3

STELLA ZUK’S STORY

Choosing to Stay

By the fall of 2006, Parkmont had already become a predominantly black neighborhood, and the number of white stayers was dwindling. It was at this time that I met eighty-seven-year-old Stella Zuk, a resident of Parkmont since 1951. We were at Parkmont’s synagogue for Saturday morning Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath), sitting in the large ballroom located on the first floor above the sanctuary. We joined a table where a small group of elderly congregants was seated, snacking on cold cuts for the kiddush meal held on Friday nights and Saturday mornings to sanctify or celebrate Shabbat.

At its peak, the synagogue’s morning kiddush meal provided for many congregants, including a large number of children; so back then, the ritual consisted of a simple snack of grape juice, cakes, and cookies after the morning service. However, with the synagogue’s depleted membership, almost all of whom are elderly, the morning kiddush became more elaborate. Parkmont’s elderly Jews eagerly looked forward to the recently introduced “sit-down lunch” kiddush, an incentive for attendance. In general, elderly members watch their pennies, have limited mobility, and look forward to a meal that they do not have to prepare themselves.

Few people were in attendance on this morning, a fact that was magnified by the setting of the kiddush in the synagogue’s enormous ballroom. This grand space once accommodated hundreds for religious celebrations, bar and bat mitzvahs, Hebrew school functions, and organizational brotherhood and sisterhood meetings, but the small group gathered on this day barely filled one corner of the room.

Rabbi Kaplan introduced me to Stella and her son who, at the time, accompanied her to shul every week. As I broke off a piece of challah, the braided egg bread shared by congregants on Shabbat, the rabbi told me that next week’s Shabbat would be the last in Parkmont’s synagogue. The rabbi and several congregants explained that low membership and poor attendance made it impossible to hold a “minyan,” a prayer service requiring a quorum of ten adults, usually men, at those synagogues that practice Conservative Judaism, such as Parkmont’s.

After fifty-three years, the synagogue would be closing its doors. Soon, a black nondenominational Christian congregation, mostly consisting of congregants who commute in from outside of Parkmont, would be worshiping in the building. This poignant “changing of the guard” was symbolic, a sort of official end to Parkmont’s era as a Jewish neighborhood that also signaled its rebirth as a black community.

Stella Zuk had had an image of what her senior years in her longtime neighborhood would be like, but the reality has been quite different. Stella’s story is her own, but it also illustrates several important themes common to many stayers in Parkmont. Through an in-depth consideration of Stella’s experiences, this chapter furthers an understanding of why white elderly people stay in racially changing neighborhoods by exploring their familial, residential, and lifestyle experiences, how they cope with loss and change, and what they most appreciate about aging in the place where they have spent most of their lives.

A Stayer’s Journey to Parkmont

Stella Zuk invited me to her row house for a taped interview in the summer of 2007. We spent an afternoon together on her patio. Stella has lived alone in her three-bedroom house for the last four months because, as she explained, “Unfortunately, I just lost my husband in March. I’m not a happy camper. All those years.” Stella showed me beautifully framed bar mitzvah and wedding photos of her three sons, all of whom were in their fifties at the time. She also told me that the son whom I had met months before at the synagogue actually lives in the nearby suburbs. She told me that she feels lucky that she can still drive and that her son visits her frequently.

Reflecting their strong preference for independent living, most elderly people in the United States live in conventional housing as opposed to housing situations that are specifically adopted to aid older people, such as assisted, shared, or supported housing or senior citizen communities.1 Like the homes of most stayers, the interior of Stella’s home was meticulously maintained and preserved in what looked to be its original style. The décor was what many younger people today would consider “retro,” but in contrast to the trendy reproductions found in stores today, the furniture in Stella’s home was clearly authentic and old. The rooms were filled with furnishings from the 1950s and 1960s, probably unchanged and unmoved for decades. The main updates were the cable box resting near the flat-screen television and the recent photos of her grandchildren. Stella keeps kosher, so in compliance with Jewish law her kitchen was stocked with Jewish foods and meats. I noticed that unlike many of her black neighbors, Stella’s home had no burglar alarm system and no security doors for protection against intruders. When I asked about this, she told me that she does not feel a need to fortify her home in this kind of neighborhood.

