscovered that the Kubler-Ross frame helpsus comprehend and understand responses andadaptations to the “loss” of community. In par-ticular, our conversations revealed responsesrevolving around three of the strategies identi-fied by Kubler-Ross: anger, depression, and ac-ceptance. In addition to coping in situ is “voting

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with one’s feet” and relocating to another com-munity, a conspicuous adaptive response thathastened Youngtown’s shift to a younger, morediverse, working-class community.

Anger

A degree of denial was undoubtedly experi-enced after the initial shock of the attorney gen-eral’s ruling. This is evidenced by a short-livedgroup of seniors, Citizens for Overlay Zon-ing (COZ), who canvassed the town in a last-ditch and failed attempt to save age restrictions(Konig 1999). Anger, however, was a widely ex-perienced reaction to the loss of Youngtown’sage restrictions and to the traumatic prospectof drastic change that would inevitably fol-low. Dot, a resident for nearly twenty years,describes anger among elders leading to outmovement as well as tensions between olderand younger residents:

Once we lost the age restrictions, we were in-undated. People were angry and they sold theirhomes and moved out, and they sold them toanybody. . . . A lot of people moved out. A lotof unhappy people. It was not a pleasant timein our town. The older people were treatingthe younger people like crap. The younger peo-ple were retaliating by treating the older peoplelike crap. It was really unpleasant. The [town]council in that period of time, they wouldn’t doa thing for the younger people. They foughtevery type of situation until finally they weretold, you have to provide for all of your citizens.You can’t discriminate. They were even havingseparate Christmas parties. . . . They almost hadcardiac arrest when it was brought up that theyshould have some playground equipment. . . . Itwas a nasty period. . . . I quit being friendswith a lot of people because of the way theyacted. (Dot Schmidt, personal communication,5 October 2004)

Kubler-Ross (1969, 45) explains anger asa defense mechanism fitting to Youngtown’scase: “Maybe we too would be angry . . . if wehad put some hard-earned money aside to en-joy a few years of rest and enjoyment, for traveland pursuing hobbies, only to be confrontedwith the fact that this is not for me.” Indeed,the repeal of Youngtown’s age restrictions rep-resents a promise broken. Seniors had boughthomes in Youngtown with faith that it wouldremain a retirement haven. Taking for grantedthat their move to Youngtown would be their

last, the thought of relocation was not a wel-come one (Ellison 1997; Nelson 1999). In thewords of one resident, “We moved here forretirement, not for a herd of kids,” suggest-ing the two are incompatible (Kelly 2001, B1).Alberta complains, “You come in and settledown. I just wanted to live the rest of my life inpeace and quiet, and then here it’s all erupted”(Alberta Hall, personal communication, 15April 2005). She then adds regret to the senti-ment: “I just would have wished that we wouldhave just stayed a retired community and letpeople just live their latter years in peace andquiet as it was in the beginning.” Even someyounger residents sympathized with the plightof seniors: “It’s kind of a bum rap for them be-cause they were sold something that later onthey changed” (Carlos Alfaro, personal com-munication, 23 February 2005).

Incoming youth played to an issue of ut-most concern among retirees: safety. Teenagersbrought fear of increased crime. To quell fearsof gang formation, many believed that the cityshould spend money on parks, or some sort ofrecreation, so that teenagers would be less aptto congregate on the streets (Whiting 2000).One resident opined, “What’s moved in is riff-raff. Our thievery is up and we’ve got kids onskateboards running people off the sidewalk”(Kelly 2001, B1). The lone dissenter in a coun-cil vote to allocate city funds for playgroundequipment held fast to his negative perceptionof the younger generation, expressing fear that“mothers may dump their children at the play-ground while they’re out running around withtheir boyfriends” (Whiting 2001, 1). Kathy,who relocated to Sun City, bemoaned the lostsanctity of her morning Youngtown walks asshe described being interrupted by the soundof gunshots, and what turned out to be in herwords, police shooting at the door of a drughouse (Kathy Wier, personal communication,31 January 2005). Dot sums up the situation:

