Jerry Carter runs the workout room at the Armed Forces Retirement Home.
It's a huge and impressive facility, with all the free weights and strength and cardio machines any gym manager could want.
But at least one thing separates Carter's workplace from a typical gym: The average age of residents at the Retirement Home is 83, Carter [...]

Alvado Campbell spent the afternoon in the puzzle room at the Armed Forces Retirement Home.
He spends a lot of afternoons there. Evenings, too.
"Puzzles are a habit of mine," he says.
Campbell, is a 78-year old Korean War vet. He's a DC native, and moved from over by RFK Stadium in Southeast to AFRH a year ago.
Campbell's [...]

Evelyn Y. Davis wants to go to Petworth, she just doesn't want to go now.
Just across the street from the U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery sits Rock Creek Cemetery, an equally beautiful resting place for civilians. It's on the grounds of the oldest church in DC, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and bodies [...]

“We’re losing a World War II veteran or two every week,” a resident of the Armed Forces Retirement Home told me this morning.
But if that’s true, the dead aren’t being buried across the street. That’s where the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery sits. (The name of the residence changed, the affiliated cemetery's didn't.)
The [...]

Abe Lincoln hasn't been this hot since his body went cold.
Lincoln turned 200 this month. The new president idolizes him. Heck, his memorial just hosted one of the biggest rock concerts in U.S. history.
A crowd of kids from Hearst Elementary were among those making the pilgrimage today to Lincoln’s summer cottage in Petworth, the newly [...]

Joseph Doyle volunteers most days at the Scott Library at the Armed Forces Retirement Home, where he lives.
He loves the quality of life there, in no small part because of the library.
"I bet it's the only library in Washington, DC, that's open 24 hours a day and 365 days a year," says Doyle, 76. "I [...]

Robert Stone runs the wood shop at the Armed Forces Retirement Home with his pal, fellow tenant and fellow Navy man Jim Webster.
"This place keeps me going," says Stone, who's lived at AFRH for two years. "I'm not well. I've been through the cancer."
I tell him he looks fine and fit, and mean it.
"My insides [...]

Among the perks available to residents of the Armed Forces Retirement Home: beer machines.
In the canteen, at the golf course and at various spots in hallways throughout the compound, you'll find vending machines that dispense cold beer.
Any time, day or night, folks with a thirst and some spare change can grab a Miller, Miller Lite, [...]

Frank McCabe says his life at the Armed Forces Retirement Home is pretty regimented.
"Get up at 6, do PT til 7 o'clock, eat breakfast and hit the golf course," says McCabe.
Yes, there's a golf course inside the huge fenced-in government complex in Petworth.
A nine-hole, 2517-yard par 35 jobber, in fact. Access is free to residents, [...]