With the dual losses of her husband and the synagogue, a day in Stella’s life now involves waking up at 8:00 or 8:30in the morning and retrieving the newspaper, which is delivered to her home. Then, she said, “I do a little something in the house, or I go shopping. I read. I go to the library. Nothing important.” She told me that she was considering getting involved in some form of volunteer work because, as she said, “Really, I’m home alone too much.”

Immediately after getting married, many stayers lived with their own parents or their in-laws in tight quarters. Eager to start a family and be on their own, these couples were excited when they heard that Parkmont was a new and affordable community. Stella told me that with so many friends moving to Parkmont in the late 1940s and early 1950s, word spread fast that the homes there were ideal for young Jewish families:

When we were first married, my mother had a four-bedroom house, and we weren’t making too much money. We lived with my mother for less than two years, and then everybody we knew seemed to be moving here. It was just being built at the time, so we came here. We liked this house, and we bought it. And we’re here all these years. We bought the house from people who had lived here about two years, so it wasn’t brand new. I had already had one child. After we came here, we had two more boys. If the people here today heard about what we paid, they’d drop dead. We paid $12,500 for the house. Across the street, recently, in the past year, I saw in the paper, $119,000. Of course, I’m sure the house was greatly enhanced.

When I first approached Stella for an interview, I could not help but notice that she felt the need to tell me that she was not an “original,” meaning one of the stayers who were the very first to buy a home in Parkmont. Many stayers felt obligated to disclose this information to me, as if they feared that they would otherwise be misrepresenting their place in Parkmont’s history. I also noticed Stella’s enthusiasm about the rise in Parkmont’s property values. By this time, I was beginning to recognize that many stayers had become keen observers of the way that homes in Parkmont were selling and of the improvements that black residents were making to their properties. Stayers would scour the newspapers and take note of any sales that occurred on their blocks. However, contrary to what one might suspect, the stayers’ interest in home sale prices did not feed a desire to leave Parkmont or “cash out.” In fact, they seemed comforted that local property values were holding up and often told me that the stable home prices served to further validate their decision to remain in Parkmont.

Fortunately for me, Stella was eager to share her memories of Parkmont, drawing a historical timeline. She said that when the stayers first arrived, Parkmont was almost entirely Jewish, but eventually Italian immigrants could be found scattered among the Jews. With the postwar baby boom, the typical household contained a working-class father, a stay-at-home mother, and one, two, or three children. When I asked Stella about “the feel” of Parkmont when she was younger, she almost glowed while recallingit:

It was known as Rabbitville. Get it? A lot of children. There were all young couples having children. It was predominately a Jewish neighborhood. Also, many Italian families. I had an Italian lady here who didn’t speak English, Mrs. Sparelli. And here, I have Jewish neighbors, and the next two houses were Jewish. It was very friendly. The school was excellent. We only had one public school, Lombard, and it was very highly rated. All three of my kids went there. When we moved in, every Friday night, we would go to my mother’s for dinner.

Stella is similar to many stayers in her recollections of the baby boom, the memorable new presence of Italian immigrants, the prestige of the local school, and the important role of family and neighbors in her social life. Back then, community life for a young housewife was vibrant, and parents could send their children to Lombard, confident that they would learn and flourish.

Deciding to Age inPlace

Financial considerations affect the spending and relocation decisions of elderly stayers, but I have argued that aging in place, even in integrating or black neighborhoods, gives white stayers an opportunity to maintain a sense of continuity, comfort, and power. Still, although neighborhoods like Parkmont offer an opportunity for elderly residents to live a manageable and familiar life, challenges continually arise:

I drive, fortunately. Otherwise, I’d really be stuck. I would take the bus occasionally when I was going to the hospital. If you have the bus schedule, it’s very convenient. It takes you right there, and they have an air-conditioned room to wait for the bus. So occasionally, when I had to go there I would use the bus, but otherwise I would drive. There’s only one supermarket here now…. I do use a cane now because I had a very bad fall. And at the time, my husband was in the hospital, and I don’t know if you’re familiar, but the floors, many of the floors there are marble. They’re so shiny that I was terrified to walk on them, so I bought a cane, and it helps a lot. I know a lot of women, the doctor told them to get canes, but they’re so vain, they refuse.

