What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [38]
“It was always in the back of my mind, I suppose. I knew if you could take this idea that I saw in Wilmot of people caring about people, if you could integrate what we have and what we know with what they have and what they know and what they need . . . oh my God! This isn’t science. It’s just good business practice. The whole trick of what we are doing is that we keep going back. We keep going back. And guess what happened? It has worked. It has worked because we give resources, we keep promises, and we keep coming back.”
The three stages of life may not have proven as precisely sequential as Dana imagined when she recited her mantra approaching sixty and began her journey to Ghana, but that may be for the better. “Here I am, still learning and earning—respect and experience—and returning. Every day I work to make WomensTrust a little better. It takes a great deal of perseverance, but I am getting the satisfaction of ‘return.’ If that Reaper tapped me on the shoulder today, I’d say, ‘Fine, but could I just take care of a few things?’ ”
ROBERT IADELUCA
Doctor of Substance
“Let the shadows fall behind.”
Robert Iadeluca’s license plate is his credo: ALL-OK. More than a few motorists in recent recessionary times may have felt provoked by its cheeryboast to shout, “Yeah, what’s sookay?” That would have suited the loquacious, bushy-browed, eighty-nine-year-old psychologist just fine. “Think about it for a moment,” he instructed me, straightening his six-foot-two-inch frame before he proceeded with his signature Socratic probing. “Does it say everything going on in my life is okay?” He waited—long enough for the question to fill the spare office where he treats his patients atop Hospital Hill in Warrenton, Virginia. “No, it just says all okay. That’s just my attitude toward life.”
A few biographical facts dispel any doubt about the truth of his assertion and prove his right to proclaim it on his license plate even in the most difficult times. He has, after all, known such times as well. In 1972, he lost his job as assistant director of public relations for the New York State commissioner amid a state fiscal crisis that forced massive budget cuts. Having worked for the state for only two years, he got bumped early. Gone, through no fault of his own, were a good salary, the security of a government job, health benefits, a pension plan, and any prospect of a comfortable retirement. He was fifty-two and had no savings to fall back on.
Faced with the daunting challenge of finding a new job in an era when employers looked even less kindly on older workers than they do today, Robby, or Dr. Robby as he is now known by patients, colleagues, friends, and fans, dared to do something that must have then seemed ludicrous for a man his age. He enrolled in graduate school. Seven years later, at fifty-nine, he received his Ph.D. and then began a new career as a research psychologist. A decade later, he upped the ante. He volunteered for a hospital internship, earned state certification to treat patients for alcoholism and substance abuse, and, at seventy-two, became a full-time therapist. Over the next seventeen years he earned the respect of colleagues and community alike for his clinical work. In the process, he also became something of a poster boy for eternal youth.
One day shortly before we met, Robby, a veteran toastmaster, spoke by popular demand at a Warrenton Chamber of Commerce luncheon. When he finished his talk the one hundred or so chamber members present rose and gave him a long ovation. “I have never seen anyone else get an ovation like that here,” Karen Henderson, the chamber’s director, told me. “Robby exudes the positive and reminds us that the mind runs the body. And he is revered in this community for it.”
His daily routine illustrates just how encompassing