Single Women Making Earlier Retirement Plans

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30936, 17 December 1965, Page 2

Single Women Making Earlier Retirement Plans

More single American women are beginning to take notice of sociologists’ advice and are making earlier plans for retirement. Professor LeVelle Wood, who retired recently from a top job at Ohio State University, bought an apartment in a block for retired people 10 years ago.

“Willamette View Manor was only in the construction stage then, and as a founder I bought my apartment for much less than I would have to pay now,” she said in Christchurch yesterday. After an extensive world tour. Miss Wood is looking forward to “settling down” in her own home among old friends. Situated in suburban Portland, Oregon, 100 miles from where she was born, the manor overlooks the picturesque Willamette fiver, which flows lazily through the heart of the western city. “Many of my girlhood friends are already at Willamette and I know many other people around Portland,” she said. Willamette comprises three blocks. One accommodates 300, the other 200 and the third is an accredited hospital. Plot For Flowers “I bought the biggest apartment available for a single person. I have not seen it yet and I don’t know whether I’ll be on the first or sixth floor. But it will have two bedrooms, a living-room, kitchen and bathroom. And everyone has a little plot for growing flowers,” she said. Among the furniture she will take with her from Ohio, will be an old family bed of cherrywood (42 inches wide by 72 inches) which her greatgrandfather carted with him in a waggon across the Oregon trail before 1850. She will also take with her accessories from her earlier travels, such as coffee tables, antiques and a carved screen from India.

For a monthly service fee ranging from about 100 dollars, depending on how early the residents bought their apartment, most of their needs are covered. These include meals served in a central dining-room, general utilities (water and electricity), maid service, room and personal laundry and nursing care.

“Retirement homes are springing up throughout the United States,” she said. “Some are cottage blocks; others are condominiums — apartments in blocks covering the area of a small village.” Willamette View Manor was started by a Methodist group and is now a corporation.

“It was a new idea when it was built and no-one knew if it would take on. But this type of home has now become very popular,” she said. It has community lounges, a library, television rooms, a beauty shop, a pharmacy, sun decks, recreation rooms and assembly hall for church services, films and dances. Miss Wood has been professor of the Division of Institution Management at the School of Home Economics. Ohio State University, for 19 years. She is a past-president of the American Dietetic Association.

For several years she has been academic adviser to international students studying home economics at the university. Among her students have been Miss Margaret Till, dietitian-in-chief at Princess Margaret Hospital, and Miss Judith King, formerly of Christchurch. Miss Wood has kept in touch with most of them and

has visited many of them in various countries in Europe and the East on her present tour. “In Izmir, Turkey, I stayed for two days at the home of a girl who is now studying at Ohio State University. Neither of the parents could speak English and I don’t know any Turkish, but we got on fine with the help of a dictionary and a schoolgirl, who used to come in and help us as an interpreter,” she said. Miss Wood is a woman with plenty of initiative and resources. When she joined the faculty of Kansas State College in 1928 to open its Department of Institution Management, there was no textbook available for the courses so she and Bessie Brooks

West wrote one. “Food Service in Institutions” is about to be issued in its fourth edition. Since 1938 it has been a basic textbook in many countries. Even trainee-dietitians in New Zealand are broken in on “West and Wood.”