Article: Life Masters


Voices of experience: One is a bridge champion, another holds senior track-and-field records, and another worked until she was 97. All came ready to share their stories with the first-year medical class. This year’s Over 90 Panel included, from left, Hyman Krasny, David Apple, Edith Bowers, LaVahn Overmyer, Alberta Hornsby, Ed Preisler, and Marjorie Warner.

verett Hosack and his wife celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1978 by sailing to London on the Queen Elizabeth II. For their return trip, they flew home on the Concorde. And Mr. Hosack has continued to spend his later years sailing out of the past and flying into the future.

An athlete to this day, Mr. Hosack has suffered only one injury: He broke his arm. Ninety-nine years ago. A track team member during high school, Mr. Hosack took some time off after graduating–50 years, to be exact–and then jumped right back into it. At the age of 101, he now holds eight track-and-field national records in the Senior Olympics. In March 2002, he demonstrated his shot-put technique to a large gathering of CWRU first-year medical students.

In March of this year, he addressed the group again, his seventh appearance at the CWRU School of Medicine’s annual “Over 90 Panel.” Mr. Hosack was one of eight panelists this year, all of whom were over 90 and two of whom were over 100. The creation of Jerome Kowal, a professor of medicine and CWRU’s associate dean for geriatric medicine, the Over 90 Panel has taken place for the past fifteen years. As part of the Introduction to Clinical Medicine program for first-year students, it is heavily attended by students and faculty preceptors.

The conference was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. in a large lecture room in the medical school. All of the panelists were in place by 10:45. At 11, hardly any medical students were in the room. A few had arrived by 11:10. The room was about three-quarters full at 11:20 and full by 11:30, when the meeting got under way. In other words, the experience was much like visiting a real doctor’s office, minus the old magazines. But once the session got started, it bore no resemblance to a doctor’s appointment. In other words, it was fun and interesting, and it felt like it should have gone on longer.

Dr. Kowal spoke briefly, and then each panelist spoke for about five minutes, some longer, including Mr. Hosack, who decided to lead the group in a song–“I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)”–and did a soft-shoe dance, all to the delight of the audience, though not necessarily to his fellow panelists. Most of the panelists had a lot to say and had to be reminded that it was time to pass the microphone to the next person. After this full session, the gathering divided into eight smaller groups for more extended breakout sessions with one of the panelists plus a faculty-member moderator, followed by lunch with all of the participants.

Mr. Hosack was joined by several other panelists in having participated before. Most surprised the audience with accounts of their active lifestyles: Among 92-year-old LaVahn Overmyer’s surprises was that she had graduated from college, in 1931, unusual for women at that time. As doctors-in-training, the students seemed impressed that she had survived a form of leukemia 15 years ago, at age 77. And as young people, they admired and appreciated the fact that Prof. Overmyer (CLC ’42EX), CWRU associate professor emerita of library science, teaches computer skills to the other residents of her retirement home.

Alberta Hornsby, 98, the only African American on this year’s panel, had worked as a secretary for an interior designer, which in itself was not all that surprising. What opened some eyes was when she retired–last year, at the age of 97.

Class is in session: Edith Bowers makes a point.

Ed Preisler, 92, who ran a lumber company for 70 years and has been married for 69 years, was well known around Northeast Ohio and other places in the country for his golf playing. He recalled encouraging a couple of young golfers a while back–Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, with whom he remains friendly. Mr. Preisler still golfs.

In the 1920s, Marjorie Warner, 92, had the moxie to answer a help-wanted ad for a male switchboard operator–back when companies were still allowed to advertise that way–and got the job. She has had a colostomy for over 20 years and serves as a volunteer to counsel patients receiving a colostomy for the first time.

Hyman Krasny, 92, is a bridge champion, a Life Master. That’s a bridge term, but it can easily be applied to his real life. He has not only survived both a heart attack and cancer, but a much more recent “fall on a jagged rock,” which has put him in a wheelchair “temporarily,” he said.

Edith Bowers, 100, who is a recent great-great grandmother, looked and acted 20 years younger than her age in her sharp rose-colored suit. She spoke loudly, clearly, and lucidly about her life and the changes she has seen occur in the world.

David Apple, 91, a small man with a nearly constant smile, wore a shirt with a wildly colorful design, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be pictures of (what else?) apples. Not only has he traveled all over the world, taking thousands of black-and-white photographs that he has developed in his own darkroom, but he was leaving the very next day for a trip to Cuba, as part of a cultural mission. An alumnus of Adelbert College (1933) and what’s now the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences (1940), he still works as a traveling salesman (his second career), though, in recent years, he has let someone else do the driving. And he has a girlfriend.

Mr. Apple drew a laugh when, in discussing the kinds of things that keep him going, he happily volunteered that he was “still sexually active.” He drew applause when he quickly followed the comment with, “And that helps!”

Dr. Kowal launched the Over 90 Panel when he realized that medical students weren’t getting, he says, a “fair picture of how people could age.” The father of one his friends had just turned 90—“a remarkably dynamic, well-read, articulate, and independent man,” Dr. Kowal says. “It started with him and it kind of evolved from there.

