It was the snow that finally convinced Nancy Pfund it was time to move.
She had lived in Montauk since the late 1950s. One winter about a decade ago, widowed and in her 80s, she headed outside and began shoveling. The next morning, she woke up to find the wind had whipped all the snow back into place. "I did it again," she recalled, "and I thought, this yard business is getting too much."
A retirement community was on her mind. Ultimately Mrs. Pfund took her younger son up on his suggestion to leave Long Island and move near him and his family in Charlottesville, Va. She has spent the past eight years living in a community there called The Colonnades. Now 92, she lives independently in her own apartment and has access to a host of amenities from sewing classes to a community garden to lectures and trips to the theater.
Mrs. Pfund is one of a growing number of older Americans who live in senior-living communities. Demand is far higher than supply, and costs are generally high. But there are many advantages to such accommodation: a recent report from NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonprofit research organization, concluded that "senior housing's preventative approach to care contributes to increased quality of life for residents and reduced healthcare costs over time." Still, making such a move requires some adjustment.
Nancy Pfund says that having members of her family nearby helped her adapt to life in her continuing care retirement community. This type of housing offers different levels of living, from independent settings or assisted living to memory care and skilled nursing, all on site. Mrs. Pfund is also a pragmatist, which helps. She loves Montauk, where she arrived as a young bride, and where she raised her family. Still, she says life is seasonal. "You have to look to the future and appreciate the past," she said. "I didn't want to be a burden to my family. I wanted to be as independent as I could possibly be, and I knew that I would need help."
She got that help one day last year when she was about to take the community's private bus to an appointment. She felt fine, but the bus driver took one look at her and dashed into the building to get a member of the staff. That person told Mrs. Pfund they needed to get her to a hospital right away. The driver had noticed one side of her mouth drooping — and it turned out she had suffered a small stroke. "Isn't that amazing?" she said of the driver’s quick instincts. "They just take care of you."
Montauk still takes care of her, too. She attends her longtime church, the Montauk Community Church, weekly over Zoom. It brings her great comfort. "It's a wonderful church," she said. "I still see the parishioners and my friends in there. . . . I get to hear about the local citizens of Montauk [during the service], and that's precious to me."
Adjusting to a move is not easy for everyone. In 2022 Tony Newman and his husband, Dick Huebner, moved from Water Mill to Peconic Landing, the continuing care retirement community in Greenport. Mr. Huebner was 90 and having health issues. It felt like the right time to give up a much-loved house and a yard that had gone from being a delight to something approaching drudgery. But Mr. Newman says Dick, who died last year, found the transition tough.
"He didn't cotton to it quite as quickly as I did," he said. They had a lot of friends on the South Fork; Dick missed them, and it wasn't as easy to see them now that they were in Greenport. Mr. Newman himself, who is 83, says he's glad to be where he is. He is grateful for his friendly next-door neighbors and the kind staff, even if he does miss the outdoor shower at his former home ("It was terrific!") and its large, screened-in porch. Not that his current accommodations lack refinement. He lives in an elegant two-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of one of Peconic Landing's apartment blocks, with a view of the Long Island Sound sparkling in the distance. The sprawling campus covers 144 acres.
"It's a welcoming place, but it's a different place," said Mr. Newman of his new home. He and Mr. Huebner spent decades living in New York City, where apartment living is often anonymous — unlike life at Peconic Landing. "It's not like you're moving into an apartment and you're on your own," he says. "There's very much a sense of community about this place, which takes some getting used to." Saying hello in the corridor is the norm; scuttling into your apartment is not.
Peconic Landing's chief executive officer, Bob Syron, says when new residents arrive, a volunteer committee of established residents supports them and helps them settle in. He's been at Peconic Landing for 22 years and says much has changed during that time, because older people themselves have changed: they're healthier and more active.
"We used to have a small gym here," he said. "We built a larger one. We've already outgrown it. We're going to build a larger one again." Mr. Syron had chatted the previous evening with one of the community's centenarians, a man who's a regular gym-goer. Menus full of pot roasts and meatloaf have changed over the years to include "all different types of healthy eating choices," he says. The community even employs a vegan chef.
Doris Stratmann appreciates the focus on health and wellness, and not just when it comes to cuisine. She wants to stay social. It's one of the reasons she decided to move from her townhouse in Riverhead to Peconic Landing three years ago. As a widow living alone, she worried about becoming isolated if her health went downhill.
Now settled in a two-bedroom apartment, she misses the large kitchen of her former home, where she loved to cook. But she's delighted with the opportunities her new one offers to stay sharp and connected to others. She says she has developed new interests "that have helped my mental agility. That's very important to me. So learning new games like mah-jongg, chess, and struggling to play bridge. I enjoy challenging myself mentally," she said.
And while some balk at the idea of living in a community "full of old people," even when they fit the demographic, Mrs. Stratmann isn't among them. For one thing, she says, many of the staff at Peconic Landing are young. "We have a nice relationship with them. We get to know them and they get to know us," she said. A former college administrator, she enjoys these conversations.
She has friends here who are younger than she, and a 99-year-old friend with whom she plays bridge each week. She sees her children and grandchildren regularly. "Age doesn't loom large in my relationships," she said.
Nor is she squeamish about what comes next. "I think you have to be prepared to face the fact that we're all here and there's going to be an end," she said. In a community like this one, "there's an acceptance of the reality of the life cycle."
No one thinks they're going to live forever, and so they enjoy the life they have.