LOGAN — Virginia Hammer remembers well her first summer in Sun City, Ariz.
"It was beastly. Even in the spring . . . it was in the 90s, and that was a shock to us because we had come from the Midwest," she said.
Hammer, a native of Illinois, had been used to turning on the air conditioning "two, maybe three times" all summer.
She talked to a neighbor, who had spent the summer before in a college town in Utah called Logan. "So we thought we'd come and see what they're doing here."
Twenty-one years later and even after the death of her husband, Hammer still summers in the Cache Valley.
She's joined by roughly 650 other older students this year in Utah State University's Summer Citizens program.
From the first of June until the middle of August, participants live in campus housing or nearby apartments.
For about $20 per class, they take weeklong courses in subjects like writing, art history and world religion from USU professors.
They use the campus computer lab, hike in the local canyons and go to the opera.
Most of the summer citizens come from Arizona; others come from Minnesota, Texas and Colorado.
The program began in the late 1970s, the same summer the Teton Dam broke and flooded Rexburg, Idaho. At that time, the local chamber of commerce had a sunbird program on the Ricks College campus.
Flood refugees came south to Logan that June.
"There were empty apartments here that year, and people on campus knew people there," said director Noelle Call.
For several years afterward, the program at USU was a "hodgepodge" of classes. Now, well-organized and well-marketed, it has attracted as many as 1,000 seniors at a time.
While not the first of its kind, USU's Summer Citizens program has found an important niche in the campus and city communities.
"We prefer to call them summer citizens, not sunbirds," said Call.
Perhaps the latter sounds flighty, and Call says these summer residents feel a strong connection to Logan and USU.
In 1985, they created an endowment fund for a Summer Citizens Scholarship, given to a traditional student every year who has both high academic achievement and financial need.
The city of Logan has also benefited from summer citizens.
"(The program) has a huge impact on the local economy," said Bobbie Coray, president of the Cache Chamber of Commerce. How could it not, "when you bring between 600 and 1,000 people to the valley who rent and shop and buy groceries and attend every cultural event offered."
"And then there are many things you don't see," she said. "They volunteer, come back year after year and really get involved in the community."
Summer citizen David Garber is just as quick to praise Logan, especially the young students he passes on campus.
"I don't see any of the tattoos or body piercing I was used to," said the Texan, who winters in Arizona. "The young people here seem to have some old values. We're Jewish, but we had some Mormon neighbors back at home. We told them, 'Whatever you're doing in your church, it's working.' "
Garber calls his summer stays in Logan "refreshing," especially the walks and hikes in Logan Canyon.
Equally stimulating, he says, are the classes he's able to take, topics he wished he had time to study his entire adult life.
"If I were doing this for a degree or something, I might be struggling," he said.
But as it is, American history, demography and economics are a treat.
On a breezy weekday afternoon, Garber is one of about 15 students in Helen Cannon's writing class.
"Writing Our Lives" the course is called, and Cannon encourages her students to write "beyond this short practicum."
Her students, wearing colorful sundresses and wide-rimmed hats, golf shirts and white tennis shoes, listen to her intently. They write in notebooks spread among copies of The New Yorker magazine.
"The professors say they like us because we ask the right questions," said Hammer. "We're so very interested in what they're talking about."
Enrollment in the Summer Citizens program has dipped during the past few years.
"It's the change to semesters," said Call. "They really want that extra month away from the heat."
But Coray doesn't see the new calendar as a long-term deterrent.
"I think the people who are new to the program don't find it hard because they're used to the semester system already and don't know anything different," Coray said. "For the people who have been here before, who really miss our Septembers, we try to encourage them to do some traveling in the Intermountain West after the middle of August."
Hammer, who has seen fellow summer citizens come and go over the past 21 years, says newer retirees don't know what they're missing.
"I have acquaintances who are retiring at 55 or so, and they don't want to come up here. They're interested in resorts," she says. "Baby boomers."
"Well, we just love it," said Garber. "I don't know where else we'd want to go."
E-MAIL: mtitze@desnews.com