How an older lesbian uplifted Sun City’s queer community

Susie Broussard first moved to Sun City 20 years ago to care for her mother. As a 40-year old lesbian, she wasn’t much like her neighbors. She was much younger than most of them, and as far as she knew, there weren’t any other gay people in the area. 

But she was comfy: The unincorporated community—built as one of the first “retirement cities” in the nation—had plenty of amenities available, including a serpentine walking pool, various recreation centers, and community programs and clubs for opportunities to meet other people.

After her mother died eight years later, she decided it was time for a change and moved out of the 55-and-over town located just outside of Phoenix. 

But she found herself missing the Sun City lifestyle of active older-aged living. So, when she turned 55—the age people are eligible to buy property in the town—she jumped at the chance.

There was one problem: Even though she had a wife and solid companionship, she missed being around other people like her and her partner.  

For years, Sun City’s sole LGBTQ+ group had kept a low profile—low enough that residents often looked perplexed when hearing there were gays living among them. 

In fact, there were hundreds.

So, she realized that to find friendship and build that community, she would have to do it herself. But there was another reason for bringing the club out-of-the-closet: loneliness. 

While the feeling of loneliness from time to time is an inescapable part of life, too much loneliness and disconnection can be deadly, according to a report published by the U.S. Surgeon General, leading to increased rates of heart disease and strokes. LGBTQ+ older adults are especially at risk, according to the non-profit SAGE.

If Broussard succeeded, there was an ancillary benefit in that she could also help her neighbors survive the loneliness epidemic sweeping the nation, especially among queer Sun Citizens. 

THE HIGH ROAD

Creating an oasis for older LGBTQ+ adults in Sun City—a community inhabited almost exclusively by people who came of age during the height of the AIDS epidemic and decades before marriage equality—wouldn’t be easy. But Broussard said her life to that point had been filled with similar challenges that trained her for this moment. 

Broussard grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was a difficult upbringing, she said, particularly because her father, a loan officer at the local bank, could be cruel and vindictive.

“It was like living with an alcoholic, a violent alcoholic, but he didn't drink,” Broussard said. “We thought he was always mad at us. He came home mad. He's just one of those damaged people.”

Broussard grew up watching her parents transform into kinder, gentler people when visitors dropped by, and the experience taught her about the duality of people and to never trust a book’s cover. But she said it also gave her the tools to be compassionate. 

“I think you end up having more empathy and sympathy for others when you've been a victim,” she said, adding that she had vowed to take a more honorable path in her life. But the higher road had its share of twists and turns. 

Broussard enrolled in a local college where she remembers excelling in her coursework, save for a botany course that still haunts her. After kissing a girl, she confided in a friend. Word got around fast, and eventually the story found its way to her father who cut her off financially and kicked her out of the home. The financial difficulty ended her dream of becoming an architect.

She worked as a gas station attendant briefly, but soon after left for Memphis where she took on an entry-level job at a wholesale tire distribution center. She climbed the ranks and by the time she left for Arizona 14 years later to care for her mother, she managed 600 employees. 

Today, Broussard leverages the marketing, operations, and leadership skills she learned on the job to help serve Sun City’s LGBTQ+ community.

“Everything I do, I try to figure out how to do it better,” Broussard said. “What works, what pays off, what motivates people, what keeps them honest, what keeps them coming back. All of that.”

BUILDING FOR AN ACTIVE LIFESTYLE

Sun City’s builder, Delbert “Del” Eugene Webb, shares a twisted journey in his success.  

Webb was a high school drop-out who traveled the country playing minor-league baseball before becoming a prolific builder. He was responsible for constructing The Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas. He also built Arizona’s internment camp that the U.S. Government used to forcefully imprison Japanese-American families during WWII. 

In 1960, Webb took a turn and made history, when he invested $2 million in a new kind of community. Specifically, a retirement-aged community where school-aged children would only be allowed to visit, and ownership was limited for those who were older and only wanted to work part-time. It would be the first town ever built with retirement in mind, said a 1962 Time article. (Though, Youngtown—located right next door to current Sun City—had been established as a retirement community three years prior with more than 1000 residents, and was the main source of inspiration to create Sun City, according to one historian.)

He called his plans the “Sun Cities,” and their residents Sun Citizens. He built his first one in Arizona about 15 miles Northwest of Phoenix, in a large patch of desert between the New River and Agua Fria River. 

He marketed the town as a way to stay active in retirement and not sit on a porch all day, as he told reporters. 

To persuade retirees to move to a new community, one designed for their unique needs, the company had to sell more than just houses. It had to critique the traditional aging-in-place model and sell what it described in its sales materials as a new “philosophy on retirement” that reimagined this final chapter. 

“Despite the fact that everyone has an endless list of unaccomplished interests, one of the most serious drawbacks to the idea of retirement has been an awareness of how many retirees find themselves living a life of complete boredom within a few months after attaining their freedom,” read a sales brochure. 

In 1960, a staggering 100,000 visitors toured the new community in its opening weekend. While visiting, the prospective homebuyers found small, ranch-style homes and resort-style amenities like swimming pools and bocce courts. Over the next year, Webb sold 1,300 homes and, in doing so, invented a new niche in the real estate market.

He sold 272 houses the first weekend advertising the community. They were priced between $8,750 to $11,600 (or a modern day cost of $89,000 to $119,000 adjusted with inflation) for each home. 

Del Webb created a new way of life that aimed to reduce isolation and boredom associated with retirement by offering endless activity.

