Anita & John Tassone

John asked Anita to marry him on the second day he knew her. Anita accepted three days later. Almost 43 years later, as Shannondell residents, neither seems to have slowed down. John teaches ballroom dancing, plays table tennis, chess and regularly “runs the table” shooting pool. Anita matches John step-for-step on the dance floor, plays bridge, Scrabble, chess, Pinochle and, together, they’ve won more than sixty singles and co-ed community billiards tournaments, and counting. The thing is, neither had shot pool before moving to Shannondell.

Q:
I have to start with the marriage proposal story.

John:
Here it is; I met her on a Saturday, proposed on Sunday, she accepted that Wednesday. We got married three months later and within a year, we had our first child.

Q:
You guys don’t mess around.

Anita:
So we’ve been told (giggling). We enjoy doing a lot of things; playing golf, swimming, dancing; and now that we live at Shannondell, we can do it all, every day.

Q:
But I hear that you hadn’t planned to move here. You were actually planning to retire in Florida.

Anita:
We had spent a lot of time at a community near Orlando and thought we’d like to move there. But my daughter, who has three small children and lives nearby (in Pennsylvania), wanted us to be able to see our grandchildren more than just once a year. So, one day, she drove us to look at Shannondell.

Q:
And you thought….

Anita:
I thought I wasn’t sure I could live in a high-rise, which is funny now that we live here, because one; it’s nothing like a big skyscraper, and two… we can’t imagine living anywhere else.

John:
You see it from the outside and it looks nice, but it’s not until you walk through the front doors and see all the beautiful decorations, furniture, billiards rooms and more that you realize why people like us choose to call Shannondell home. It grabs you when you see it.

Q:
We’ll get to billiards in a minute, but other than that, talk about what else grabbed you once you moved to Shannondell.

John:
Neither of us had exercised before. Well, I did teach roller-skating and we did a pretty good Jitterbug, but we hadn’t gone to gyms when we were raising our family. Now, we swim in the indoor pool and go to classes in the fitness center. Anita’s lost ten pounds.

Anita:
And I must say that it’s very hard to stay away from desserts here.

John:
You’ve probably heard people say that Shannondell is like a cruise ship with all the dining choices; pizza parlor, bakery, deli, bistro, buffet, fine dining. It’s true.

Q:
Well it sounds like you can afford the calories. I hear you also teach ballroom dancing.

John:
Ballroom dancing is very similar to skating. And we used to take lessons, so it comes naturally.

Q:
Let’s talk about something else that seems to come naturally to you both: billiards. Neither of you had ever played before?

John:
Nope. I started by substituting for another player during one of the community tournaments and we won the tournament. So, I did it again, and we won again. Then I was hooked. The same with Anita. We’ve won the community co-ed tournament so many times that they won’t let us play together any more.

Q:
Banned from the pool hall (laughing).

Anita:
It’s a little embarrassing. But it’s all for fun. And we do have fun. If you don’t believe us, pop in on one of our Wednesday or Thursday night tournaments. You’ve never heard such laughter.

John:
But be warned, somebody’s liable to stick a pool cue in your hand.

Anita:
And a glass of wine.

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