My own personal sadness it that a lot of peoplemoved here under the assumption that it wouldalways be a retirement community, and theywere unwilling and maybe financially unable tomake a move . . . and those people I have a lot ofempathy for, because to live in your own homeand be frightened to death of what’s going onaround you would be a terrible existence. (DotSchmidt, personal communication, 5 October2004)

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Additionally, many seniors were quick tonote that they live on fixed incomes, and thusare concerned about paying taxes. Currently,Youngtown is not within the bounds of a schooldistrict so residents are free of local school-related taxes, although they do pay a very mod-est statewide school tax. This is another ofYoungtown’s attractive qualities, but the in-evitable inclusion of Youngtown in either theDysart or Peoria school districts will eventuallyincrease local taxes.

Depression

In the terminally ill, depression stems froma deep sense of loss that comes in two maintypes: reactive and preparatory (Kubler-Ross1969). Reactive depression, similar to nostal-gia, is a reaction to, and dwelling on, past loss.For some Youngtowners this is the sad realiza-tion that this place will never be the sleepy re-tirement community it once was. Alberta, whoknew Youngtown from its humble beginnings,expresses this loss in place meaning: “It’s sad,really, that Youngtown didn’t stay the retiredcommunity that it started out to be, becauseit was the first retirement city in the UnitedStates. So why not stay the first?” (Alberta Hall,personal communication, 15 April 2005).

The strength of Youngtown’s identity wasseeded early in its history as a communityof neighbors, a small town where everyoneknew each other. Clubs, activities, and infor-mal socializing contributed to a sense of be-longing and togetherness. Shirley, Alberta, andDorothy describe life in an earlier Youngtown:

It was a very close-knit neighborhood. Wewould have our little get-togethers. It was a timewhen people would sit on the front porch or theback patio and talk, and there were no fences,you could just cross the yard. It was a real nicecommunity. (Shirley Miller, personal commu-nication, 19 April 2005)

When I moved out here, . . . women would havelittle coffee klatches, eight or ten people wouldbelong to this club, eight or ten people wouldbelong to that club, and it was just more or lesstogetherness. . . . I think that’s what the peo-ple miss most, neighbors helping neighbors. Itwas that way from the very beginning. . . . [Myneighbor] and I would sit on the porch swingand discuss everybody going up and down the

street. (Alberta Hall, personal communication,15 April 2005)

I made friends so quickly out here. . . . We usedto have block parties where we would meet atone house and there’d be a potluck. We’d alltake something and all of our neighbors wouldbe there. . . . The men all bowled together. Thewomen all played bridge or something, cards,as a rule. . . . It was so easy to become a partof Youngtown. (Dorothy Covington, personalcommunication, 15 September 2004)

Youngtown boasted more than forty clubs inits heyday in the 1960s (Sturgeon 1992). In2005 there were only ten active clubs. Young-town’s most prominent clubs have taken a hit.Its first, the Crystal Club, disbanded in 2005due to declining rolls, with members eitherdying or moving away (Kathy Wier, personalcommunication, 31 January 2005). The CalicheGarden Club, once well over one hundredmembers strong, declined to ten, with onlysix members physically able to work on gar-den projects. Sadly, it also was disbanded (DotSchmidt, personal communication, 5 October2004). Youngtown’s Chapter One of the AARPonce had 450 members, but now with justtwenty members has merged with a Sun Citychapter (Kathy Wier, personal communication,31 January 2005). The Methodist Church hasdeclined from 200 to fewer than eighty-fiveparishioners. In one year alone, twenty mem-bers of the flock passed away (Alberta Hall, per-sonal communication, 15 April 2005). As clubswithered and died, a group of women affiliatedwith the Youngtown Historical Society workedto make a commemorative quilt, each squarerepresenting a club from Youngtown’s colorfulpast. The quilt took third place at the ArizonaState Fair.

