Nada Skerly
- 1971
Fellowship Title:
- The Aged in the U.S., Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Asia
Fellowship Year:
- 1971
The Aged in Denmark: Paradise Can Be Lonely
Copenhagen, Denmark May, 1971 Daggi Boucherat shuffles slowly, painfully to the door and opens it with a cheery, English- accented, “Hello, won’t you please come in?” Crippled with arthritis for most of her 72 years, she has lived the last eight in a retirement apartment in the Copenhagen suburb of Gentofte. Over a crystal goblet of Sandman port, the petite Dane, slim and elegant in a tailored, orange wool dress, tells of married life in Great Britain. When her husband died, she decided, as do many fellow aged expatriates, to return home to Denmark to retire. Mrs. Daggi Boucherat It would be foolish not to. This is as close as you can come to retirement paradise. Legislation dating back some 80 years enables pensioners, as they are called here, to live as a privileged elite. Talk with any Danish citizen and he will proudly tell you, “The problem you face with the elderly in the U.S. today is one we solved back in 1891.” The normal retirement age is 67 for men and 62
In the U.S. “Aged” is a Dirty Four-Letter Word
Washington, D.C. April, 1971 At gate four of the “walled city,” a small, white Toyota pauses long enough for the guard to check the bumper identification sticker, glides past flowering plum trees and symmetrical patches of velvety lawn, and eases into a car shelter adjacent to a Spanish-style bungalow. The car and its driver, Mrs. Edith Wilson, 65, are home again in Leisure World. Safely. To the uninitiated, to those under the occupancy age minimum of 52, Leisure World in Laguna Hills, California, is the Cadillac of a burgeoning U.S. phenomenon known as retirement villages. In this one, about 90 auto minutes south of Los Angeles, some 14,000 affluent retirees from around the country have opted for a new life style. They have left behind social and civic pressures of upper-class living and the irritations of noise, pollution, integration and a rising crime rate. In exchange for a lot of cash, they are promised “privacy…security…companionship of people just like you.” The glossy advertisement also glorifies the “freedom to do what you want, when you want