In another thread, Sadie McC commented about the Sun City Life Long Learning club teetering on the edge of extinction (my words, not hers). I know they are in trouble, the pandemic put them on the shelf for the past couple of years and the recovery from it has been challenging. My apologies, but almost everything i write becomes a teachable moment. Those moving to Sun City these days often know virtually nothing about our history. It's always been a pet peeve of mine and while serving on the RCSC board, one of my goals was to incorporate our history into each and every purchase. Silly me. Let's get in the way back machine and visit the late 1970's. Those of you familiar with the Big O Tire company just off the corner of Bell Road and Boswell Blvd know there are two very large multi-floor office buildings across the street from them. What most of you don't know is DEVCO built and owned them and ran senior life long learning classes out of one of them. At one point, they had some 1700 registrants attending classes yearly. No surprise as continuing education has been a staple in senior communities for a very long time. It was just another benefit that contributed to Sun City "new active way of life." This one, all-be-it cerebral. When DEVCO left and opened Sun City West, they stopped subsidizing the classes, the buildings were sold and everything changed. Fast forward to the early 2000's and the board made a decision to re-enter the adult learning game. They set aside an amount of money to buy into the Osher Life Long Learning Program from ASU and schedule classes in Sun City. It was pretty cool, i took several. There was a small fee per class, not at all unusual for this kind of activity in senior communities. Unfortunately shortly after the new gm was hired (or maybe just before?), the roof collapsed over the Sundial swimming pool. She had a problem and her solution was to try and find ways to save money. The Osher program was one of the first things to go. If memory serves me, it was costing the RCSC some 50k to subsidize and it quickly went away. I've had people over the years ask me why i had a problem with the now departed general manager. This was one of those reasons. Her priority's became everyone's priority. As we now know, golf had 25 million dollars shoveled at it, without any vote by anyone. We also know the Osher program never returned. Why pay for it when you can get it for free. Somewhere around 2010, a Sun City resident came up with a plan to start a Life Long Learning Club. Tom was a firebrand with an enormous amount of energy and drive. He started the club, found instructors, wrangled to get space for the classes to be taught and over the years grew the club to a high point of around 250 members. It was the next best thing to the RCSC hiring an outside college to run a program. The good news was it was remarkably inexpensive. For a $20 yearly membership you could take as many courses as you wanted; kind of. Their class signups were on a first come, first served basis and the most interesting classes filled up before late arrivals could get in. Some were very good, some not. Tom died suddenly and the club was left to evolve. Several board members took the reigns and made some very good changes. Their goal was to grow their ranks from the 200-250 cap to my best recollection of well over 300 members. They limited the number of classes people could take so others could sign up. They maintained the $20 fee but the biggest problem was coordinating class room space with the RCSC. Then the pandemic hit and life came to a screeching halt. Two years later, their membership had dwindled, their instructors had aged, some moving away, others losing interest and now they were faced with the challenge of how to move forward. Hence, we are where we are. In trouble. The story is bigger than this though. Over the years i have followed other age restricted communities. In many cases, life long learning in them is much like it was in the late 70's in Sun City. Massive numbers of seniors attending classes. The difference in them is, there is usually a per class fee. Most often it is $10 or $20, but apparently that was never a deterrent. The simple reality is, those communities ran 3 and 4 times the number of classes. They most often weren't a club, but a membership activity subsidized by the organization that oversaw the community. It was a benefit to be had, just like a swimming pool, golf course or a fitness center. In John Meeker's journals left to the museum by his daughter Susie, he lamented when building Sun City they didn't create more activities for women. While that may sound sexist, it wasn't. Clearly women do most of the same things men do, what is lacking is the opportunities for people as they age. Women most often outlive men and when they do, there should still be things to do. Continuing educations is one of those items seniors could and should do late into their 80's and 90's. We tend to overlook our members as they age. Providing options and opportunities for them is critical to keeping them up and moving. I always have resented that when Osher was closed down (for good reason), that we didn't restore it. We were too damned busy shoveling money at all things golf. For Sadie, i suspect if you want to try and restore the Life Long Learning club, there may be no better way to do it than using our amazing history as the catalyst. And to be clear, i'm not talking about small groups of 30 or 40, but entire auditoriums filled with a 1000 attendees. Lots of details to be worked out, but doable for sure.
Another interesting footnote in our history FYI, DEVCO used to yearly schedule a guest lecture series and once the Sundial auditorium was built, they packed them in. Once DEVCO left, it all stopped.
So what you're basically saying Bill, in this thread along, with many others, Sun City is moving backwards! Everything that has made us a great place to live is slowly dying on the vine. They have taken away more things then they have created. Certainly they have created material things such as the facilities at Grand, but it's the intellectual things that we are losing. Losing Life Long Learning goes right along with losing the Members ability to co-govern along with anything else a Member wishes to do must first be approved by the board!!! The Membership that was once "A City of Volunteers" has become a Membership subservient to a feudal system.
