Going back to live on a college campus, taking classes, and mixing and mingling with students young enough to be their grandchildren wasn’t originally on Anna and Jeffry Young’s retirement bingo card. Yet that’s their life these days.
The Youngs’ grand plan when they stopped working several years ago had been to eventually move to a life-plan retirement community near their home in Monte Sereno, California; the couple had even put money down to hold spots on waiting lists at two places. Then, while on a 2024 vacation in Arizona, Jeffry, 78, a retired hospital chief of nephrology, and Anna, 74, a former operating-room nurse supervisor, decided to take a tour of Mirabella, an upscale retirement community on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe.
It offered the amenities and continuum of health care options they’d been looking for, along with the benefits of being an ASU student — full access to classes, clubs, facilities and academic, sporting and cultural events, all at their doorstep…