Choosing to Age in Community

by Tom Hungerford interviewed by Robert Foote

T WENTY YEARS AGO, SOME visitors arrived at Light Morning community from a group house in a nearby city. They said they wanted to see what life was like in a small, rural community. We gladly obliged. Soon they were hard at work, helping us set the locust posts for a new woodshed.

Mostly they were our own age; in their 20s and 30s. One of them, however, Tom Hungerford, was 60. We wondered what had attracted someone our parents' age to a communal lifestyle. During his many subsequent visits, and more fully after he moved here several years ago, we drew out portions of Tom's remarkable story.

Finally, on the eve of his 79th birthday (in the spring of 1995) Tom and I sat down with a tape recorder and he reminisced about the path that had led him to choose community as a place to both live and age.

He talked about growing up in the then-frontier town of Winslow, Arizona. When Tom was 12, his family moved to California. After finishing school there (with a graduate degree in zoology), he started teaching high school.

Pearl Harbor changed his career plans, however, and he enlisted in the Navy, eventually going ashore as part of the Normandy invasion. Toward the end of the war, he got married. Later, he took a job with a publishing company in Chicago, and had two children.

Then, in the mid 1950s, Tom went through a painful divorce. During this traumatic period in his life, a friend introduced him to the mystical teachings of Edgar Cayce and Joel Goldsmith.

A number of years later, after a lengthy stay in New York City, Tom's interest in Cayce led to his first experiment in communal living. Having been invited to participate in a six-month work/study program at the A.R.E. (the Edgar Cayce foundation in Virginia Beach), Tom moved into community.

Tom Hungerford:The people who were in the work/study program lived and worked at the Marshall's hotel, next to the A.R.E. We did all the work--ran the cafeteria, fixed the rooms, and so forth. In addition to that, we had a meditation together morning and evening and then twice a week we had a Search for God group (a study group based on the Edgar Cayce readings).

Robert Foote: This was your first experience living with other people?

Tom: Yes.

Robert:Were you the oldest person in the program?

Tom: I was. There was one woman who was 50 and another about 45. And I was 60. Then at the other end of it there was a girl who was 18. I was perfectly welcomed by everyone in the work/study program. None of them had any reservations about my age at all.

(There was, however, some initial resistance from the A.R.E. staff. I asked Tom where this resistance came from.)

Tom: They had an idea about an upper age limit of 30 that hadn't been translated to Bob Beauchamp, who was running the program. He wanted as wide a range in age as possible.

Robert: Why was that?

Tom: He just thought it would be a good idea for the younger people to have the experience of a close relationship with older people. And he was pleased that it came out the way it did. Almost everybody in the program had a feeling that it worked well. And I think some of the staff people even relaxed a bit as the program went on.

During a second work/study session, a woman joined us who was a real advocate for modern intentional communities. She started talking to us about the possibility of forming a community, either on the land or in a house someplace

(Nine of them moved into a group house in Virginia Beach, which they called Harmony House.)

Tom: Again, you know, I was the old one. (Laughs.)  The next oldest in the group was 30, and below that they were all in their twenties and teens.

Robert: How did they feel about having someone your age in the house with them?

Tom: The kids didn't mind at all. In fact, they sort of liked it. And we did try to work together and learn together. We were open to whatever somebody brought along, as a matter of discussing it and seeing if we could fit it into the framework we were working in. It was really, I thought, a very, very fine experience.

We all worked around town. We had to support ourselves and get enough money to make the place go. We ate at a communal table once a day. We hired one of the people in the group as a cook. We had only one prepared meal for the day--the evening meal.

I'd never experienced any of that kind of lifestyle. (Laughs.)  We'd have two meetings a week, at night. One meeting was a general house meeting; sort of a business meeting, where we'd thrash out things like whether we were being fair to the cook, giving her enough money. There were a myriad of things like that that needed to be taken care of.

The other meeting was a "share" meeting--arts and crafts, books that people found, tape recordings. That's when we found The Comforter  (later republished under the title The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You ). That had a real impact on us.

Robert: What was that book about?

Tom: It was about dreams. The people on Ata lived their dreams. They woke up in the morning and shared their dreams. Then they worked together during the daytime, and at night they ate communally and they fed one another.

RF: Literally?

Tom: Literally. They said that it had come to them through a waking dreamer who told them that if they would do this (if they would feed one another), they'd never be without food; they'd never lack.

We were so impressed that a couple of times we tried Ata dinners. Boy, I'll tell you, you learn a lot of things from them--what people like, and how you approach them when you're trying to feed them something. It was quite an experience.

(After Harmony House, Tom went to California to care for his mother during the last seven years of her life. When she died, at age 97, Tom was 67. He considered living close to some of his family, "but it just didn't work; there didn't seem to be anything in it for me.")

Tom: During the time I was with my mother, I had taken a month off and visited 10 communities--a couple of communities in Arizona, a couple in Missouri. I visited The Farm in Tennessee.

I wanted to visit Twin Oaks, but you had to pre-arrange your visit. But I ran into issues related to aging again, in terms of the communities. There were only two that were receptive to me, regardless of age. Of course, The Farm people were receptive. They had some older people. Not many. But they were, "Welcome. Come and retire. Come and be with us and work with us." They were wide open.

And here (at Light Morning).  I'd always felt very welcome here. I remember one time that you and Joyce and I took a building apart. We started backwards and took off the top and took it right down to the ground. (Laughs.)  Straightened all the nails. Saved all the lumber. Re-used everything. And I never felt there was any reluctance on anyone's part here related to my age.

Robert: Would the other communities tell you directly that they weren't interested in someone your age, or was that something that came through indirectly?