The second type of depression is preparatoryin nature, preparing for impending losses thatcome with age. It is during this stage that aterminally ill patient expresses sorrow andmourns future losses, a time of reflectionessential for passage to the final stage of accep-tance (Kubler-Ross 1969). It is here that thedeath and dying analogy hits close to home, asYoungtown’s elderly population is inexorablyshrinking. Escapist moves to Sun City, movesto care facilities, and mortality have worn awayYoungtown’s elderly population. These are un-avoidable facts of life, and several Youngtown

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interviewees cited such reasons for the turnoverexperienced in their neighborhoods. Elsie,a fifty-year resident of Youngtown, has seenmany neighbors come and go: “I guess I’ll juststay home because I found my neighbor dead. Itwas so sad. . . . The man across the street died.I found him dead” (Elsie Richardson, personalcommunication, 30 March 2005). Dot opined,“That gives you a real strange feeling of yourown mortality, you’re thinking ‘Oh my God,all my neighbors are dying”’ (Dot Schmidt,personal communication, 5 October 2004).

The shifting balance of Youngtown’s pop-ulation engenders in some feelings that theysimply do not belong there anymore. Shirleyexplains, “The neighborhood changed. . . . Itjust seemed like it was time for me to makea change” (Shirley Miller, personal commu-nication, 19 April 2005). Ray expresses hisreasoning for moving away:

I’m not saying that they’re [newcomers] betteror worse than I am, but they’re different. Andso I just didn’t seem to fit in, or maybe it wasthe other way around. I didn’t fit in with themor they didn’t fit in with me, so we decided tosell. . . . It was getting so we didn’t know any-body anymore. They either died or moved away.I don’t know if they died on purpose or what toget away. Just kidding about that. We decidedto join them [and move]. (Ray Madsen, personalcommunication, 13 April 2005)

As one ages and withdraws from formal roles,close friendships become more important, suchthat these losses have a magnified impactamong the elderly (Rubinstein and Parmelee1992). With each loss of friend and neighbor,a portion of Youngtown’s collective identity isshorn away.

Acceptance

Kubler-Ross’s (1969) final stage in Death andDying is acceptance, finding peace of mind. Itis a stage without anger or depression, “an ex-istence without fear or despair” (99). At thetime we conducted the interviews six years hadpassed since the age restrictions in Youngtownwere lifted. By that time, many older residentswho remained came to see benefits of a mixed-age community, embrace their new neighbors,and look optimistically to Youngtown’s future.Youth has brought a new vitality to the oncequiet town. As Betsy says, “If you don’t havesomething to perk you up, you get old and

crabby” (Betsy Simmons, personal communica-tion, 23 March 2005). Wanda enthusiasticallywelcomes children:

I enjoy Youngtown more now than I did when itwas a retirement community. I like the kids . . . Ilove to hear them yell and scream and run andholler . . . I just look at it this way, you don’t havelong on this earth, and when you’re gone, you’regoing to have plenty of quiet. (Wanda Donahue,personal communication, 15 April 2005)

A younger resident, Tenille Ross, sees the ben-efit of mixed ages:

I think a lot of people enjoy seeing little kidsaround, it makes them feel younger. Just likethey say, you’re as young as you feel, and someof these people, I really think they felt old andby bringing the younger people in, they feltyounger. (Tenille Ross, personal communica-tion, 9 May 2005)

Dot questions whether congregating elders incommunities is a good idea:

Generational segregation was not real good.A lot of old people living together get toocrotchety. . . . I think young people keep youyoung. . . . We found out when we moved here,there’s nothing more depressing than about ev-ery other few months, you’re going to some-body’s funeral. . . . I think I can put up with acouple of bratty kids rather than having every-body on the street die off. (Dot Schmidt, per-sonal communication, 5 October 2004)

In economic terms, the “opening” of Young-town has been a boon for homeowners. It iscommon to hear tales of houses appreciating$50,000 to $60,000 since the age restrictionswere repealed in 1998. This plays into a spiritof acceptance. The home built on the first lotsold in Youngtown, a very modest affair, wasrecently remodeled and sold for $125,000 in2005 (Figure 2). Youngtown is catching up tothe growth of the surrounding area, and mon-etary gains do help alleviate doubts.

