Do you ever wonder how people will remember you after you have departed? Hopefully, my children (and grandchildren — hint, hint) will have fond memories of shared experiences, laughter and a tin full of recipes for favorite meals. Since I'm neither millionaire nor heir, creating generational wealth or a scholarship never crossed my mind. Not until recently.
Juliana Rosales, a freshman at the University of Central Florida in Orlando will use her "fun scholarship" to visit a theme park for the first time.While pondering my purpose, passions, values and the lives I have touched in a meaningful way, I read a feel-good story about a family in Naples, Florida, that advocates the essence of legacy. They inspired me to do something similar.
I discovered grants that run the gamut from traditional monetary awards for high-achieving students (with or without financial need) to specific groups, including teenagers and adults from marginalized communities, artists, even gardeners. Recipients can use the grants to pay for tuition, books, housing, travel or take a respite from the stress of school, as examples.
Setting up an endowment isn't as complicated as one might think. It doesn't require millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Below are stories of two families keeping a loved one's memory alive by giving to others.
Isabella Eghrari Memorial Scholarship
For more than 10 years, the Eghrari family has gathered at Thanksgiving to read college freshman essays with the intent of providing a little fun.
"Mom was always bothered she didn't have a diploma. So, even though it wasn't common, she went back to college when I was in high school."
Jacqueline Eghrari, 60, daughter to Isabella, explained that while her parents came from different areas of the world — dad from Tehran, Iran, and mom from St. Louis, Missouri — they shared values, especially the importance of education. Her dad and his siblings all finished high school (very unusual in the 1930s), and her father attended medical school in France. Her mom, however, did not have a college degree when she and Dr. Massoud Eghrari married.
"Mom was always bothered she didn't have a diploma," Jacqueline recalled. "So, even though it wasn't common, she went back to college when I was in high school."
Isabella majored in English and received her MBA when Jacqueline was in high school. She and her two siblings each went beyond a four-year university: she became a physician and her sister and brother both became attorneys.
The Scholarship of the Ring
When Isabella turned 65, she splurged on what Jacqueline described as "one big honking diamond ring." Her mother told the family, "I'm going to enjoy this ring, but something good should come of its beauty. When I die, I want you to sell it and turn it into 'The Scholarship of the Ring.' "
"It was the perfect landing place for Mom's wish."
Isabella passed away in 2008, aged 74. "We were all devastated," Jacqueline reflected. Not long after his wife's death, Dr. Eghrari relocated from Long Island, New York, to Naples, Florida, where he became acquainted with The Immokalee Foundation, named for the small agricultural community it serves. The foundation administers the Isabella Eghrari Memorial Scholarship.
"It was the perfect landing place for Mom's wish," Jacqueline said. Immokalee encourages career readiness and professional development for immigrants and young, non-English speaking students from kindergarten through college.
Eghrari's mother had always wanted to help college students feel like they fit on campus. "Mom worried whether kids had money to attend a football game, buy spirit wear or buy ice cream," Jacqueline said.
One Purpose: Having Fun
So, when Eghrari's father sold the ring in 2011, the Isabella Eghrari Memorial Scholarship was born. After completing their first semester of college, students can apply for a $500.00 award with only one submission requirement: write how the money will be used toward fun. Each year, there are approximately 10 winners, all financed through the investment of the ring.
Dr. Eghrari, now 93, his three children and several grandchildren vote on the most compelling story. Jacqueline said her father "ensures the next generation understands philanthropy, both to honor their grandmother and fuel the importance of contributing to the betterment of society."
The time of year for application and awarding was deliberate, so when students are home in December for winter break, they can celebrate at an honorary luncheon. "My dad remarried a wonderful woman, Tayebeh, and together they hand out the certificates," Eghrari said.
"We are all reading through my mother's eyes as her stewards, picking the people she would have wanted."
Juliana Rosales, 18, was one of the 2023 "Fun Scholarship" recipients. A freshman at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and a lifetime resident of Florida, Rosales wrote an essay that described how she didn't have money or time to visit theme parks. She would use anything leftover for a mental debrief from a stressful semester.
"I was honestly so surprised when I received my congratulations email," Rosales told me, beaming via Zoom. She said she spent her $500 to go to Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park in Bay Lake, Florida. "I felt like I landed on another planet when I was in the Toy Story exhibit," she said.
