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By PENNY FLETCHER
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When Ginger Anzalone was growing up in South Bend, Indiana, she didn’t realize how much her father’s work would influence her life.
But her dad, Dr. John F. Santos, was a pioneer in gerontology way before the phrase “aging well” was invented. While others in his field were advising elders to sit in their rocking chairs, Dr. Santos was working as a gerontologist at the University of Notre Dame figuring out ways to keep people active and healthy long past the expectations of the day. So Ginger was exposed to talk about ways to help elders live a better lifestyle from her early childhood.
As vice president of Vesta Facilities Management of Kings Point in Sun City Center, she initiates and oversees programs at Kings Point’s clubhouses and community centers, keeping track of what the people want to do next and in which events and clubs interest is fading.
Penny Fletcher Photo
GingerAnzalone, vice president of Vesta Facilities Management of Kings Point in Sun City Center, says she acquired her love of making and keeping senior citizens strong and healthy from her father, a noted gerontologist, long before fitness was considered an important component of aging well.
“We have three generations here and their needs and desires are very different,” she told me in an interview last week. “Thirty years ago, you looked like your neighbor, thought like your neighbor and you all liked the same things. It’s entirely different now.”
Trying to continually balance events and activities for the different age groups now living in the Kings Point community, Ginger must blatantly label everything so that people can easily recognize which ones they want to attend. Even the terms used have to be considered, she explained. “One generation refers to cocktail hour while another calls the same type of thing happy hour. The Beach Boys music is fun for one age group but the generation that likes Big Band music doesn’t want to hear it. I have to make sure people clearly understand what’s available to them.”
Keeping track of what new residents want is part of her job, while some crafts and clubs are dying for lack of interest. “The resident base has changed from when it (Kings Point) was built,” she said.
Now 51, Ginger started working for Sun City Center developer Al Hoffman in 1988, beginning at Walden Lake in Plant City and moving to Sun City Center in 1998. Hoffman was the developer of Kings Point until its facilities were sold to residents in 2001 and the Kings Point management company – which Ginger was chosen to manage – was formed.
The mother of three daughters first began proposing senior fitness programs to her company years before they were put in place.
She was simply ahead of her time. Fortunately for residents, by 1998 views had changed and she began initiating the programs that have since grown by leaps and bounds.
Now senior fitness is a huge part of the reason people move to Kings Point.
Ginger is especially proud of the fact that she started with 21 classes, hosting 40,000 annual visits to the facility, and that these have grown to more than 115,000 visits to between 40 and 50 programs a year. Plus the 230 clubs and all the special events held in three clubhouses.
“After three years of running fitness programs (in the main clubhouse) people could see they were working,” she told me. It was at that point that Hoffman put her in charge of developing and designing the South Clubhouse and after that, the Renaissance Club. “New home buyers did not want the same things that previous generations had,” she said. “We had to initiate new programs and activities for them. People will gravitate to where they’re comfortable. It’s like a whole city in here, with diverse tastes, which makes each day a challenge.”
It is obviously a challenge Ginger loves, but definitely not her first- or her most difficult.
After a serious car accident that left her with a broken neck shortly after graduating college, she says she was fortunate enough to have a surgeon who believed movement and activity were the keys to healing.
“If I had had a doctor who told me to sit in a chair and do nothing, I would have been so arthritic I could not have gotten up and walked,” she said. But instead, her doctor had her move every way she possibly could.
“I learned first-hand about the importance fitness, exercise, and a healthy lifestyle,” she said.
This period in her life reminded her of her father’s passion and belief that fitness was a big part of aging well while he was promoting the early studies of gerontology at Notre Dame.
Something clicked, and although she already had a degree in arts and communications, she went back to school and earned degrees in science and wellness and finally a Master’s in Business Administration.
All the while, she was building her own body back to wellness. “In 1985, I went to the Cooper Clinic, to immerse myself in fitness and activity,” she said.
Until our interview, I did not know it Ken Cooper of the Cooper Clinic in Texas who first started what he named “aerobic exercise.”
She started slow, building up to marathon running, and now, triathlons, which consist of swimming, biking and running. “They let me use a snorkel in the swimming competitions because I can’t turn my neck,” she said.
The neck and spinal injuries from her accident do not hold her back.
But not all her energy goes into physical pursuits. She also uses her mind to think up new ways for seniors to be active and healthy.
Just recently she applied to become a member of the Advisory Board of the International Council on Active Aging, along with some well-known heavy hitters in the medical and fitness industries.
“I have submitted my candidacy because I believe I can be of service there,” she said. This would not take her from her duties at Kings Point.
“My vision here is to provide exceptional lifestyles to a constantly evolving community,” she said.
I, for one, certainly hope the ICAA committee in charge of voting on board members can see her sincerity and proven track record and choose her for its board.
*Perhaps you have something you’d like to share. Or maybe you’d rather tell the community about your favorite charity or cause: or sound off about something you think needs change. That’s what “Over Coffee” is about. It really doesn’t matter whether we actually drink any coffee or not (although I probably will). It’s what you have to say that’s important. E-mail me any time and suggest a meeting place. No matter what’s going on, I’m usually available to share just one more cup.
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