Of course, as the stayers’ narratives in chapter 2 have demonstrated, the loss of a spouse also interferes with the happiness of stayers who are surrounded by a lifetime of memories as they age in place. Stella explained:

Lately, my life has been hard…. My husband was in a nursing home for almost a year, and I used to go there every day. He had strokes, and he couldn’t swallow, so they had to put a gadget in his abdomen. They said it would give nourishment. Just the way you put gas in your car. He would say to me, “I’m hungry. They don’t give me anything to eat here.” It would just kill me. Sometimes, he would say to our children, “Tell Mom to bring me a chicken sandwich or some cookies.” Then sometimes, on a real hot day, you have a cold glass of orange juice or something good and cold, and it’s so good and so refreshing. And he couldn’t have that. He couldn’t have nothing by mouth. It was just terrible to watch.

The pain, loneliness, helplessness, and frustration of caring for her husband was made that much harder by the rapid changes occurring in Parkmont around the same time. Yet Stella’s need for some form of stability to help her manage such challenging times only reinforced her decision to stay. Whereas some might predict that declining health and the death of a spouse would lead an elderly woman toward a greater inclination to move, for some stayers even the most extreme personal stressors are not sufficient motivators to flee. Though Stella admitted that she feels pressured to move by her children, she seems to take pride in successfully realizing her preference to stay. She expressed a general satisfaction with life in Parkmont, though she does get lonely now that most of her old neighbors are gone. Even so, Stella told me that she has not given any serious consideration to making a move:

It was always a quiet, friendly, and convenient neighborhood. What more can you ask? My children don’t like me to be here alone. They want me to sell the house. They’ve been telling me for a long time, even before my husband died. My son went around looking at different retirement places and took me to Shalom House and wanted me to go to Jacob’s Run. I knew Jacob’s Run because a friend from here had lived there for a while until she died. I have one friend at the other end of this block, but otherwise, I have no friends on this block. You know, friends that I can call all the time. But these people are lovely. Everything has changed. Nothing is like it was.

Stella’s main reason for staying in Parkmont is that she wants to hold off on moving into a housing development designed for the elderly:

Personally, I don’t want a retirement community. It’s funny, but I met someone that I knew when I was a kid. He’s walking with a cane. He lives in this neighborhood, but I haven’t run into him in a long time. He said his wife doesn’t want to go to a retirement home because old people are using walkers! It’s not a pleasant ambiance. You want to wait until you really have to. At Shalom House, they only give you dinner and breakfast. And lunch is on your own in your apartment. There are quite a few people there that I know who had belonged to the synagogue. They like it fairly well, some of them. And some didn’t. Some people, you can never please. When I can’t drive, I may have to go to a senior facility, too.

Stella has consciously adapted her lifestyle so that she can continue to live in her home in Parkmont. Even though she has had to endure the deterioration and loss of her husband, she said she prefers life in Parkmont to what she perceives as the far more unpleasant alternative of a retirement community. Although her children pressure her to move and fear for her well-being as an elderly white woman living on her own in a black neighborhood, Stella’s firm understanding of her new black neighbors has allowed her to feel a sense of security and comfort that is difficult for white outsiders to see or comprehend.

Perceptions of White Flight and New Black Neighbors

In many white-flight neighborhoods, race is a subject that is avoided at all costs, especially by Jews who pride themselves on their liberal racial and ethnic tolerance. However, like many stayers, Stella acknowledged the role of racism in Parkmont’s white flight, though she only discussed it in relation to the non-Jews who left:

There were people across the street that were antiblack, and they definitely moved. Not Jewish. They talked about it, how they didn’t want to, you know, live near black people. You wouldn’t hear people say too much “it’s because of the blacks.” It’s not nice. But everybody knew. It so happened they were both firemen, the people who moved out and the blacks who came.