Some scholars argue that place identity andattachment becomes increasingly centered onthe home in older age (Rowles 1983; Rubinsteinand Parmelee 1992; Cuba and Hummon 1993;Rowles and Chaudhury 2005). The home is arepository of memories and keepsakes. Also,infirmities may reduce spatial mobility andtravel away from home. As Youngtown’s clubsand other forms of social capital dwindle,older residents may be drawn further into

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their homes. With conspicuous neighborhoodchange, the home itself becomes an emo-tional vortex. Alberta’s words are illustrative,including a twinge of ambivalence in acceptingYoungtown’s fate as a community of younger,working-class families: “I’ll stay here till the dayI die if I have to build a fort around me. No, Idon’t want to do that. I get along fine with myneighbors” (Alberta Hall, personal communi-cation, 15 April 2005).

Tuan (1977) reminds us that nostalgia waxesstrong when change is swift, and it shouldnot be forgotten that Youngtown had some-thing special: identity as the first retirementcommunity in America. From its birth on anold ranch site, it has maintained a certainsmall-town charm in the face of the sprawl-ing Phoenix metropolis. Youngtown might bein danger of losing the quaintness that madeit attractive, not only to seniors, but to allwho have chosen to live there. Heed Betsy’swarning: “I hope it doesn’t change too much.We’re getting streetlights and fire hydrants andsidewalks. . . . We’re not going to be too coun-try anymore” (Betsy Simmons, personal com-munication, 23 March 2005). Shirley displaysan air of acceptance and resignation to Young-town losing its unique identity: “One time, wewere kind of unique, you’d say. But it’s not

that way anymore. We were the first retirementcommunity, but now it’s just another town, Iguess” (Shirley Miller, personal communica-tion, 19 April 2005).

The mayoral election in 2003 was a water-shed event in the transformation of Young-town. The race began with three candidates,and the run-off election pitted forty-one-year-old Bryan Hackbarth against incumbent mayorDaphne Green, a woman in her mid-seventies(Moehringer 2003). Hackbarth ran on a plat-form of change, to “bring together youngand old,” and to provide younger residentsopportunities for involvement in city politics(Bryan Hackbarth, personal communication,19 January 2005).

The election was not without controversy.An anonymous source sent court records tothen Mayor Green documenting a 1990 in-cident in which Hackbarth was charged withnegligent use of a weapon and criminal dam-age to property in an altercation with his for-mer girlfriend. Hackbarth was found guilty andserved ten days in jail. Records from othercriminal incidents surfaced and were circu-lated by Green to members of the city council(McCarthy 2003). In an interview, Hackbarthdownplayed his criminal past: “That was fif-teen years ago. . . . DUI and drugs, who cares?

Figure 2 First residential lot sold in Youngtown, 1954.

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Does that make me not a leader? I made a mis-take” (Bryan Hackbarth, personal communica-tion, 19 January 2005).

His history notwithstanding, Hackbarthedged out Green by a scant two votesin the runoff election to become Young-town’s youngest mayor (Sauerzopf and Alonzo-Dunsmoor 2003; Vantrease 2003). Hackbarth’splatform of change resonated among voters.In fact, owing to poor turnout by youngervoters, he needed support among older resi-dents to win election. To set the tone for hisadministration—to send the message that a newday had dawned in Youngtown—Hackbarth ar-rived at the Town Square to assume office on aHarley-Davidson motorcycle.

