After a long and prestigious career as a gerontologist, helping end the nursing home model of elder care and creating the State Senior Services Division, Madeline Hill began wondering what the ideal senior community might look like — and whether she could build it.

"The main thing is — it wouldn’t look like a senior community," said Hill, 61. "It would look like the rest of town and be part of the town’s life, yet have a rich community life of its own and, above all, residents would have all the power. They would essentially run the place, buy (or sell) their homes, keep their equity and be free to come and go as they please."

It happened. Mountain Meadows Community, now in its seventh year after its first occupants (Hill’s parents) moved in, sits atop a gentle slope at the north end of town, home to 250 people in 65 homes and 160 condominiums, all done in early 20th-century Craftsman-style architecture.

"It exceeded what I planned," said Hill, who lives in a Mountain Meadows condo with her husband, Hunter, a psychologist retired from work at the Veterans Domiciliary in White City. "I set up an aging-in-place community and people embraced it."

As part of the Jackson-Josephine Health Planning Council in the late 1970s, Hill was a pioneer in the concept of aging-in-place — helping seniors remain at home as long as possible, providing additional care (meals on wheels, home nursing, assisted living, in-home services, senior transportation) so they don’t suddenly become unable to take care of themselves and end up in a nursing home.

"We demonstrated more people could be served with less government money by keeping them at home with more services," she said. "It was so successful that the state created the Senior Services Division based on our experiment, called the Oregon Model of Long Term Care."

The state in the early 1980s hired Hill to teach the model to the rest of Oregon and from there, it became the centerpiece on a White House Conference on Aging, from which it spread to most other states.

"Nursing homes as we knew them — just places to put people because they’re old — became a thing of the past. They’re now almost sub-acute hospitals, doing post-operative care and rehab therapy, such as for broken hips."

After that, Hill became Southern Oregon director of the state Senior Services Division and served on the boards of the Ashland Community Hospital, the Ashland Senior Program, the Ashland Association of Retired Persons and the Oregon Gerontological Association and as a member of the Ashland Housing Commission.

By 1989, with her own parents getting older, Hill wanted to create the "ideal senior community," entirely without government money. She found local investors and her 50-50 partner, longtime Ashland builder and former city planning commission member Larry Medinger, then bought 22 acres on pasture (adding eight more later).

On Mountain Meadows she applied her aging-in-place model, so that as younger seniors age, they are met with a gradually more supportive network of in- home meals, visiting nurses, town vans and a fitness center and pool designed for any level of ability.

Residents draw a certain peace of mind from knowing they won’t be "shipped off" away from their community. If they finally can’t make it alone at home, Skylark assisted living center awaits them on the north end of the campus. Trinity Respite Center, which relocated to Mountain Meadows from Trinity Episcopal Church, provides much-needed breaks for any caregiver in the community.

Homes, condos and a cluster of soon-to-be-built rentals are all designed as senior-friendly with faucets, doorknobs and kitchen buttons that are near waist level and easy to turn with the back of the hand or elbow. Wheelchairs can turn in all halls, bathrooms and elevators.

"There are no steps in homes," Hill said. "If you’re in a wheelchair or scooter, you can go anywhere in any floor of any building throughout the campus. It’s all on a hill so, if you have a two-floor condo, you go in the first floor on the downhill side and the second floor on the uphill side. Every obstacle is gone."

"We looked at 15 places in the West and Florida and found nothing like this, where you get to own your home and are free to serve or not serve on committees, as you please," said resident Janet Nelson, 77. "It’s also nice that your investment increases about $53,000 a year."

"We came because of the concept that you live in your own home, are independent and yet you have a lot of community, so if your spouse passes away, you’re not alone," said Lue Anne Cook, 77.

"In California, you just don’t have this, said Bette Noss, 78. "It’s either assisted living or a life-care complex." (Life-care means a residential comprehensive care system with large ‘buy-in’ fee, sometimes exceeding $1 million in California.)

The Owners’ Association has considerable power and, after a search, chose the management company and the food service provider for Mountain Meadows’ new clubhouse, said Lee Bowman, 62, president of the Owners Association.

The owners assess themselves $448 a month single or $568 double for house and yard maintenance, clubhouse membership and 10 clubhouse meals. A dining committee of residents plans meals.

The community has picked up a slew of awards, including Best Small Active Adult Retirement Community in America from the National Council on Senior Housing and 100 Best Master-Planned Communities from Where to Retire Magazine.

Mountain Meadows made local headlines recently when unacceptable — but not health-threatening — levels of copper were found in some of the units’ water pipes. The city and an engineering firm hired by Mountain Meadows are working to resolve the problem. Testing at the site showed that running the water for three minutes once a day flushed the copper out of the pipes.

Mountain Meadows markets most heavily in Northern California, where so many people know of Ashland because of trips to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hill said. The arts, educational opportunities, scenic views, lack of traffic (compared to California), friendly people and sense of safety do much of the selling for Mountain Meadows, she said.

"The social life here is a big plus," said resident Bob Pohl. "You can be busy all the time with concerts, plays and the city band. People recognize you in stores. We paid $330,000 here, less than half of what our home sold for in California, but that’s not the reason we’re here. It’s the totality of it all and the great mix of people."

For Hill, Mountain Meadows is the culmination of a journey that began in childhood, where her family cared for their aged grandparents and a disabled aunt at home.

"My mom drove a school bus for disabled children, and my best friend had cerebral palsy and was in a wheelchair," Hill said. "I got to deeply value disabled people as who they really are inside. As a child welfare worker, I began trying to move handicapped children out of hospitals and to advocate for them being part of society.

"It’s always been my passion to help those who need a little extra hand. That’s what being human is all about."

John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.