“Every year,” he continues, “I call people I know and say, ‘Do you know anyone over the age of 90 to meet with the first-year class?’ And I get a group every year. People will call me with candidates for a future session. On average, we aim for eight people. We try to bring back previous panelists, who as a result of their previous experience are very relaxed when facing the whole class or a small breakout group. And we get a good cross section. It doesn’t seem to matter what someone’s ethnicity or background is–once they reach the age of 90, they have a certain zest for life and a certain sense of survivorship that you don’t find very often.”

Among the panels’ goals are “humanizing” elderly patients, possibly even encouraging some of the students to consider geriatric medicine.

Medical student John Norbury, a Philadelphia native, says the panel helped him in that regard. “I’m pretty interested in geriatrics,” he says, “and I’ve been doing it since I got here, through the family clinic program. But, certainly, the over-90 group is something we don’t have much contact with. I think that the way our society is set up, a lot of times those people just aren’t in the mainstream so much. So it was definitely nice to put a human face to that age group.

Live and learn: Medical students were entertained as well as enlightened by the panelists.

“It was really nice to see the different models of how people age,” Mr. Norbury continues, “and I guess one of the things that really came across to me was that, as a student doctor, you see so many people who are really struggling with the process, but these people showed a very optimistic model of aging successfully, which was nice to see. It was surprising to see that people can do shot-put, that people can still travel, [and] to see those possibilities.”

For the most part, the students’ feedback is overwhelmingly positive, Dr. Kowal says. “Many of them say that it does change their outlook. There are always one or two students who say this is not a fair representation of the aging process, but it’s not intended to be. The intention is to show people that you can get close to 100 years of age and still be fully functional and still have a positive outlook on life.” He adds, “The point I try to make is that this is one end of the bell curve, and certainly the end we’d like to see more and more people get into.”

Student Vanessa Richlin, from Los Angeles, says, “It was nice to see a side of geriatrics that we don’t get to see that often,” she says. “Everyone [on the panel] was doing great, and they were upbeat and fun and hilarious, but I know everyone is not going to be like this.”

She adds, “But I think it was inspirational to us to see that people that age could be like that, so that you actually have hope–if you’re treating someone that age–that they don’t have to be sitting in a wheelchair all day. You actually have a picture of someone you know who’s active, and you can sort of use that as a guide.”

Dr. Kowal points out that it’s not only the students who benefit from this event. “By the time we’re finished,” he says, “the panelists are literally floating on the ceiling, because for two or three hours they’ve had all these young, attentive, and responsive students totally interested in everything they were doing. They probably don’t get attention like this from their own family.”

Dr. Kowal mentions some crowd pleasers from past years. “We’ve had some real characters on these panels,” he says. “There was one attractive 95-year-old African-American woman who was elegantly dressed, all in blue, and who spoke totally in rhyme. It was wonderful, and the students were absolutely in awe. And when Hosack did his shot-putting exhibition last year, the students gave him a standing ovation at the end. It was absolutely extraordinary.”

The panel has included some celebrities, too. The renowned playwright George Abbott came to Cleveland to attend a hundredth-birthday tribute to him in 1987, produced by the Great Lakes Theater Festival, including revivals of two of his works, The Boys from Syracuse and Broadway. Dr. Kowal and his staff convinced Mr. Abbott to participate in that year’s panel discussion. They spoke with his agent, who warned them that Mr. Abbott was “a real stoic,” who would only give one word–yes or no–answers to questions.

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Dr. Kowal recounts, “He came out stone faced, looking like the man in the American Gothic painting. We were waiting to start, because we were going to feed the students; we were waiting for pizzas to arrive. After about fifteen minutes, a young female medical student arrived, juggling a stack of ten or twelve pizzas. The students came down like locusts and devoured the pizza. And Abbott started laughing, and he started talking for forty-five minutes, offering his opinions about everything relating to the theater, past and present.”

Dr. Kowal believes it’s important for the students to see and interact directly with these panelists, “even in connection with the students’ perception of their own aging. It’s very important for them to see how people, who, as a result of their years, have faced adversity and great emotional loss, can nevertheless function effectively and think positively. And it’s not necessarily the fact that these people have the right genes and never see a doctor. Many of them have had strokes and other problems and still rise above it to be fully active.”

Seeing older people in a setting like this is “more personal” than seeing them in a clinical setting, says Ms. Richlin, and she appreciates that. She thinks it was valuable “just being able to talk with them. They were able to show their personalities in a short period of time.” So it had that humanizing effect–“seeing that they are the people they were when they were young.”

Many people have heard stories of doctors telling their very old patients that they’re not going to do much for them in the way of treatment, simply because of their advanced age, and that they should, perhaps, expect to experience health problems. But the panel helps students realize that these patients are fully in control of what’s going on around them, Ms. Richlin says.

Mr. Norbury says he realizes that “unless you go into pediatrics, you’re going to see people with health problems, and older people, and this gives you an appreciation for life and keeps you looking toward the future.

“Someday, as a doctor, I hope that I’ll remain open-minded when I see a patient in his or her 90s, remembering this and realizing the realm of possibilities that could be there.”

Cleveland writer David Budin is a regular contributor to CWRU Magazine.

Photography by Daniel Milner