Although many Jewish and non-Jewish “leavers” wanted to move away from Parkmont’s increasingly black population, the elderly stayers had more nuanced perceptions of blacks as a group to begin with, and these views became more sophisticated and sympathetic as black residents became more familiar to them in real life:

I think the blacks just wanted to move up to a better place. They were earning good money, and they wanted to move up to a better neighborhood. Fortunately, my neighbors, they speak good English. They don’t speak, you know, the black slang. They seem to be very refined and very nice. With the exception of one house, I think it’s fairly respectable here. Hopefully, it won’t worsen. You don’t see anybody during the day. Everybody’s working. Very quiet.

In the above account, Stella Zuk described her general perception of her black neighbors. Her assessment of them as decent2 is similar to that of many stayers and closely matches the ways pioneers view themselves. Income, employment, speech patterns, appearance, dress codes, and etiquette are all sources of information that both groups use for making judgments. Although Stella said she has relationships with her black neighbors, many of her perceptions were also based on observing them from a distance. Parkmont is a public place, and residents use their observations on the streets to understand the people who live in the homes that are attached to their own. Like many residents, Stella watches the pioneers as they go about their lives, leaving for and coming from work, and interacting with their partners, children, and extended families. Along with these mundane behaviors, Stella takes great stock in the degree to which pioneers greet her and offer to help her. To the stayers, this information about the roles and statuses of blacks, combined with the place-based fact that “these blacks” were able to move into Parkmont, was all that stayers needed to know to feel a sense of safety and security around their new neighbors.

Indeed, researchers have suggested that individuals’ actions in public places are very much like “performances,”3 and the first black newcomers to Parkmont were quite aware that white stayers were watching them. The pioneers’ demonstrations have succeeded in convincing Stella of their civility and goodwill toward her and their investment in Parkmont’s best interests. To be sure, black pioneers in a largely white community are strangers, but for these stayers, who have taken the time to observe, meet, and better understand the pioneers, black neighbors do not inspire fear and loathing. Thus, despite their age and the social rigidity that is assumed to accompany getting older, stayers’ decisions to remain in Parkmont have evolved into an ability and commitment to judge their new neighbors more accurately.4

As the next two chapters will explain in detail, the neighborhood integration that occurs after white flight provides opportunities for a range of meaningful cross-racial contacts between elderly white stayers and younger black newcomers. However, for some stayers, relationships are less likely to form. Stayers’ desire to appear independent and their visits from adult children who live nearby can function as a buffer that inhibits interracial contact in the neighborhood. Stella explained why she only periodically accepts help from her black neighbors: “My son, the one that lives nearby, always comes over and cleans my snow, cleans around my neighbor’s car. And then one time, we had a lot of snow, and my neighbor’s boyfriend came out and cleared my driveway. I’m a very independent person. I don’t ask for help.”

Yet even Stella, who greatly benefits from her son’s help and who considers herself to be very self-sufficient, needs her black neighbors and routinely benefits from their daily acts of kindness. She was emphatic that Parkmont’s black residents are vigilant and proactive in watching out for stayers in a range of settings, rather than just coming through in emergencies:

After the trash guys take the trash, they just toss the can. There’s a black man who lives in back who always puts mine back where it belongs. One day I forgot to put out my recycling. You have to put everything up front. The guy behind me took mine, and put it out, too. I think that’s going the extra mile. I noticed it, too, when I get on the bus. I don’t do it too often, but when I go on public transportation, black people will jump up and give me a seat. White people don’t do that.

As I will detail in future chapters, stayers’ potential for cross-racial contact is also shaped by the circumstances of the pioneers, especially their busy lives and lack of time for socializing and their eventual black flight from Parkmont. For those stayers who have only recently become needier because of advanced age or loss of a spouse, the time to become acquainted with new pioneers has come and gone. Many of the pioneers who were most involved in community life have left Parkmont, and the newer and less familiar second wave families are the now the most common cohort of black residents:

Now, you hardly see anyone at night. Years ago, in the evening, summer evenings, everybody would come out on the patio and socialize, even at night. I guess they come home from work, and they have things to do. You know, laundry and stuff. You don’t see anybody. I know my immediate neighbors. This is a very long block. I don’t think there are six white families here now. All black. I have very nice neighbors on both sides. We don’t socialize, but I’m fortunate that I have very nice neighbors. This one lives there alone, and she has a boyfriend. She’s an older woman. There’s a young woman, and she has a son who goes to high school. Lovely. Next door is a young woman who’s been here thirty-some years, not a Jewish woman, but she is still one of the old neighbors and she still calls me Mrs. Zuk. [Laughs.] I don’t know the newest people. I only know my immediate neighbors. I don’t know the people across the street even.

