Lancaster Sunday News – May 11, 2008
Continuing care communities have turned Lancaster County into a retirement mecca, bringing jobs, money and senior citizens not ready for a rocking chair The new senior class

By Jon Rutter, Sunday News Staff Writer jrutter@lnpnews.com

Excerpts . . .

At Garden Spot Village, said Chief Executive Officer Steve Lindsey, 72 new apartments are scheduled for completion in November.

But the sense of security is the same [at retirement communities]. It beckoned powerfully to 70-year-old former Langhorne resident Mary Ellen Bough.

"I've never been married," Bough said, "and therefore I don't have family to depend on to take care of me." But Bough, who has a doctorate in math education, didn't plan to shut herself in behind the beige and olive walls of Garden Spot Village. She is an adjunct professor at Millersville University. She works out at the Universal Athletic Club gym on Oregon Pike.

"I think it's important to be with people of all ages," Bough said. "You need that stimulation." Her neighbor, Tom Plitt, 68, found it on the ball diamond. Not that Plitt was twiddling his thumbs after he and his wife, Joan, moved into their duplex carriage house four years ago. Plitt said he had already "basically retired three times." He golfed. He fished. He built furniture and did repairs for other residents. He contributed to the thousands of volunteer hours that he estimates is required to keep the campus humming. He has enjoyed living where you can walk downtown to hear a concert, where people smile and open doors for you. "It's a neat lifestyle," he said.

But, as Plitt noted, he could also "still throw batting practice." One thing led to another. Now, Plitt is in his second year with the Garden Spot High School junior varsity baseball team. It is his second paid coaching job, an encore to a high school sports instructor stint back home in Baltimore." We show how to field, how to hit a cut-off man," Plitt said. He does it for the joy of the game, he added, and also to be a role model. "I'm a firm believer that every kid ought to play some competitive sport," he said. "That just prepares them for adulthood."

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