Center for Successful Aging Finds Opportunities in Experience

Peer counseling fills niche of support for senior set

By Gayle Golden, Center for Successful Aging | Published on 01.27.2010

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Her name is Alice and she is a senior peer counselor. She will be 104 in July. The wonderful ladies in the support group at Heritage House Assisted Living love having her as their group facilitator because she is their role model. She is the poster child for successful aging. In fact, she’s a star at the Center for Successful Aging, which helps seniors and their families with the challenges and opportunities of aging.

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Alice was 16 when she read the first Time magazine ever published, saw the first production of Porgy and Bess, remembers getting sick on bathtub gin, and fondly remembers the time when no one she knew had cancer or even knew what it was. She reads every book she gets her hands on and when she can’t find someone to play Scrabble with, she plays against herself.

Before meeting with the group at Heritage House, she was the facilitator for a support group at Garden Court on De la Vina. They called themselves the “Grey Panthers.” Alice remembers one woman urging the group to do something about world peace, much to the consternation of another woman who sternly said that politics was not a subject for a support group. Indeed, they spent the next years together talking more about how it feels to be moved from home to a residential facility, and how it is to deal with loss of loved ones, health issues, decreased independence, and telling stories about their childhoods long ago.

Alice remembers one African-American woman who told stories about how hard it was to pick cotton and how she knew they were going to move again when she saw her mother packing the big box with their bedding, pots and pans, and tableware. Her father was an itinerant preacher who traveled by horse and buggy. Her grandfather had been a blind slave who was eventually given a mule and a small plot of land by the federal government at emancipation.

A Japanese man joined the group; he was a violinist and had gone to school in London, where he had played for Fritz Kreisler. He considered this his greatest honor. Later he mentioned that he had been Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s translator at the end of the war with Japan. MacArthur had made it possible for him to come to the United States.

Alice also remembers the sad day when there weren’t any members left.

She talks fondly of the 96-year-old woman whom she met with as an individual counselor. The woman was amazed and delighted to be able to talk with someone who was actually older than herself. This woman has been so actively involved in the early history of Santa Barbara that she lives on the street that was named for her and her husband.

When I ask Alice how she feels about outliving so many of the people she has known and loved, she says she keeps them alive in her memories and continues to find beauty and excitement in every day. She feels so fortunate and grateful for the opportunity to give something back.
 
Click here for more information about the Center for Successful Aging, or call 805.963.8080.

— Gayle Golden is administrative director of the Center for Successful Aging.

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