Like so many stayers in Parkmont, Stella’s immersion into an elderly life cycle stage that involves aging in place coincided with white flight and the rather sudden change of having daily neighborhood contact with blacks. Given that the living arrangements of the elderly are closely associated with the level of assistance they receive in their homes and communities, it makes sense that Stella’s assessment of the pioneers played a role in her decision to stay. Stella was unfamiliar with the pioneers when they first arrived, and family members, friends, and former neighbors subjected her to negative stereotypes about blacks that encouraged her to fear them and flee. However, Parkmont’s integration provided positive interracial neighboring experiences and welcome assistance. As an elderly woman coping with a myriad of difficulties related to her personal life and daily living, Stella feels grateful for the pioneers’ help and friendship.

Recent Decline: The Strip, Crime, Losing the Synagogue

Many people appreciate living in a neighborhood with a pedestrian-friendly commercial district filled with retail and service establishments. In fact, real estate developers frequently design new master-planned housing developments with mixed-use components, and they market, sell, and promote the residential area’s access to offices, retail, dining, and entertainment.5 However, when neighborhood commerce zones become distressed, the success of nearby residential areas can become threatened.6 This may be especially likely in white-flight neighborhoods, since population change and loss have been shown to negatively affect a community’s commercial life,7 sometimes having a lagged effect that takes time to appear.8 Consequently, many of the original businesses in Parkmont may have failed, in part, because they could not or did not adapt to the tastes of the new black population. When businesses in a neighborhood shopping district have been catering to the locals, instability in the local population presents a major disadvantage to profitability. At the same time, racially biased business decisions, discrimination, and disinvestment also play a role in decline, as local business owners may flee communities that are in transition. The reasons for the downscaling and exodus of local retail and service establishments in white-flight neighborhoods include race-based fears among business owners, the tendency of many business owners to discriminate against black communities when considering location, and the possibility that less desirable businesses may attempt to capitalize on opportunities that emerge as vacancies appear.

Pioneers and stayers agree with researchers that such changes in business districts are a notable cause of concern. Although many stayers sentimentally miss the Jewishness that once dominated Parkmont’s strip, Stella reported that she is more concerned about the fact that the business district is increasingly characterized by transience, low quality, and a lack of order that has negatively affected nearby local institutions, such as the school and library:

Things have changed. The stores are all different. There’s no kosher butcher, and there used to be a deli that was very popular. Now, sometimes it closes at night; Koreans own it. To tell you the truth, I really don’t go in those stores, so I don’t know. They’re all different now. I mean, they’re not Jewish stores, so it’s a whole different ballgame. Antonio’s Restaurant was so popular, and that’s gone. The only thing, the Grapevine, that’s still very popular. Very busy. That’s about the only place today that’s been here over the years and stayed the same. I may run into the ladies’ stores there to see what’s available, and there’s usually isn’t anything for me. I like to go to the library when school is in session. If you go there when school is out, it’s like Grand Central Station. I complained a few times, but it is so noisy. The kids were never told, they were never taught that in the library, people want to read or study, and you have to be quiet. It’s become their baby-sitting spot. Another thing about the library system now, every time you go in there, there are different librarians. At one time, you got to know them, and you were friends with the librarians. But now, every time I go in there, there’s different ones.

