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 says.

So something called Osteo-balls, which are basically beach balls with handles and are designed to improve flexibility, are a much hotter attraction than the 50-pound dumbells.

On an average day, the gym is most crowded during the morning Osteo-ball class.

He loves the work.

"I've got a theory: Just keep them in motion," Carter says. "When I see people move in here, and see their attitude and the whole mental part change from coming [to the gym], see them start doing things they thought they couldn't do, start to want to ride bicycles here and get outside to ride bicycles, that gets me going. And I see it all the time."

Because of the demographic of his customer base, Carter has to look after his patrons a lot closer than most guys who run gyms. He's trained in several forms of lifesaving, he says.

Just in case.

"If they fall, we're ready," he says.

Nobody's died in the gym during Carter's five years of managing it.

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 daily routine ends with him working on puzzles till his 10:30 bedtime.

He's now working on a 1000-piece farm scene that will take "7 to 10 days" to complete. He started putting the pieces together last night, after watching Fred Astaire in "Daddy Long Legs" in the Retirement Home's theater.

"That was a good movie," he says. "Then I came here."

Campbell says that he's amazed how many activities are available to residents. He would have gone to the golf course on the complex today, he says, but was worried that yesterday's rains would mean no carts could be used.

So he did puzzles instead.

As he heads off to the Retirement Home cafeteria for Thursday's dinner, hoping salmon cakes are on the menu, Campbell tells me he'll return to the puzzle room later tonight.

Again, that's his routine.

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 have been buried here since 1719.

Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Longworth, Constitution signer Abraham Baldwin and "Meet the Press" icon Tim Russert are among the assembled dead.

And, again, it's a beautiful place to visit.

Seeing the burial plot for Davis is alone worth the trip.

She’s a DC resident who has gained international fame after decades of playing the gadfly role at stockholders meetings.

One more thing about Davis: She's very much alive.

But she set up a fabulous monument to herself years ago, and pretty much engraved her life story on the many stones that make up the place. Why let others write your epitaph?

She's had to change the etched-in-stone bio over time, to take into account job changes and add in a divorce or two.

I once called up Davis to ask about the fabulous plot, but she didn't want to talk about it for a couple reasons. She said it was “her busy stockholder meeting season. And besides, she added, "Everybody already knows about that."

That second statement ain't true at all, but in all my years of asking questions, that’s the best non-answer I've ever gotten.

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 Petworth cemetery has been accepting bodies of military dead since August of 1861, three years before the more famous Arlington Cemetery opened for business.

And after all these years, the soldiers’ cemetery on Rock Creek Church and Harewood Rds NW is almost filled up: 14,420 bodies have been placed in 13,893 graves, according to cemetery records. (Families and couples occasionally pile onto each other in the same plot.)

“We’ve only got 121 slots left,” says Dr. David Moshier, the caretaker of the cemetery.

Because of the space limitations, since 1996, only current and former AFRH residents are accepted for burial.

Yet, the remaining spaces are hardly going fast, says Moshier, who lives on the grounds.

There were no burials here today, and only one in the past two weeks: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. (retired) George Richer, a 95-year old tenant of AFRH, was the cemetery’s most recent acquisition.

There was no landscaping scheduled today, either. And, because most of the dead are at this National Cemetery are long, long dead, on most days folks don’t come by to lay flowers on any gravesites or mull over lost love or days gone by or whatever folks at cemeteries mull over.

I hung out at the cemetery for an hour, and no visitors came by. Only one car even came in through the front gate, but quickly turned right around and left.

Moshier says the only big day at the cemetery any more is Memorial Day. That’s because Maj. General John Logan, the Civil War hero and former federal legislator who gave us Decoration Day and formalized Memorial Day celebrations in this country – and who is the man behind Logan Circle — is buried here with his family.

Every Memorial Day, Logan’s fans hold a small service at his gravesite. As these sites go, it’s quite a sight: The Logans get the only mausoleum on the grounds. I’ve lived in apartments much smaller than their burial housing, truth be told.

But, nobody stopped by to see Logan’s death digs during my visit.