Some seniors who were unwilling to ac-cept the inevitability of Youngtown’s transfor-mation found solace in the greener pasturesoffered by Sun City and other retirement com-munities in the area. Housing is more expensiveand landscaping codes are much stricter in thenearby Sun City communities, and this likelydeterred many Youngtown seniors from relo-cating. Those who could afford to move and didso appear quite happy. Ray, who moved to SunCity, exclaims, “I can’t see how it can get anybetter than this” (Ray Madsen, personal com-munication, 13 April 2005). Youngtown trans-plants appreciate restrictions that keep yardstidy and neighbors congenial, and the recre-ational facilities of Sun City are very attrac-tive. Kathy recalls her friend’s concern withher move to Sun City: “[My friend] said ‘I’mso glad you’re happy.’ She said ‘I was afraidyou wouldn’t be able to make the transition.’I said ‘Ha! What’s not to make the transitionfrom there to here?”’ (Kathy Wier, personalcommunication, 31 January 2005). Shirley,who recently made the move, declares, “I justlove it here in Youngtown . . . er, in Sun City”(Shirley Miller, personal communication, 19April 2005). To counteract what may have beena Freudian slip, she lists sources of her content-ment: “It’s quiet. You’re not really isolated, butit’s not that loudness you have in a neighbor-hood where there are children and teenagers,and dogs barking. We don’t have that.”

No Escape

How does Youngtown’s history and tu-multuous transformation relate with our

understanding of retirement enclaves? Whatare the broader implications for understandingurban social change, and shifting cultural atti-tudes about aging and places in aging? One ofthe intriguing elements of retirement commu-nity life unearthed in the exploration of Young-town, and revealed in earlier studies, is what weterm a freeze-frame view of place. Seniors mi-grate to Sun Belt retirement enclaves expectingstability: to enjoy active and rewarding lives foras long as possible among like-minded retireebrethren in an ordered, controlled, and pre-dictable environment (Laws 1995). The eventsthat unfolded in Youngtown upset long-heldbeliefs about community identity and stability.

This freeze-frame view of place is expressedby seniors in other retirement communities, in-cluding Sun City (Kastenbaum 1993; McHugh2007). When asked to describe the ideal com-munity in a 1995 interview, Russell, a Sun Citygentleman, did not hesitate: “Well, the idealcommunity would be Sun City with people notgetting old” (McHugh 2007, 297). Russell adds:“The city [Sun City] is not changing, but thepeople that are coming here are changing. Theycome and adapt [to] this lifestyle.” His wife,Marilyn, chimes in: “I would say the city hasmore influence on them than they have on thecity” (297). This is a striking view of place asscripted (Laws 1995), an unreal place existingoutside time and social change.

The desire for stability and control isconnected with sentiments of insularity thatpermeate age-restricted enclaves. The paradig-matic statement of this “fortress mentality” isRobert Kastenbaum’s (1993) trenchant essay,“Encrusted Elders: Arizona and the PoliticalSpirit of Postmodern Aging.” Kastenbaumargues that communities like Sun City werepopulated early on by hard-working, stalwartsenior citizens who wished to maintain cher-ished values and virtues, an idealized Americanway of life, threatened by accelerated socialand cultural change. In seeking to protectspace from time, retirement enclaves, says Kas-tenbaum, are akin to sanctuaries or preserves.This engenders identity with, and allegianceto, the retiree enclave and, at times, a defensiveposture toward “outsiders” who might pose athreat, real or imagined, to foundational valuesand beliefs. This is evident, for example, in thehistory of heated political conflicts betweenthe Sun Cities and surrounding communitiesregarding school funding measures, control

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of school district governing boards, and SunCitians deannexing from districts to avoidpaying local school taxes (McHugh, Gober,and Borough 2002).

