Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here
Otherwise, follow the link below to join.
To Our Valued Readers –
Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.
For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.
Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.
Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.
Need to set up your free e-Newspaper all-access account? click here.
Non-subscribers
Click here to see your options for becoming a subscriber.
Register to comment
Click here create a free account for posting comments.
Note that free accounts do not include access to premium content on this site.
I am anchor
Neighbors
Group tours Sun Cities museum
Friendship Force absorbs history
Posted
Del Webb Sun Cities Museum 10801 W. Oakmont Drive Sun City, AZ
View larger map
A group from Milwaukee, Wisconsin soaked up area history Feb. 19 with a visit to the Del Webb Sun Cities Museum, 10801 W. Oakmont Drive.
The Friendship Force International group, along with their local hosts from Sun City and neighboring areas, had the museum stop as their second activity on their itinerary for a week’s stay exploring Sun City, Phoenix and other areas and attractions in the west Valley.
The local chapter of FFI coordinated the plan for the week and selected the museum as a way to introduce their new Milwaukee friends to active retirement and its origins in Sun City and Sun City West. Five volunteer docents were on hand to organize, guide, explain, educate and answer questions from the visitors.
After the 90-minute tour, the group gathered outside for a picture and to express their gratitude to their museum hosts. A sample of comments heard included, “Just awesome! I had no clue! I loved the stories about Marinette, the Sun City Pom Poms and spring training for Milwaukee Brewers baseball.”
After the museum, the group went to Sundial Center, 14801 N. 103rd Ave., for a quick lesson on how to play bocce and then engaged in some spirited competition under the watchful eye of other local volunteers. They hiked across the Sundial parking lot to Church of the Palms, 14808 N. Boswell Blvd., to enjoy a western dinner featuring cowboy stew. Sun City historian Ben Roloff from the museum’s Speakers Bureau entertained with interesting, and often amusing, stories of inventing active retirement in the Sun Cities.
Friendship Force is an international organization that connects people from different areas of the country and from around the world on a personal basis, when local hosts open their homes to visitors from other states and countries. For instance, Milwaukee is one of 105 Friendship Force clubs in the United States and were hosted by the Friendship Force of Central Arizona that has many of its members living in Sun City and Sun City West. Nancy Mueller, local coordinator and Sun City resident, noted that planning for the next group of visitors is underway for a November visit from an FFI group from Japan.
Call Mueller at 608-838-3575.
Editor’s Note: We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