So what’s an average day like at this cemetery, I ask Moshier: “The squirrels would make their rounds, maybe the raccoon would make a run at the garbage can,” he says. “I could go for a day here where even the phone is reasonably quiet.”

You want your cemeteries to be quiet, especially if you live on the grounds. But Moshier is a bit sad that his workplace doesn’t get more attention.

“It’s beautiful here,” he says. “I call this cemetery the best kept secret in Washington.”

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 restored residence on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

“I need a nice, Lincoln-like smile from all of you!” shouts William Rope, a third-grade teacher at Hearst and the main adult chaperone on the field trip.

Rope has lined up his class in front of a statue of Lincoln in the rear of the cottage for a photo op, but he’s having trouble getting his pupils to follow orders.

Two-thirds of the kids smile, as per instructions.

The rest do various unauthorized, third-gradey things, like make goofy faces and poke each other in the arm.

Rope finally has reached the end of his, well, you know. And the teacher decides, as Lincoln would have, that for the good of the whole, some individuals must suffer: The teacher loudly tosses one of the funny facemakers out of the group.

The punishment gets everybody else’s attention, and the frazzled teacher snaps the group-minus-one photo and lets the kids disperse.

After a few second to let Rope defrazzle, I ask him if his students realize how in vogue all things Lincoln are right now.

“No,” he says. “I don't know that they know that he's in the news now. But if you ask them what he did during the Civil War, they know that. They’ve been taught that.”

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 even worked on Thanksgiving."

Along with the hours, Doyle is quite proud of the Scott Library's unofficial mascot, a massive goldfishy-looking fish that swims alone in a tank near the main entrance.

"Watch this: He knows tricks!" Doyle tells me.

He then runs his index finger along the front pane of the tank, and the goldfishy-looking fish ("He doesn't have a name, far as I know," says Doyle) puts his nose against the glass and follows Doyle's finger wherever it goes.

I tell him I'd never seen a fish do a trick.

"Oh, he's just hungry," Doyle says, modestly. "He thinks I'm gonna feed him. That's all."

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 are terrible," he says.

If the shop really does keep him going, he returns the favor. From 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Stone and Webster can be found on the basement level of the complex drilling, lathing, carving and otherwise cutting wood.

Stone fashions tabletop art out of bark for kicks, whittles elaborate walking sticks out of branches, and takes requests from residents and management of the Home to repair old woodworking.

Today, Stone is making a new scrapbook for "an old guy" upstairs.

The wooden binder the old guy has been using for decades to hold his clippings sits on a table in the shop, falling apart. But Stone is on the case, and by the end of the week, the old guy's prized papers — among them photos of a family dog, Thurgood Marshall and Oprah Winfrey – will be protected again.

Webster is doing a good deed of his own, too. He's building a small picture frame for a resident.

As much as Webster loves working with his hands, he's not real happy that he agreed to take on this job.

"I'm doing it under protest," he says. "I put two hours of labor into it already, and the guy coulda bought his own frame at the Dollar Store."

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, Michelob or Budweiser for $1.50 a can.

Sodas and water are just a quarter less.

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, and the course also has more than 500 dues-paying associate members.

And nobody plays the course more than McCabe, a 26-year veteran of the U.S. Army.

"Every day, odds are he's going to be here," club pro Matt Kayson tells me about McCabe. "He's our hardcore player."

He picked up the game after moving here four years ago.

"Never played a day in my life til three years ago," says the seventy-something McCabe. "Now I play all the time. It's something to do."

He hits a few buckets at the driving range, takes a break and then plays the course twice. No golfer ever feels self-actualized, but McCabe says his game has a long way to go before he makes up for his late-in-life start.

"No holes in one yet for me," McCabe says, looking out at the longest hole on the course, a 464-yard, Par 5 first hole. "I haven't even had a hole in two."

He loves the course, and talks up the Retirement Home life even beyond the links.

"It's three hots and a cot," he says with a big laugh.

By the way, I ask, how's the food here?

"Average," he says.

I didn't prompt him. Honest.