Given that so many whites associate black neighborhoods with crime, and so many who fled Parkmont prophesied that it would become a high-crime ghetto, how did stayers assess the crime in Parkmont? Of course, stayers are not as likely as some of the younger blacks in the community to have their fingers on the pulse of the action when it comes to crime. Even so, Stella’s assessment of Parkmont as relatively safe is a reflection of her personal feelings of security, satisfaction, and trust within her longtime neighborhood:

We had very little crime. Maybe now, more so, but I walk to the library, which is only a block away. I feel safe in this neighborhood. Occasionally—well, very often—I’ll accidentally leave my garage door open, and nobody ever touches anything. My neighbor thinks some people play such loud music that she can’t sleep, but I don’t hear it.

Stella, like many Jewish stayers, also described the hard times faced by Parkmont’s synagogue in recent years. She explained to me how her son, a chemist, came to be the cantor there. Typically, a synagogue’s cantor is a specially trained leader whose main job is to lead the congregation in song and prayer. In some synagogues, like Parkmont’s, the cantor is as important in status as the rabbi, acting as a key contact person and a major source of support to congregants. Parkmont’s Jews have been mourning the downsizing and eventual closing of their synagogue, which marked the culmination of years of change. Stella described the reasons that this has been a particularly difficult transition for many stayers:

My son was very active in the synagogue. The past few years he was acting cantor! Every Saturday. We didn’t have a cantor anymore. It’s too expensive. Towards the end, not too many came to services. On Saturday, if we had twenty-five, it was a good one. During the week, on Friday night, at one time they had a minyan there every night and every morning. Recent years, there was a man that lived a couple doors away, Mort. He would always get the minyan together. Then he died, and my husband took over. They had about seven people that were regulars that they could count on, and then my husband would maybe make ten or fifteen calls just to get three more people. We could’ve stayed if they would be able to get minyans and have enough people to come in. We wouldn’t have left. We wouldn’t have closed shop, but all the young ones moved away and the older people, they’re dying, and they don’t go out at night, or they don’t drive at night. So, some of the people are angry. They wanted us to use the money that was left to us and continue, but you can’t.

Because Parkmont’s synagogue received a large monetary gift after one of its members died, many leaders at suburban synagogues were eager to “merge” with the congregation. By the time of the last Shabbat service, a deal was reached, and Parkmont’s synagogue was absorbed by another temple located in a very wealthy nearby Jewish suburb. Still, Stella told me that many of Parkmont’s observant stayers refuse to attend the services at the new synagogue because they say that they do not approve of the “liberal” practices used at this younger, less conservative temple:

Abe Rothman, he comes on Saturday, but his wife refuses because on high holidays the synagogue has a choir, and the people singing are not Jewish. That’s Lorna’s complaint, mainly. I said to her, “Lorna, sometimes even if you don’t want to go, you have to go for your husband’s sake, sometimes.” But she doesn’t want to go to the Orthodox one either. The Orthodox synagogue moved out. They just dedicated the new building last Sunday. So, I said, “Sometimes you have to do something that you’re not too happy with.” I begged her last Tuesday. This week, they had a program for seniors that was to talk about the neighborhood you grew up in, and they had a nice turnout—mostly people from our old synagogue. And I told her, I said, “Why don’t you come?” I said to Abe, “Try to get Lorna to come.” And he says, “You call her.” So I did. She had an appointment that particular day, so that was her excuse. Her husband comes on Saturdays, but she hasn’t set foot. On high holidays we’re gonna have separate services: one with the choir and one without. Our old rabbi will lead the service without.

However, aside from the conflicts about adhering to Jewish traditions, the loss of the local synagogue has presented other challenges, as well. The leaders at the new synagogue promised to provide transportation to and from Parkmont, but so far, many stayers have had a difficult time finding a ride to the suburbs. Additionally, stayers reported that they have struggled in adjusting to the new people and strange environment at this late point in their lives. This is especially distressing, because for many Jewish stayers the synagogue has been the center of their social world and a constant in their lives. Stella explained the practical barriers to continuing her religious practice at the new synagogue and her sense of alienation there:

I go on Saturdays, but I don’t drive at night. It’s difficult. It doesn’t feel like my synagogue. It feels like I’m in a strange place. It’s very beautiful. I’d never, in as many times as I’d been there, I’d never gone into the ladies’ room. This lady said, “Stella, come on in. I want to show you the ladies’ room.” It was magnificent. Beautiful wallpaper and the sinks and everything was just state of the art. But I liked it when the synagogue was here and we could walk there. The new synagogue is very big. It’s overwhelming. It’s magnificent, but I mean, we were members here. We knew everybody. Everybody knew us.