Tom: Indirectly. Well, you know, I could be misinterpreting that. (Laughs.)  It's possible that they just didn't like me.

(There were, however, a few experiences with age prejudice after moving here, especially with one member of the community. Tom described how he once received some unwanted assistance when several people were lifting a cab onto his pickup truck.)

Tom: He was trying to help me. Actually, it was no help at all. The cab fell on my hand, merely because he wasn't leaving me alone and letting me do my thing and not try to help me.

Robert:He was trying to protect you?

Tom: Yeah. That's it. That's the key.

Robert: Because of your age?

Tom: Well, must be. He doesn't do that with (younger) people. At least I don't think he does. Now I don't mean this in a negative way. I'm very fond of him. But he is one of those individuals who has a tendency to help you when it would be just as well not to....

There are a lot of what you call physical requirements in this kind of life. I know, when the situation is right, you can get assistance (from others). But the general tack is to explore it some yourself.

Robert: This is similar to what we're trying to do with Lauren (age 10)--trying not to have the middle-aged people telling the younger people and the older people so much what to do, or how to do it, or when to do it, or when not to do it, but leaving as much leeway as possible for people to learn from their own experiences.

Tom: And that's essentially aging, too--how Lauren is treated as she grows up. This is a part of her aging process. And how it's treated. It's very different here than it is generally in society. And it shows! The result of it shows. Tremendously.

Robert: In what sort of ways?

Tom: In her resourcefulness; in her interest. It sort of reminds me of my mother. She always wants to help. She always wants to get in and do things with everybody else. It's pretty amazing what she can do.

Robert: Do you think that your being a part of this community has made a difference in her life?

Tom: I hope so. I missed a lot in the early part of my experience with my own kids (because of traveling so much).  I missed being an intimate part of their growing up. So reading to Lauren, having her come up to Snowberry (Tom's cabin)  and wanting to do things with me, and all those things that happen with a younger age--it's just been great to have that all be filled in. Where else could I have got it? I don't know of anyplace else. There's a really good relationship between us. And she doesn't have much of an opportunity to be connected with her grandparents, either.

Robert: When you see yourself in the mirror these days, how does that reflected image correspond to your inner self-image?

Tom: Well, my inner self-image doesn't have an age. It has a feeling rather than an age. And I'm often amazed to know how good the feeling is. A few years back, I was thinking of how some of my friends were getting into their seventies. Now I'm not only in my seventies, but I'm nearing the end of my seventies, and I still feel great most of the time.

For myself, I've kind of given up on what age I'm supposed to be when I pass out of this experience. I'm a lot further on in it than I ever expected to be. And in greater control of my senses and sensibilities and even not too bad on the physical side. So I'm feeling now that it's more important for me to learn to deal with whatever this process of passing is. To be ready for it when it occurs.

Robert: How does one become more ready for death?

Tom: I guess death is one of those things when you don't really know. At least I haven't reached the stage where I really know what happens after death. I've met a lot of people who say they're not afraid to die; they're not afraid of death. But even observing some of the ones who've said they're not, it makes you wonder whether they are (unafraid)  or whether they're just trying to do something with themselves about the experience of it.

Robert: How might living in community affect the process of passing through the death experience with awareness or lucidity?

Tom: Even though we assume that we're pretty busy, we really have a lot of time for the kind of things that you don't have time for when you're out in the (outside)  world. Working with dreams, working with prayer, working with meditation, working together--all of these contribute substantially to this. And to taking the fearful aspect out of it.

Robert:Earlier, when those of us my age were in our 20s and 30s, there was a strong emphasis on home birthing, natural birthing, conscious birthing. I wonder if now, as we near the other end of the aging spectrum, we might grow into the realization that dying isn't something to be closeted away in hospitals and nursing homes. And that a family or a community might want to be involved in these transitions.

Tom: Well, in a community like this, we're family in a real sense. In a greater sense, perhaps, than if you're out in the world. It doesn't have anything to do with you biologically, in the way you were born. It has to do with the way you live together. Consciously or unconsciously, we're contributing to each other in the whole process by being in community and not being plagued by a hundred and one things that would be in our attention if we were living some other way.

Robert: When Lauren was born ten years ago, it wasn't in a hospital setting. The community family gathered to lend energy and awareness, to soften some of the anxiety and pain, to participate in the miracle of birth. Maybe death could be like that, too.

Tom: I think so! And that makes a whole different thing out of it. Many studies of various kinds are leading people toward that kind of a goal for dying.

Robert: You've sometimes talked about the psychological differences between the expressions "aging" and "growing old."

Tom: I would rather have people refer to themselves as "aging" rather than "old." I think it would be a tremendous psychological help. We're aging from the time we're born until we leave the scene. We're aging. And that can be quite a different sort of thing than "growing old."

Joel (Goldsmith)  says that people ought to mature. They shouldn't get old. They should be born and get into their life and work at it and gradually mature. Change and mature. All the time. And that the three greatest drawbacks to that are the clock, the calendar, and birthdays. He said he wished people didn't have birthdays. That they would mature gracefully as long as necessary, without having birthdays.

I was lying in bed the other morning thinking about this and it seemed to me that if you were to approach aging like you approach a good wine, then that would be it. You'd have a vintage year in which you were born. (Laughs.)  And then it would get bottled and pass right on through the years and get better and better and better and better. And as the wine got better, the aging would get better.

Robert Foote lives at Light Morning in Virginia, which he co-founded in 1974. He authored Season of Changes/Ways of Response  and Wax Statues, Cotton Candy, and the Second Coming.  He is grateful for Tom Hungerford's friendship, his strong dreams, and his example of aging gracefully in community.