A New Jersey Community Joins Together Again, This Time to Mourn

With its swimming pools and putting greens, reading clubs and bowling leagues, the Ponds retirement community bustles with so many organized activities that some residents view it as a kind of summer camp for their sunset years.

At first glance it is the picture of impersonal suburban conformity: 577 condominium units spread across former farmland just east of the New Jersey Turnpike near Princeton. But at the center of the neighborhood is the Clubhouse, a sprawling building where the development becomes a community.

There, neighbors gather for games of billiards, mah-jongg, poker and bingo, or meetings of 30 clubs that cater to interests ranging from Italian language to fund-raising for education in Israel.

“People here are always doing something, always,” said Robert Lipsit, 77, who moved to the community shortly after it opened in 1995. “Even before the Clubhouse was built, people used to gather together on the street corner to see who wanted to do what the next day. And we’d have 25 or 30 people there every night, outside on the street catching up.”

That tight social web provided some solace on Thursday as residents absorbed the news that 10 of their neighbors had been killed in a bus crash while touring the Andes Mountains in Chile.

Black and purple bunting was draped from the Clubhouse as a symbol of mourning.

The handful of residents who gathered for the afternoon dinner special at Spiro & Andy’s diner clamored for news of when the 50 other neighbors who had gone on the South American trip might be returning.

Later, about 50 residents crowded into the living room at the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe for a memorial service.

And all over the community, neighbors stopped to share hugs, tears and stories of how many friends they had lost and how their absence would be felt.

Mr. Lipsit said he was proud of the community because it somehow seemed to transform the people who lived there.

Most of the residents had moved from New York City, Long Island or North Jersey for the same reason: to be near their children. But once they arrived, he said, they learned to focus on themselves.

Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky of the Chabad Jewish Center knew several of the people who died in Chile and said he had seen a pattern.

“It’s typical when people move to Monroe Township that they start a new life,” he said.

Arthur and Frieda Kovar were remembered as the social butterflies of the community.

Mr. Kovar organized the Chile trip and other international tours for B’nai B’rith, and neighbors said that even though he had retired years ago from his job in pharmaceutical sales, he never lost the salesman’s knack for smooth talk.

That skill made him the perfect co-host at the soirees given by him and his wife, said Phyllis Magier, head of the residents association.

“She loved to entertain,” Ms. Magier said of Frieda Kovar. “She always had people in her house, she was always inviting people for dinner, cooking and socializing.”

Hans Wilhelm Otto Eggers was the neighborhood’s Mr. Fixit. Mr. Eggers, 72, and his wife, Maria, 71, were frequently seen toting one of his toolboxes around the community, because he had a gift for repairing broken appliances, computers or light fixtures.

“He was a very proper gentleman,” said Rita Cherney, who has lived at the Ponds for eight years. “He was very eager to help us.”