Poignant comments about insularity and fearof intrusion were offered by Madeline, a long-time Sun City resident and editor of the lo-cal newspaper, The Daily News Sun (McHughand Larson-Keagy 2005). Madeline refers,metaphorically, to the salience of Sun Citycommunity walls in keeping out crime, youngpeople, children and “all the things that wereattendant on their lives when they lived otherplaces” (251). She summarizes this escapist pos-ture among Sun Citians with the elegant state-ment: “And so there is a concerted feelingof splendid isolation” (251). Splendid isolationinculcates an atmosphere of concern, as overthe years Sun Citians have voiced fears aboutlosing autonomy, including the loss of state-sanctioned age restrictions and fears of beingincorporated into a nearby city such as Peoria orSurprise (McHugh and Larson-Keagy 2005).

Chris Phillipson (2007, 322) argues thatcommunity studies in aging should attend tosocial divisions engendered by global processes,“that the influence of globalization at the lo-cal level must now be given serious attentionby social gerontology.” Phillipson makes a dis-tinction between urban elders “able to chooseand to identify with particular locations” (elec-tive belonging) and “those who see neighbor-hood change as incompatible with their ownviews of themselves and their peers” (socialexclusion; 328). The Youngtown story jibeswith Phillipson’s clarion call. Even among so-called elective migrants, there can be no es-cape to freeze-frame communities immune tosocial and cultural change. Explosive popula-tion growth, suburban sprawl, and the rapid La-tinization of the Phoenix metropolis are localarticulations of far-reaching currents. Young-towners discovered firsthand that freeze-framedreams of place ultimately prove chimerical.Hopeful wishing for stability cannot stem thetide of urban change.

Requiem for Retirement

Communities

In some respects, the case of Youngtownis unique. Its luster as a quaint retiree

haven, which shined in yesteryear, had alreadygrown dim. Once a legal crack was exposed,Youngtown as retirement place was doomed.Youngtown offered minimal resistance tothe gathering of forces in the NorthwestValley of Phoenix. Perhaps more precisely,the legal crack accelerated Youngtown’s trans-formation from humble retirement havento working-class Latino community.

One might speculate that Youngtown’s muchlarger and influential neighbor, the original SunCity, is sustainable as a retirement community.After all, Sun City continues to enjoy the sanc-tion of age restrictions in the form of senioroverlay zoning within Maricopa County, sta-tus as the pioneering social invention of thelegendary Del Webb, and substantial politicalclout via more than 38,000 citizens who con-stitute a formidable voting bloc. Yet, the in-exorable aging of people and place in tandemwith powerful market forces and changing cul-tural attitudes about aging might prove over-whelming. Will the original Sun City remain inretirement repose or succumb to obsolescencehastened by competition from trendy, amenity-laden communities?

Lying like a string of pearls in the North-west Valley of Phoenix are Sun City, SunCity West, Sun City Grand, and Sun CityFestival, a sequence of communities that cap-tures increasing affluence and amenities, fromthe 1960s to the present day. Beyond thisfamous quartet—on the expanding fringesof Phoenix—beckons a suite of “boutique”communities by Del Webb and many otherdevelopers, places popular among -nestersand early retirees in their fifties and sixties,many of whom work full or part time. In ad-dition, Del Webb is developing multigener-ational communities (under the identity tag“Anthem”) that twin both active adult and fam-ily living neighborhoods. Tremendous geo-graphical diversification has been underway. Atthe time of this writing, Del Webb Corporation(now a division within Pulte Homes) is market-ing sixty-seven new lifestyles communities intwenty-two states (http://www.delwebb.com).Tellingly, the company develops and mar-kets communities both with and without theSun City moniker, and many new develop-ments lack the “fifty-five and better” agestipulation. In Arizona, for example, a se-ries of Del Webb lifestyle communities have

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been developed that carry cultural cachetand melodious Mediterranean-inspired namessuch as Terravita, Bellasera, Corte Bella, andSolera.

