Prime Time - Jane Fonda [69]
Two centenarians I met in Atlanta were perfect examples of the kind of attitude that feeds relationships as well as longevity. Ben Burke was 101 years old in 2008 when I met him and “still percolating,” as he put it. He takes care of himself and cooks all his own meals, and, I’m told, everyone in his ten-floor, three-hundred-unit condominium building knows him, and he’s making an effort to get to know all of them on a first-name basis. Ben also has a passion for making music with his banjo—not just playing it but sharing it with people in his building. “Just brightening them up,” he says. “Upstairs is an assisted living department where I go with a couple of musicians, whoever is available, and we play ‘golden oldies.’ ” I discovered that Ben has a woman friend up there, which gives him added incentive—but more about that in the chapter on sex!
With pal Robin Laughlin.
Ben didn’t start playing the banjo until he was seventy-two. That was when he persuaded his son to resurrect the Tuneagers, a band he’d started as a teenager, so they could play together. “Making music and brightening up people are the lifeline to my living,” Ben tells me. “There’s gotta be more to life than food and shelter and being a beach bum.”
Ben’s wife of fifty-eight and a half years died from complications from Alzheimer’s disease on Christmas Day in 1997. “I figured I had to do something to keep me living, and that was music,” he says. “So you see what music has meant to me. You had mentioned that the later part of your life can be the best part of it. You got that right! Not for everybody, but for me, fortunately.”
Like Ben, 104-year-old Rachel Lehman devotes her life to keeping busy and brightening people’s lives. A friend who’s known Rachel for a long time told me this about her. It’s a recipe for a long, healthy life: “One of the things so remarkable about Rachel is that she’s rarely self-absorbed. I have yet to see her when she’s not asking about me and my family. That quality has made her a magnet. She draws people to her, and they love her. It keeps her connected to lots of different kinds of people of different ages.”
The day I met Rachel she walked slowly into the reception room of an assisted living complex using a walker, helped by her daughter and the friend, but she had a twinkle in her eye. “You know, Jane, we met before, at your Workout Studio in Beverly Hills in the 1970s.” “We did!” I exclaimed. “How old were you?” “Musta been in my seventies. My niece Didi Conn brought me. We did one of those classes together.”
Around that same time, Rachel had moved to Atlanta and answered a newspaper ad for a volunteer position with the Atlanta Opera. She got the job and still works there every week as a fund-raiser. She also has a singing group called the Georgia Classic Club. “You have to be sixty to join,” she pointed out with a wink.
“What do you sing?” I asked.
“ ‘Second Hand Rose’ is my specialty number,” she replied and promptly got up and, using a cane, did a slow soft-shoe while singing a few verses.
When Rachel was 101, she read in the sports section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about a bowler named Bill Hargrove who was 102. She called the paper, got his phone number, and called him. They subsequently became friends, and for her 102nd-birthday party he brought her three long-stemmed red roses. She confided to the Atlanta paper that he’d said to her, “I came in here looking for an old lady, but I can’t find one.” When the paper called to let her know Bill had died (he was about to turn 107), she reminisced with the reporter about the fun times they’d had. “He would tell me, ‘When I go to bed at night I see you in my dreams!’ How can you top that?” She’d brought Bill a bottle of wine for his 106th-birthday party, in 2007. “I mean at our age, why not?” she told the paper. “We always had so much fun together. I just wish we could have started a little earlier. But I’m so happy I got to meet him. He was so handsome!” She planned