“It’s a Way-of-Life that encourages all to be themselves more completely,” reads one of the development’s colorful and verbose brochures. “...with such pleasures as warm friendships, the sharing of the good things of life, the fun of getting together when they feel like it for club meetings, potluck suppers, square dances, picnics, entertainment, and parties.” 

But researchers will explain that activity does not always equate to positive social ties, and loneliness can still come to those who are constantly out and about. And as much as Del Webb may have invented the “retirement community village,” it hasn’t solved for the state’s overall depression problem. About 18% of the state’s total population has had depressive thoughts in 2020, and Phoenix residents were ranked in the top 10 cities of lonely people. There isn't any available research to know if Sun citizens have lower rates of depression. 

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy spent much of 2023 raising the alarm about the many ways in which the ongoing loneliness epidemic is hurting Americans. 

A shortage of meaningful connections, according to a report published by the Surgeon General’s Office, can increase the risk of premature death to levels comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. 

Like all epidemics, some populations are more at risk than others. Older LGBTQ+ adults, which researchers estimate number around 2.7 million people, are twice as likely to live alone as non-LGBTQ+ adults and often experience social isolation and vulnerability as a result, according to a report published by SAGE.

A SNOOZE FEST

When she first moved to Sun City in 2004, Broussard was like many of the early settlers of Youngtown—she found a community with no shortage of activities. 

With a population of nearly 40,000 people, there is no mayor or city council to govern the expansive community. It’s the Sun City Homeowners Association that wields the most power in dictating activities. The governing body, which consists of volunteers, works to preserve home values by enforcing community rules, and oversees the area’s eight golf courses and recreation centers complete with swimming pools, bowling alleys, and indoor mini-golf courses. The town also has an open-air amphitheater and a dog park. 

There are clubs for stain-glass window enthusiasts, handbell ringers, political groups, shuffleboard players, pickleballers, and dancers.

The one thing it didn’t seem to have when Broussard moved back, though, was a thriving club for LGBTQ+ residents. The lack of a visible club seemed to run contrary to Broussard’s understanding of the times, which is that there were more people like her than ever before. 

A Gallup poll last year showed the percentage of U.S. adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual has steadily increased year over year to a new high of 7.1%—double the percentage points from when Gallup first measured it in 2012. 

“There was no existence of LGBT,” Broussard said of the clubs. 

Broussard said she expected that when she moved, and considered the local politics of the area. Donald Trump won Sun City in 2020 by a margin of nearly 16 points, and with more attacks from conservative media on Pride flags, trans kids, LGBTQ+ people serving in the military, and the constant drumbeat of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from local lawmakers, it didn’t shock her that there wasn’t a visible club for the city’s LGBTQ+ population. 

Broussard eventually discovered there was, indeed, a community club for them in Sun City—but it took some searching. Headquartered out of a hard-to-find recreation center, she said the club felt more like a secret and divided clique than an alliance of queer people. 

Broussard’s wife, Lisa Becker, 63, said she remembers the meetings as a “snooze fest,” with unwanted religious undertones. 

To make matters worse, the club broke along gender lines. 

“When I first came, we still had the men sitting on one side and the women on the other,” said Broussard. “And I'm like, ‘What's going on with this LGBT club?’ And they just said, ‘We've kind of just evolved that way.’ 

A CHANGE

During the pandemic, members left the club en masse. The proselytizing, division, and social issues surrounding the pandemic resulted in an exodus: 258 members joined the club when it started in 2017, but by the time Broussard took over in January this year, that number dwindled to just 49.

Persuading people to come back, Broussard said she put a kibosh on religious discussions during official meetings, and urged her members to consider visibility a strength, not a liability. 

“We have to rip the band-aid off. We have to let people know we're here and that they have a place to come,” Broussard said. “The LGBT community lives here. We're pulling them out of the closet, and the more new people that jump in, it seems to have radiated some energy to some of the older people coming back.”

That meant investing in marketing and meeting up at popular locations like the local bowling alley to socialize. In January, the group sponsored the ASU Women’s Basketball team and appeared on the arena’s jumbotron during a home game. 

To bridge the gender divide, Broussard appealed to the group’s competitive side and organized a men versus women trivia game. For the women, she asked questions like Who did Ellen DeGeneres come out to? For the men, she included an equal number of questions about the cult film “The Birdcage.” The gender divide has since disappeared, and the group socializes together now more than ever, Broussard said. 

To ensure more access to events, the club began pairing up those who didn’t feel safe driving to evening events with members willing to give them a ride.

Rob Macauley, 65, said the club is much more integrated and active than when he first joined. Macaulay originally planned to spend his retirement road-tripping around the country, but after the isolation of COVID-19 he decided to move to Sun City and be closer to his family. He learned about the club at a pool party and decided to join.

“I feel like, all of a sudden, instantaneously, I gained 200 friendships,” said Macauley, an insurance agent who relocated to Arizona from Seattle. “I have not met a single person that hasn't been just extremely wonderful to me. ”

When she’s not organizing events, Broussard gives complimentary tours to LGBTQ+ people considering making the move to Sun City from as far as Florida. 

“I'm calling them free LGBT tours, but it's not that it's so much that it's LGBT, it's just an LGBT person doing it; It’s me,” laughed Broussard. “There's a different level of communication and talking about the community and who we are.”

Today, the group has grown to 189 members, according to Broussard. 

“I start looking at all the people around me and realizing it's not just that they've achieved an LGBT balance, they have with everything. There's every skin tone, there's every body type, there's every age, there's every disability,” she said. “What I don't see is anger, hate, or anything else. What I do see is everybody's having a good time. Everybody's being nice to one another.”