The Problem on the Corner

Although Stella’s home appeared perfectly preserved, and most of the homes and lawns on her block were maintained and attractive, there were some eyesores in Parkmont that would have been visible and offensive to even the most casual observers. The house located two doors down from Stella’s was one of the most blighted I had seen during my fieldwork there. Several rusted appliances, including a large washing machine turned on its side, sat on the patio. A massive tangle of wires and hoses, broken and frayed, hung from the building.

In addition to these markers of physical disorder, social disorder plagued the residents of this once peaceful block. While I sat with Stella, a white male visitor arrived to the blighted house, left, and returned, each time screaming to an upstairs open window for a woman to let him inside. Stella told me that she now avoids going outside and that her neighbor, a pioneer, has become so fed up that she is planning to move away:

We have a problem on the corner. That’s a duplex right there on the corner. See all that junk there? They have that side boarded up, and every board is a different color and a different size. It makes this street look like a shantytown. They’ve had the electricity and the water shut off. They’re renters, and it’s a lot of people. They’re related. The upstairs people are related to the downstairs. And this lady who has not been living here that long—she’s black—and she’s moving out ’cause they’re so loud and so vulgar. She said she never heard such language in her life. She said she’s gonna move from this house. She has a “for sale” sign. I’m not sure where. She’s a very fine lady, very nice. Nice children, too. I don’t really dislike anything about the neighborhood. I’ve no complaints about the neighborhood, except neighbors like that. Our neighbors were respectable, always. These are the only trash.

Almost any observer would be saddened to watch Stella contend with such drastic problems right next door, especially at this stage of her life. Just as disappointing is the fact that incoming black residents have been forced to live with this level of disorder, and possibly crime, after believing that moving to Parkmont would be an escape from these kinds of disturbances. Stella told me that she often speaks with her black neighbors about this house, gathering information and strategizing about what to do. I asked Stella whether this house had always been a nuisance:

Oh, no, no, no! It’s just since late September. I’ve been living here fifty years, and it’s the first time we ever had trouble with a neighbor. We’ve called the police. I have not noticed it, but my neighbor thinks they’re selling drugs ’cause people come there all hours of the night. And she also thinks there’s prostitution going on. She’s seen one of the young ladies came out with nothing on. Outside, in nothing but a towel. My neighbors tell me, too. The blacks tell me. I have not seen or heard the things these people have seen or heard. Like, that a young lady that lives here was servicing men in their trucks, and didn’t get paid. Stuff like that. I have no knowledge of that. And the one day, the man was chasing a young woman up the street and my [pioneer] neighbor, Marla, she called the police. And she said, “Hurry, hurry! He’s gonna kill her.” She was so upset, and she said she saw that he had his hands around her neck. By the time the police came, they disappeared so she doesn’t know what happened.

Many stayers and pioneers have accepted the resegregation of Parkmont, but they have refused to tolerate the emergence of disorderly behaviors and signs of crime. For practical reasons, pioneers and stayers have put aside race and instead blame the problems on the far-reaching shortcomings of a substandard class of people that has recently entered the neighborhood. The stayers’ and pioneers’ estrangement from the second wave and their agreement that these newest residents are the main cause of local disorder leads them to cooperate with each other to deal with such problems. However, such efforts are not always effective. With so few stayers healthy anymore and a decreasing number of pioneers choosing to remain in Parkmont, the longer-term residents’ levels of involvement and vigilance may be insufficient, especially in a black neighborhood where city officials have become unresponsive to residents’ needs. Stella described the frustrations that she and her pioneer neighbors have experienced in reporting the nuisance house to city officials and their own failed initiatives at taking action:

We reported the house to L and I [the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections]. We reported it to everybody we could think of. It takes time. L and I says, “We’ll be there in between five to fifteen days.” We reported it two weeks ago. These ladies have been calling every department. Marla, the neighbor over here, went and rang the bell there [at the blighted house] yesterday. I said, “You’re very brave.” You hear about these people who are dealing drugs—they have guns. I can’t understand. If they’re dealing drugs, why is the water shut off, the electricity is shut off? I can’t understand. My son said maybe they’re not selling enough. We read that when they have these drug busts, they find tons of money. They didn’t have any water, so they hooked onto Marla’s water spigot, so she shut her water off. Then, they came here. I came out one morning and the patio was soaked. The hose, we hadn’t used that hose in ten years! It was not connected. It was laying here. [Laughs.] And they even took the nozzle off and had some kind of a fancy nozzle of their own. They left it here, so I kept it. I said, “It’s evidence that they were here.” I’ve even gotten to jotting down the license plate numbers.

Many researchers are interested in the social forces that bring residents of a community together.9 As described above, in Parkmont the social integration between the stayers and pioneers has created productive forms of neighborhood social participation. Stella further elaborated on the role of social capital in helping her to deal with neighborhood problems:

Only now, since we have this problem do I have my neighbor’s phone number. I don’t even know her last name, but one day I gave her my phone number, and I asked her what hers was…. We exchanged phone numbers. In fact, my son was here last night, and it so happened when we drove up in the back of the house, this lady and that lady were outside, and I said, “Now that I’m here, we can have a meeting!” [Laughs.] And then her boyfriend came, and he and my son were examining the wires that were hanging in the back of the house, and they said, “That’s really dangerous for your house.” And Marla said the electric company has a phone number for hazards, and Marla said that she had it. So, my son called Marla and got the number. Then, he went home and called me back. He says, “Mom, I called the electric company, and I wasn’t satisfied with the woman that I spoke to.” She says, “Oh, why are you worried if they’re stealing electricity?” He said, “It has nothing to do with money. I don’t care about their stealing electricity. I’m concerned about the fire hazard.” So she says, “Well, I’ll let you talk to a supervisor.” So she says, “That’s not a hazard.”

Stella and her neighbors seemed to think that they had hit a dead end. I provided Stella with the telephone number of the civic association president, Sam Wilson, who was still holding his office at the time, although he had already joined the large group of pioneers who had moved away from Parkmont. The next time I visited Stella’s block I observed the status of the nuisance house. Its patio was clear of appliances and debris, and the landlord had replaced the mismatched planks and boards with windows. After asking around, I learned that the disruptive tenants had been evicted.

Conclusion

At the ends of their lives, most elderly people find that their worlds are shrinking and their prospects for independent living are threatened, but for Parkmont’s stayers the introduction of neighborhood racial change provided new, unexpected, and enriching social opportunities, along with challenges. Stayers like Stella appeared to possess little to no animosity toward black neighbors. Much to the contrary, they often relied on black residents for help, social contact, emotional support, neighborhood information, and trouble-shooting when problems would arise. Stayers’ relationships with black residents developed over time, whether these contacts originated at the start of integration because of basic hospitality and sociability or whether such relationships formed at a later point in time out of practicality and need. Because stayers were invested in the community, they took the time to learn about the pioneers as individuals. The process of carefully watching new residents, interacting with them, and reserving judgment has been crucial for stayers’ successful adaptation to white flight.

Although Stella Zuk’s story is representative of the lives of many stayers, she is also a “negative case”10 in some respects. Specifically, her delayed and subdued neighbor interactions with black residents contradict some patterns described in the next chapters. Stayers, such as Stella, who are fortunate enough to have healthy family members who reside in close proximity can be less enmeshed in the immediate community in some respects. Yet even for the stayers who received substantial and frequent help from their adult children, black residents repeatedly materialized as a continued and regular source of assistance, social contact, and problem solving. These findings suggest that, at least while they are healthy, elderly whites who stay in changing neighborhoods have the potential to be leaders in efforts to improve race relations, educate their younger counterparts and peers, and share in community problem solving. In chapter 4, I focus on the cross-racial neighboring between stayers and pioneers that dominates black-white social relations in this white-flight community. These stories provide hope for the prospects of interracial relations in changing neighborhoods and for the ability of people to evolve and adapt over their life course.