When the Army stationed Tom Hessler at Fort Huachuca near Sierra Vista, Ariz., in 1976, he didn’t want to leave. The Army’s subsequent insistence that he needed to — first to Korea, then to New Jersey — sped Hessler to retire on Halloween 1985, with 26 years of service and the rank of colonel. He hurried back to Sierra Vista (his wife and four kids had never left) and is now the city’s mayor. “I have never witnessed a relationship of a local community with a base as I’ve seen here,” he says. Sierra Vista has something else in abundance for Hessler: “Great weather.”

Marine Sgt. Maj. Art Nottingham and his wife retired in Yuma, Ariz., near the Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) where he once served. He, too, locked onto the community-military relationship, Yuma’s small-town ambience, and, yes, the weather.

A good game of golf attracted Jim Anderson, a retired Air Force colonel, and his wife to Green Valley near Tucson in 2001. “It’s really a nice place to play golf and enjoy yourself without paying high prices,” he says. That and the weather: “We do like the dry heat.”

Cost of living was the key factor for Bill Gray, a retired Air Force senior master sergeant also living in Green Valley. He and his wife used the cash from the sale of their home of 10 years in Palm Springs, Calif., to purchase a comparable house in Green Valley with the same standard of living, but no house payments. “A lot of the same things we like about Palm Springs we find here: good golf, low humidity, and a warm climate.”

Scott Phillips, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, and his wife settled in the community of Goodyear, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix, which provided them a major metropolitan area with “all the amenities.” He, too, cited the climate, but more for what Arizona doesn’t have that other states do. “We get an occasional dust storm, but no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no volcanoes, no earthquakes.”

A hot spot

For military retirees, Arizona is hot, both figuratively and literally. To dispense first with the literal heat: yes, it is a dry heat. As for figuratively hot, Arizona’s population growth parallels the state’s popularity growth of 12 percent from 2000 to 2004 (this after a 40 percent growth from 1990 to 2000) compared to a 4.3 percent growth for the whole nation. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the state also has a higher portion of people under 18 (26.6 percent) and people over 65 (13 percent) than the rest of the nation (25.7 percent and 12.4 percent, respectively). Anecdotal evidence of the state’s drawing power for older people is that most communities in the southern half of the state will cite two population figures: one for the summer and another for winter, when snowbirds — retirees still living part-time in colder climates — make their annual migration to Arizona’s time shares and RV campgrounds.

Incredible Views

“People come here for the desert, the dry air, and no mosquitoes,” says Anderson. Truly, the Mojave Desert landscape is a singular sensation on this earth. Vistas of saguaro cacti, their arms upright in perpetual greeting, expand beyond horizons. Buttes and mountains seem to rise from your feet to stellar heights yet appear so close you can count the crags in the cliff peaks. These incredible views are possible only because the air is still relatively free from pollution (except in “The Valley,” where the Phoenix metropolis lies) and the land is sparsely populated, with 45.2 people per square mile in 2000 compared to the national average of 79.6 people per square mile, census figures showed.

“You see different skies every morning and evening,” Anderson says describing the view from his home in Green Valley. “The only drawback is that you’re not near the ocean. Anybody who likes water and sea, this is not for them.”

Not so for Nottingham over in Yuma. “I got a boat when I retired here,” he says, fishing as often as he can in Mitry Lake, the Colorado River, and San Diego, which is only 185 miles west of his home.

Not all is desert in Arizona. The northwest quarter of the state, anchored by Flagstaff, gets chilly even in June. Arguably the most stunning landscape in the world, the Grand Canyon carves through the northwest corner of the state, and throughout Arizona you’ll find many impressive — if not quite so grand — canyons. Even some of the southern desert mountains, called “sky islands,” are richly forested. In winter, Tucson residents load up their cars on 70 degree mornings, drive up 9,157-foot Mount Lemmon for a day of snow skiing, and get home by nightfall.

Retiree perks

Though the geography is stunning, there is more that attracts retirees: communities that cater to their social needs, nearby medical facilities, a low cost of living, and affordable housing. In Coldwell Banker’s Annual Home Price Comparison Index for 2005, the average price of a home was $250,833 in Tucson, $293,334 in Phoenix, and $478,833 in Scottsdale. Compare these to California cities in the index, such as Sacramento, Calif. ($517,975); Santa Maria, Calif. ($605,350); and San Diego ($627,938), and other military-retiree-centric communities, such as Colorado Springs, Colo. ($211,667); San Antonio ($219,075); Pensacola, Fla. ($222,258); and Tampa, Fla. ($320,781).

One of the Southwest’s best-known prototypical retirement communities is Lake Havasu City, Ariz., known as the resting place of the old London Bridge, on the Colorado River 150 miles south of Las Vegas. “Lake Havasu City doesn’t have a military post, but it’s a strong retirement area, including for veterans,” says Luella Emmons, assistant deputy director of the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services, noting that Mohave County, which includes Lake Havasu, has about 27,000 of the state’s 600,000 veterans. In 2000, according to an Arizona Department of Commerce study, more than 40 percent of the county’s 155,032 residents were retirees — well above the 19.7 percent statewide average.

Military connection

For those military retirees looking to settle in proximity to a military installation, Arizona offers four distinct choices: the Army’s Fort Huachuca in the southeast corner, MCAS Yuma in the southwest corner, Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, and Luke AFB in Phoenix. All have medical clinics with pharmacies, and hospitals specializing in geriatric care are the norm in all four communities. All have commissaries and exchanges, including Luke’s K5-Superstore commissary (the largest classification in the Defense Commissary Agency) and Davis-Monthan’s 123,000-square-foot BX mall, one of the largest of all of the Army and Air Force Exchange Services’ facilities. MCAS Yuma offers a retired activities office staffed by volunteer military retirees that serves as a liaison among retirees, the installation, and other military agencies.

Fort Huachuca, 75 miles from Tucson, offers Old West history. The fort itself was founded in the 1880s and was home to the Buffalo Soldiers and the preserved cowboy towns of Tombstone and Bisbee. Community support of the post includes the city’s Joint Services Club, comprising 57 community service organizations, which has a military subgroup that includes local MOAA and VFW chapters.

Sitting beside Interstate 5 halfway between San Diego and Phoenix, MCAS Yuma is surrounded by the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range and Yuma Proving Ground. Yuma has an out-in-the-middle-of-the-desert character. Nottingham estimates that about one third of Yuma’s population of 100,000 is retired military.

Tucson is one of the West’s most cosmopolitan cities, a university town, a high-tech center, and an arts community. About 21,000 military retirees and military widows live in the community. “We do miss some of the cultural services in Irvine [Calif.],” says Anderson, whose Green Valley home is 25 minutes from Tucson International Airport and 30 minutes from the base. “But with the University of Arizona [nearby] you get most of what you need,” and the many Native American casinos in the area supplement the cultural arts with pop entertainment.

The Valley is a collection of eclectic communities ranging from the college town Tempe and the faux west Scottsdale to the urban state capital Phoenix and the retirement-centric Goodyear, Sun City, and Surprise. “There are at least 10, maybe more, [retirement] communities here,” says Col. Jerry Wojtas, USA-Ret., president of the Luke Chapter of MOAA. “They all do a great job, and they all have different amenities.”

When Wojtas and his wife decided to retire in 1998 and leave their San Francisco Bay Area home, they paid weeklong visits to military installations throughout California and Arizona, and in Las Vegas and San Antonio, looking for just the right place to spend the rest of their lives. They settled on, and in, Surprise, where the primary industries are hosting baseball spring training camps and serving retirees. And in doing so, they’ve joined the growing ranks of military retirees who now call Arizona home.