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At Last
by Susan Burns Right after moving into Palms of Manasota in Palmetto, Geri Whitaker Scott, a smiling, silver-haired, 63-year-old former nurse and college instructor with multiple sclerosis, sprained her ankle as she got into her car after her daily swim at a local hotel. Scott is accustomed to getting around despite her disability - until recently she lived alone in her big home in the woods in New Jersey - but as a newcomer in Palmetto, she had no family or old friends to call. She drove home and carefully pulled her car into the garage, as close as possible to her walker. She managed to get herself to the couch and called a neighbor she barely knew and asked, "Can you help me?" That one call was all it took. Ever since then, Scott has been surrounded by concern and attention. Neighbors make her breakfast and lunch and check in on her three or fours times a day to make sure she's OK. Whitaker Scott's eyes fill with tears when she talks about how lucky she was to find Palms of Manasota. "Bruce went grocery shopping for me and John let me use his washing machine the other day," she says. "This is a real community. A place where people help one another. It's a real family. It's my second family." And in fact, as the only gay and lesbian retirement community in the country, Palms of Manasota was developed to fill the role that family members usually hold in the heterosexual world. A caring community is what Bill Laing, a retired psychology professor from Long Island and the founder of Palms of Manasota, was hoping to create when he took all his assets and bought 20 acres in Palmetto in 1997 for $300,000. Laing knew that most gay people would consider themselves extremely lucky if they found the care and acceptance in a retirement community that Scott received. In fact, retirement is a frightening prospect for many gays and lesbians. At least one to three million people over the age of 65 are gay, according to a report by the national Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and that number is expected to increase significantly as baby boomers begin to retire in the next few years. Straight seniors often have their spouses and children to take care of them. Ninety percent of heterosexual seniors tend to have children, according to an estimate by the Gay & Lesbians Task Force, and these children provide all kinds of support - financial, emotional and physical. Only 10 percent of gay people have children - and some of those children have broken off relationships with their homosexual parents. Also sobering is the reality that gay seniors don't receive retirement benefits such as Social Security and pensions when their partner dies. When gay seniors move into traditional retirement homes filled with heterosexual couples, they're often treated as pariahs, according to an article in The Networker, a publication of Pride Senior Network, an organization concerned with the aging of the gay community. Many gay seniors, who struggled to come out in their younger years, are forced to go back into hiding again, keeping telltale photos in boxes, refraining from showing affection for their partners, speaking only half truths about their pasts. It can be a lonely, sad way to live the last years or decades of their lives. John Goodwin, Palms of Manasota's president, says that was true for Bob Daly, a resident who recently died. Daly, an artist, discovered Palms of Manasota after living in a traditional retirement home. He was dying of esophageal cancer. "Once people found out he was gay, they wouldn't talk to him," Goodwin says. "They might say 'Hi,' but they wouldn't sit with him at dinner." Daly decided to move to Palms of Manasota and spent his last days surrounded by neighbors. He set up a trust of $50,000 at Palms to make some of the housing more affordable for residents who otherwise might not be able to live there. Goodwin says Laing created The Palms of Manasota so that gays and lesbians could be themselves. He wanted them to be able to walk through the neighborhood holding hands, to feel accepted and to get the health care they needed at a community-owned-and-run assisted living facility and nursing home. Laing died of prostate cancer a year ago, but not before he saw part of his dream become reality. The Palms of Manasota, located between U.S. 19 and U.S. 41, now has 31 residents, with room to build up to 10 more houses. When a house becomes vacant (it's only happened twice since opening in 1997), there's a list of people waiting to buy, says Goodwin. The board of directors has purchased 8 more surrounding acres and plans to build 44 villas, a community center, pool and eventually an assisted living facility. (The nursing home is on hold until the board of directors is more confident of its abilities to tackle the complicated state and federal government requirements.) When everything is finished, Palms of Manasota should have about 275 residents. And even then, they may not be able to accommodate all the people who will want to move there, especially as the community receives more and more publicity. Recently, The Miami Herald profiled the Palms. Newsweek has featured it and Ted Koppel's "Nightline" called to do a story. When the Newsweek story came out last January, the community's Web site received 2,600 hits, and the mailing list expanding from 200 to 600 people including about 40 from overseas. When visitors come calling, they see a development that looks much like any other small and modest retirement community in Florida. No signs at the entrance inform visitors that this is a community for gays and lesbians. And there's no way to tell from the inside, either. (Although one gay Web site quips about Palms that "gay men's decorating habits never die.") The lawns are neatly trimmed to the curb, the houses - costing from $135,000 to $150,000 - are all yellow with red-title roofs and white columns, the garages are out front and the cars parked in the driveway are sensible and mid-sized. The houses surround two ponds, one with a waterfall and the other with a fountain in the middle. Huge live oaks provide shade in places, and the middle of the development has been designated a conservation area and wetland by the Southwest Florida Water Management District (Swifmud) and can never be built on. Goodwin says the community plans to put a gazebo in the center of this pretty natural setting with board-walks meandering throughout. Goodwin says there are not "screamers and yellers here or people running around with very little clothes on," the stereotype the straight world usually sees on TV, he adds. Instead, on a quiet day this spring, only Scott was out in her motorized wheelchair (which she plans to dispense with as soon as her ankle is better). Goodwin, 44 ticks off a list of other residents - ages 44 to 80 - on his fingers. The list includes a retired biochemist, a banker from New York, a doctor from Kentucky, a travel agent, a former Episcopal priest from Indiana, a florist from Pennsylvania, a CPA from Fort Lauderdale, an IBM consultant from Boston and several former teachers and health care professionals including nurses from North Carolina and a chiropractor from Georgia. One resident has his 94-year-old mother living with him, and many of the residents chip in to help care for her. Twenty of the 31 residents live with a partner, and about seven are still active in their careers. Goodwin says residents and prospective buyers like the location. Palms of Manasota is close to I-75 and the cultural life of Tampa and Sarasota. It's also a 45-minute drive to the Tampa International Airport. Fifty-four-year-old Judy Newdom, an IBM consultant and Palms of Manasota's vice president, flies out of Tampa almost every week. She and her partner of 25 years, Valerie Filipski, a computer network supervisor (and now Palms' director of sales and marketing) found Palms of Manasota on the Internet after looking at other retirement communities. At the time, the two were living in Boston and were worried about finding a community that would accept their relationship. Newdom says when they took a tour of Palms of Manasota, two residents walked out to greet them. "We walked into the open arms of two guys," she says. "They walked out and gave us this huge hug. There were four houses at the time and the fifth and sixth were under construction. This is the sixth. We grabbed it within a month." That was almost two years ago. Newdom says she and Filipski moved in years earlier than they had planned. They thought they would rent out the house for five to 10 years. "But it just kept calling to us," Newdom says. Since then Newdom has become active on the board of Palms of Manasota and wants the community to be a model for other alternative lifestyle communities. "We don't want to be one of a kind," she says. Other developers from across the country - in Boston, Canada, New Mexico and San Francisco - are indeed looking at the Palms of Manasota, says Goodwin. Still, the community is experiencing some growing pains. The first phase of development - the 21 single - family homes - was not profitable. "Bill Laing had incredible vision and passion," says Newdom. "But he did not have a solid developer background. Bill wanted to keep prices affordable. The base price for the largest model was $134,900. That was a bargain price." There were cost overruns, too - mistakes that the new board has had to learn from. Today, the board is waiting for approval from Swifmud for its permits and has applied for a line of credit to start building 44 villas, phase 2 of the development. So far, Palmetto - a quiet, old-fashioned town with the good-old-boys flavor of the south - seems to have calmly accepted Palms of Manasota. There have been a few incidents - the lights at the entrance were vandalized and the concrete seahorses at the edge of the pond were knocked over one night - but no one is sure if these pranks were a reaction to the community's alternative lifestyle or just run-of-the-mill vandalism. In many ways, Palms of Manasota is such a pleasant, affordable spot that just about anybody - straight or gay - would be attracted. What would the community do if heterosexuals came knocking? Goodwin knows they can't discriminate against straight seniors, but he's not worried. "I don't think straight people would be comfortable here," he says. Maybe not. But then, not all homosexual seniors would be happy there either. It's definitely an enclave of like-minded people, and for those who value diversity in race, age and culture, Palms of Manasota might be too isolating. Stephen Karpiak, executive director of Pride Senior Network in New York, agrees. While he says Palms of Manasota definitely fills a niche and does it well he doesn't predict most gays and lesbians will flock to their own retirement communities when they gray. "Most people - 87 percent - age in place," he says. "Most of us grow up in heterogeneous environments. Why would we want to move after spending 60 years in that setting?" Still, points out IBM's Newdom, Palms of Manasota is part of a trend that is happening all over the country, with groups such as African-Americans and Jews choosing to establish their own retirement communities. To some degree, she says, gays are like those ethnic groups. For Newdom, Palms of Manasota is also a chance to have something she's never had before. "I've never lived in a place where I knew all my neighbors," she says. "I've lived in places where you can wave, but not in a 'Can-you-come-out-and-play' kind of place, with people who are watching out for one another. Palms of Manasota is more than buildings and housing. It's a community." |