MOBILE – AARP President and CEO Jo Ann Jenkins returned to her hometown of Mobile earlier this month to help cut the ribbon on a new outdoor fitness park at James Seals Park in downtown Mobile, marking the first stop of its kind in Alabama for the national nonprofit.
The ribbon-cutting brought the leader of one of the nation’s largest membership organizations back to the streets that raised her – and brought to Mobile a piece of a nationwide campaign to change how Americans think about exercise and aging.
From Mon Louis Island to Washington
Jenkins, who leads the American Association of Retired Persons, grew up on Mon Louis Island, a small community about 16 miles south of downtown Mobile bordered by Mobile Bay on one side and the Fowl River on the other. She graduated from Theodore High School before attending Spring Hill College, and she has said she carries deep pride in her Mobile roots even after decades spent building a career in Washington, D.C.
“I always say I’m very proud to be from Mobile,” Jenkins said during her visit.
Mon Louis Island is a quiet finger of land along the western shore of Mobile Bay, a place of fishing camps, waterfront families and a history stretching back to early French settlement along the Gulf Coast. The road south from downtown Mobile passes through it on the way to Bayou La Batre and the state’s seafood coast, and its residents have long lived with the rhythms of the bay – hurricanes, shrimp seasons and all.
It is a long way from that shoreline to the executive offices of the nation’s largest organization for older Americans, and Jenkins made the journey in stages: public service, higher education administration, and finally the leadership of AARP itself.
A career in public service
Before joining AARP, Jenkins built a career in public service and higher education. She worked for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during President Ronald Reagan’s administration and later served in the U.S. Department of Agriculture under President George H.W. Bush, an experience she credits with shaping her commitment to public service.
She went on to complete the executive program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and holds honorary doctorates from both Spring Hill College and Washington College. Jenkins later became chief operating officer of the Library of Congress before joining AARP, where she first led the organization’s charitable foundation for two years, focusing on programs to help low-income and vulnerable older adults.
She was subsequently named AARP’s chief operating officer and was promoted to president and CEO roughly 18 months later, a position she has now held for five years.
The path gave her an unusual vantage point for leading AARP. Federal housing and agriculture programs taught her how government touches the daily lives of older Americans; the Library of Congress placed her at one of the nation’s great institutions; and the foundation years put her face to face with the seniors the organization exists to serve – the low-income and vulnerable older adults for whom a public park, a warm meal or a question about Social Security is not an abstraction.
The fitness park comes home
Her return to Mobile centered on the opening of new adult fitness equipment at James Seals Park, part of a nationwide initiative AARP launched to mark the organization’s 60th anniversary by investing in community spaces across the country.
Mobile is the first city in Alabama to receive the equipment, though Jenkins said she couldn’t take personal credit for bringing the project home. “The state office pitched Mobile,” she said.
The credit, she insisted, belonged to AARP’s Alabama staff, who saw an opportunity to put the anniversary initiative in a community where it would be used and noticed. James Seals Park sits in downtown Mobile, a public space serving neighborhoods where access to modern exercise facilities is limited, and its selection reflected the initiative’s focus on communities rather than showcase locations.
The new park spans roughly 1,400 square feet and includes 22 individual equipment stations designed for users of all ages and fitness levels. Rather than relying on weights or machines, the stations use participants’ own body weight for resistance, making the equipment usable by people with a wide range of body types and physical abilities.
Body-weight stations have become a fixture of outdoor fitness design across the country for exactly that reason. There are no weight stacks to adjust and no seats to fit, so a grandfather and a teenager can work through the same course side by side, each at his own level. The equipment requires no membership, no key fob and no fee – a significant consideration in neighborhoods where a gym membership competes with groceries.
Jenkins said the design reflects a broader goal of reducing injury risk while encouraging older adults and retirees to stay active. “It’s our way of showcasing you can exercise at any age,” she said.
The equipment is shaded to protect users from direct sun and is available to the public during regular park hours at James Seals Park. The shading is more than a comfort feature in a Gulf Coast summer, when midday heat and humidity can keep older residents indoors; it extends the hours when the park is safely usable through Alabama’s long warm season.
Why AARP invests in parks
The fitness park reflects a shift in how AARP approaches its mission. For decades the organization was best known for its magazine, its discounts and its advocacy on Social Security and Medicare. Under recent leadership, it has invested increasingly in the built environment of everyday life – walkable streets, accessible parks, housing and transportation – on the theory that health in later years is shaped less by hospitals than by neighborhoods.
Public health research has long supported the premise: older adults who live near safe, welcoming places to walk and exercise are more likely to remain active, mobile and independent. A park station that invites a daily stretch is, in that framing, a piece of preventive health care installed at no charge to the people who use it.
The 60th anniversary gave the organization a framework for acting on that idea at scale, and the James Seals Park installation became the Alabama entry in a national roll-out. For local residents, the practical meaning is simple: a free, shaded, purpose-built place to exercise, a short distance from downtown neighborhoods.
Coming home
Jenkins said the celebration also gave her a chance to reconnect with the community that shaped her. “It’s always great to come home,” she said. “It was good to be back and see so many smiling faces and eat some good food.”
Homecomings carry particular weight for Mobile natives, whose city marks its calendar by festivals, church suppers and family gatherings built around exactly the kind of food Jenkins referenced. Her visit joined those two worlds – the national executive and the Mon Louis Island native – at a ribbon-cutting in a downtown park bearing the name of one of the city’s own.
For the AARP members and community residents who gathered for the opening, the presence of the organization’s chief executive was a signal of how seriously the initiative takes its local commitments. The fitness park was not a grant mailed from Washington; it came with the leader of the organization standing in the Alabama heat to open it.
AARP has said the fitness park rollout will continue well beyond Mobile. The next stop for the initiative is planned for Phoenix, with more than a dozen additional locations across the country slated to open equipment over the following year as part of the organization’s ongoing anniversary push to promote healthy, active aging in communities nationwide.
Mobile’s place in a national picture
Mobile’s selection as Alabama’s first stop placed the city alongside a national map of communities receiving the equipment through the anniversary initiative. From the Gulf Coast to the Southwest, the roll-out follows a common design: identify a public park in a neighborhood that needs it, install body-weight stations that anyone can use, shade them, and turn them over to the public with no conditions attached.
For Mobile, the addition at James Seals Park also fits within the city’s broader investment in its downtown green spaces, which serve residents within walking distance of the park’s neighborhoods. City parks in Mobile have long doubled as gathering places for family reunions, church outings and youth sports, and fitness equipment extends that role into daily exercise for older adults who might otherwise have nowhere free and safe to be active.
The Alabama connection ran deeper than geography. An organization led by a Theodore High School graduate choosing the state’s first installation for her hometown reflected both the state office’s initiative and the personal stake its national leader takes in the Gulf Coast.
A model for active aging
The underlying message Jenkins carried home – that exercise is possible at any age – is aimed squarely at the assumptions that keep many older adults sedentary. Too many people treat retirement as an endpoint for physical activity, and the health consequences of that retreat compound quickly: loss of balance, muscle and independence that modest daily exercise can slow or prevent.
Outdoor fitness stations are designed to interrupt that slide at the neighborhood level. A resident can stop at the park on a walk, work through several stations, and build the habit without ever entering a gym or buying equipment. The stations at James Seals Park, usable by all ages, deliberately invite grandparents to exercise alongside the children they bring to the playground.
That is the model AARP intends to carry across the country from Mobile to Phoenix and beyond – and the community that watched its hometown executive cut the ribbon will be the first in Alabama to show whether a park, some shade and twenty-two stations can make an ordinary part of staying well.