Further evidence that fifty-five and better isbeing eroded as a residential landscape signa-ture in the Phoenix region is the decline in agerequirement for entry into existing adult-onlycommunities. Several years ago Leisure Worldlowered its age requirement for purchasing re-sale homes to forty-five years and Sun Lakesto forty. In 2007, Sun City Grand followedsuit with a reduction to forty-five years, on theheels of a similar lowering by nearby West-brook Village. Lowering the age requirementfor resale home purchase is a maneuver to slowthe process of community aging, to try and re-tain a “youthful” image in the face of a highlycompetitive residential market for the heartsand pocketbooks of people in midlife, empty-nesters, and early retirees (Zlomek 2007).

Trends in marketing and community devel-opment are mold and mirror of shifting so-cietal attitudes about age and aging, a themedeveloped in the pioneering work of GlendaLaws (1993, 1994, 1996). One of the most fas-cinating and far-reaching revolutions under-way in America is the cultural “eradication”or “death” of old age. This is evident in ram-pant proliferation of anti-aging products, inscientific advances reported in outlets such asthe Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, and in thepopularity of anti-aging spiritual elixirs foundin the New Age section in bookstores. Oldage is being erased, supplanted by anti-aging,agelessness, and the endless prolongation ofmidlife, which now rivals the desire for perpet-ual youth as a cultural ideal (Featherstone andHepworth 1995; Kastenbaum 1995; Andrews1999; McHugh 2003).

“Modernity is drive to mastery,” writes Zyg-munt Bauman (1992, 132) in Mortality, Immor-tality, and Other Life Strategies. What bettersignifies modernity than the “drive to ‘decon-struct’ mortality . . . to dissolve the issue of thestruggle against death in an ever growing andnever exhausted set of battles against particu-lar diseases and other threats to life” (Bauman1992, 10)? Death cannot be escaped, of course,but it can “be held off the agenda, elbowed outby another truth: that each particular case ofdeath . . . can be resisted, postponed, or avoidedaltogether” (137–38). This becomes life’s work.

“The existential worry can be now all butforgotten in the daily bustle about health”(141), in pursuing what is termed successful ag-ing (Rowe and Kahn 1988). In short, we havecreated the illusion that aging is a curable con-dition. In a society obsessed with anti-aging andagelessness as cultural ideals, will the legal sanc-tion of age-restricted communities long survivein the landscape?

De jure age restrictions will fade as will passecommunity labels such as adult-only, fifty-fiveand better, and retirement. People in theirfifties, sixties, and seventies will coalesce, ifnot congregate, in communities promoted andmarketed not through age restriction but bylifestyle niche and level of wealth. Of course,aging in place will lead to communities re-plete with aging baby boomers. Youngtown,Arizona, will be long forgotten. Within thisevolving cultural field (Katz 2005), it is fittingthat we mark the “passing” of Youngtown, thenation’s first retirement community. The life,death, and rebirth of Youngtown serves as apoignant reminder that shifts in aging, place,and community are inexorable. �

Note

1 Pseudonyms are used for all interviewees, with theexception of Bryan Hackbarth, Youngtown’s mayorat the time the study was undertaken.

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Whiting, B. 2000. Retirement community thinkingabout kid amenities, growth and development. Ari-zona Republic 4 July:B3.

———. 2001. Old guard vs. kids over playground.Arizona Republic 3 November:B1.

Youngtown Historical Society. 2002. History ofYoungtown. Phoenix, AZ: Youngtown HistoricalSociety.

Youngtown Land and Development Company. 1959.5th anniversary of Youngtown, Arizona. Phoenix, AZ:Youngtown Land and Development Company.

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KEVIN E. McHUGH is Associate Professor in theSchool of Geographical Sciences at Arizona StateUniversity, Tempe, AZ 85287–0104. E-mail: km-chugh@asu.edu. His research interests are in criti-cal thought and theory, place and mobility, culturalstudies in aging, and cinematic geographies.

ANN M. FLETCHALL is a doctoral student inthe School of Geographical Sciences at ArizonaState University, Tempe, AZ 85287–0104. E-mail:Ann.Fletchall@asu.edu. Her research interests arein cultural and humanist geographies and mediastudies.

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