I hate the term subservient, but effectively what you are saying is true. All those years of having 20 members sitting in the massive auditorium at Sundial with nary a peep of resistance allowed them to just do as they please. Our history, those first 18 years of unimaginable success was an absolute road map to our continued success. Instead of following it, they allowed the gm to carve out a new direction. The only folks who had the ability to object or stop were the board and for whatever reason, they went along with it. If i were to be cynical, part of it was because so many were golfers and so much of the money was going to golf. Thank god it couldn't be a conflict of interest because "golf wasn't a club."
One of the most appealing features of Sun City which made me want to live here was the Osher ASU program since I loved the university connection and figured it would prevent me from undergoing withdrawal symptoms after leaving the academic life. We lost much when we lost that affiliation and I think a similar one should be pursued, but revisioned. Why not have ASU use us as a training ground for their teachers-to-be or their grad students? We could be helping them while they are helping us. We'd be cultivating intergenerational relationships and that's healthy for all concerned. Additionally, Our Director of Events & Entertainment should be creating and running programs that span interest groups and fill gaps not met by the clubs or which would be too complicated for a club to arrange. We used to have cultural programs at Sun Bowl that cost little but provided an interesting mix: Irish folk dancing and music presented by talented students from our area, local choral groups, some classical groups, etc. Now all we get for the most part are tribute bands. Fun for some, and they pack the Bowl, but other programs which fill the needs of other residents, even if they don't pack the house should still be part of the mix. Chautauqua style programming anyone? Plays in the Park style events? Dinner theatre anyone? You bet! Let drama students try their wings, bring in the local theatre folks for short plays or excerpted performances. We need more of a social director approach to bring people together in innovative ways, not just a booking agent.
I agree Bill! Not a label I'm happy to wear but unless you can identify something...anything that we, as members, can do without having to first go thru and get the blessings from the Board or RSCS, I'm all ears! The only definitive power we have over the Board is if there's a conflict when amending the Bylaws, "the actions of the Members shall prevail," but even with that, we have to jump thru Bylaw hoops to get there...and who gives us the permission to even do that?.....The Board and RCSC of course! I won't be holding my breath waiting for an answer!
I taught for OSHER in another life -- and yes, it's a class act. I've also taken many OSHER/OLLI classes thru ASU. The insider story circa 2010 was there was a lot of conflict between OSHER and ASU because ASU felt the OSHER grant didn't cover ASU's costs. I can also tell you that back in those days ASU wasn't at all interested in "help" with how their staff related to 75-year olds. They had fired all outside contract teachers in their OSHER program during the 2008 recession and replaced them with their younger staff and emeritus profs -- and even after several years of declining enrollments they still refused to adjust. What a disaster they had in several long running classes -- so much so the library host location hired the fired instructors themselves and ran the classes outside the auspices of ASU/OSHER. One of those fired instructors told me he at one time was supposed to teach film at SC but ASU/OSHER broke with SC because the students didn't want to pay for the classes (they expected the RCSC to pay). I don't know if that's the whole story, but it wouldn't be the first time residents expected the RCSC to pay for a club activity.
Thanks for the history lesson IC, by the time the OSHER fallout happened they were long gone from Sun City. When i wrote the piece above, i was trying to remember if there was a charge per class or not. The RCSC might have just picked up the tab which would have accounted for the 50k they claimed they saved when dumping them. I know after they left, RISE just outside of Sun City West saw a huge increase in participation. I think that was on a per class enrollment, although quite reasonable. I don't want to ignore scj's comments above. Community events of all stripes bring people together. It was a tool John Meeker built into the community the day he took over (1965). DEVCO had a policy of non-involvement, Meeker understood they couldn't/wouldn't make it without a little hand-holding. He was willing to spend money to create ownership and buy-in. He didn't focus on one aspect, he was fearless in trying to do more. It was a lesson we should have learned from; we didn't. Every day i post a photo from the Del Webb Sun Cities Museum's collection. Almost every day i get feed back how much people appreciate and enjoy hearing about our amazing history. What i do, it is being generous to call it a pimple on an elephant's ass. In the grand scheme of things, it's just a shade over nothing. That said, within the next year, the RCSC could engage in an educational program centered on our history. There would be no such thing as a bridge too far. We've explored any number of issues Sun City will be facing in the coming years on this website; some go well beyond the RCSC. None go beyond the community as a whole coming together. Everyone who has ever re-invented themselves, came to understand it always starts with the first step. The biggest problem in doing that is thinking everything is just fine the way it is. If that's the case, why bother to change? To evolve? To grow? To begin to solve the challenges we face? The answers to the questions are contained in our history. If only we would look at them. If only indeed.
