Florida’s Friendliest Hometown

The Villages, Florida promotes itself as Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.  Ruth and I bought our first home here in 2004.  It was a patio villa that we owned for eighteen months.   We bought a ranch home after the villa, sold that after a couple of years, and spend four winters in Palm Springs, California so we could be near our “California kids” during the winter months.

We bought our third Village home in 2014.  We sold that in 2017 when we bought a lot and built our current home.  I think this will be my final landing spot.  Time will tell.

The Villages was started by Harold Swartz. If you Google Swartz, you’ll find something like this.

In the 1960’s Michigan businessman, Harold Swartz sold Florida lots through a mail-order business.  In the early 1970s, Schwartz turned his focus from mail-order land sales to land development. Schwartz, along with business partner Al Tarrson, founded Orange Blossom Gardens, a mobile home park in Central Florida located off of US Highway 27-441. Using land leftover from his mail-order land sales business, Schwartz began selling homes to retirees. Initially, sales were slow, with only about 400 homes being built in the original development.

In 1983, Schwartz, unsatisfied with the progress, bought out Tarrson’s interest in the business and brought in his son, advertising executive, H. Gary Morse, also from Michigan, as a business partner. Together, Schwartz and Morse increased sales at Orange Blossom Gardens exponentially and created interest in the growing community.

In 1992, the name of the development was changed from Orange Blossom Gardens to The Villages.

Today, The Villages has over 150,000 residents.  Some are fulltime.  Some are snowbirds.  They estimate the population to reach over 250,000 by the time they quit building.  That’s big.  The truth of the matter is most people hang out in an area of their choosing.  There are thirteen country clubs, but I frequent five most often.  There are over forty-five executive courses, but I stick to the five or six closest to my home.  There are over a hundred pools, but I go to one or two.  I think that’s true for most “Villagers”.

The Villages Daily Sun is the community’s hometown newspaper.  I subscribe but don’t read it from cover to cover.  I read a few of my favorite sections.  The sports section is the only one I read every day.  There are at least two full pages covering local high school athletics and    Village competitions for us seniors.  There’s golf, softball, pickleball, tennis, volleyball (both sand and water), billiards, and at least a dozen others. There are currently thirty softball teams organized across five levels of play. Heck, The Villages has its own polo team.  There are no senior riders, but there are senior cheerleaders.

The Villages Daily Sun publishes a sixty-four page supplement each Thursday outlining the upcoming week’s events, including the schedules for their over 3,200 clubs.  You can do whatever you want, including nothing.

The nice thing about the paper is you can suspend its delivery whenever you’d like.  I turn it off when I head north for the summer and if I’m going to be away for a couple of days.  I’ve made four three-day trips to Biloxi this winter with my friend Dave.  I suspended the delivery during each trip except the last.  I forgot.  On the second day I was gone, I got a call from my next-door neighbor, Giselle.

Giselle called to tell me that the police had just been to her house to check on me.  The Villages has a neighborhood watch system in place.  The “watchers” drive around the current thirty-eight square miles of The Villages to make sure everything is going well.  When the local “watcher” saw two days’ worth of newspapers in my driveway one evening, he thought something might be wrong, so he called the police.  The police came to my house, and when I didn’t answer the door, they checked with my neighbor to see if she knew anything.  She didn’t, but she did have my phone number, so she gave me a call.  That’s friendly.

It’s comforting to know that I won’t be lying around for days should something happen to me.  Somebody is going to check as long as I keep that paper coming.

And then there’s my experience last Easter Sunday.  I was invited to some friend’s house for dinner.  I’d only been to the house a couple times. I’d been running errands that morning and approached the house from the opposite direction that I normally drive.  I was running a few minutes late and was relieved when I found several cars parked out front.

The entrance to the house looked a bit different, but people are always making changes around here, so I rang the doorbell.  A very attractive lady answered the door and asked if she could help me.  I was confused by her presence and looked into the house to see if I recognized anyone.  The sunlight was pouring in so all I saw was shadows across the room. That’s when I said, “I think I’m at the wrong house.”

And the pretty woman said, “Who are you looking for?”

“Connie.”  Connie and her husband, Dallas, had invited me to dinner.

The woman turned and spoke to one of the shadows who stepped forward.  A second attractive woman appeared.  The first said to the second, “He’s looking for Connie.”

“Connie’s in New York.”

The two attractive women and I exchanged a few more words. I was at the wrong house, but they invited me in for a drink just the same.  “You can stay here with us.”  I declined.

Upon further review, I’ve reconsidered my decision, and if an opportunity such as this should happen again, I’m going to accept the invitation. Who knows where that might lead.  In fact, I’m seriously considering driving through some upscale neighborhoods when the next holiday season rolls around.  I’ll look for a house with several cars parked out front, ring the doorbell, ask for “Connie” and hope that some attractive lady invites me in.

After all, The Villages is Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.