Rosales bought clothes with the remaining money. "Shopping was fun because I needed to update my wardrobe," she said. "Being in college, I wanted to walk around like it's a fashion show!"
Eghrari said the personal impact of giving was unexpected. "We are all reading through my mother's eyes as her stewards, picking the people she would have wanted," she added. "This money makes a difference, and it's such a wonderful tradition to honor my mom and keep what she wanted afloat and implemented."
Keep Your Chin Up Scholarship
Peggy Baze, 58, remembers waking up one morning in her Phoenix home and hearing her late father say, "Keep your chin up, kid." It was about a year since he passed from mesothelioma in 2018. George Keown, or GK, frequently used that expression with all four of his kids until he died at 71.
"I knew I had to turn my pain into purpose."
"My grief had been debilitating," Baze said, "and then, out of nowhere, I knew I had to turn my pain into purpose." Within hours, she designed the framework that would honor her father's memory.
Baze said her dad was a pillar of strength and "taught us about knocking down obstacles and the importance of a positive attitude." It was this mindset that moved Baze to create an award for adults. "I chose older people because they are a forgotten demographic and matched the sentiment of my dad," she said.
The Keep Your Chin Up Scholarship is considered a nontraditional award. Run twice per year, it is for two undergraduate students 25 years of age and older who are Arizona residents. Funding for tuition and books ranges from $500 to $5,000.
The GK Legacy Foundation has become a family affair, with siblings serving on the board and Baze's daughter as the scholarship director. Initially sponsored through family contributions, the organization has grown to include donations from friends and organizations.
Baze said the applicants' stories she and her family read are heartwarming if not tragic in some instances — candidates have included those who had been incarcerated, unhoused or experienced unthinkable tragedy in their families. Patricia Williams, a four-time recipient, is one of those individuals.
Williams, 37, is in her senior year of college and is scheduled to graduate this year. She was initially set to complete her bachelor's degree from the Arizona College of Nursing last year when one of her five children died.
Patricia Williams, 37, is a senior at the Arizona College of Nursing and a four-time recipient of a scholarship."It was March 2022, and my son was murdered," Williams said. "So, I needed a hiatus. Now, I've gone back and am finishing this year. I want to do something that helps my kids and one day, grandkids, and leave a legacy for them. I need to set a high standard for them."
While maintaining a 3.6 GPA and making the Dean's List, Williams works as a patient care tech at one of Arizona's larger hospitals. "My youngest believes I'm a doctor because she sees I'm in the medical field," she said. "I tell her she can be whatever she wants to be."
Before returning to school, Williams applied for the scholarship once again. "I kept my essay raw and real," she said through tears of gratitude. "My story resonated, and they allowed me to win. I tell them they are my family now, too, because they've been helping me through such a hard time."
Baze is proud of how the scholarship has changed the lives of recipients. "What started as a single-person journey is about to close its 10th round," she said. "I could never have imagined a more impactful legacy."
Beginning the Process
Eghrari and Baze shared two suggestions for designing a fund in your name or someone else's memory: First, "just do it" — emphasizing that the rewards are everlasting. Second, "use an attorney."
 "I want to do something that helps my kids and one day, grandkids, and leave a legacy for them."
Tracy A. Craig, partner and chair of the Trusts and Estates Practice Group at the law firm Seder & Chandler in Worcester, Massachusetts, said there are multiple ways to set up either a one-time gift or ongoing scholarship, each with its own tax laws, implications and consequences.
First, determine the amount you want to donate (or raise) — the magnitude will likely dictate how you proceed. Craig explained that unless a foundation can start with $5 million to $10 million or more, she usually directs clients to a lesser-known option: community foundations. They enable philanthropists to achieve their goals without taking on the administrative burden of running an independent nonprofit foundation.
There are more than 900 community foundations across the country; They bring together the financial resources of individuals, families and businesses to support nonprofit groups and activities in their communities. the Council on Foundations has an interactive map that will let you find one near you.
Start Early and Be Methodical
"Go to a community foundation while you're still alive," Craig advised, "and add the scholarship into your estate-planning documents." She suggested a personal meeting with a community foundation representative to document your request to establish a scholarship, name it, establish selection criteria, choose committee members and understand the administrative fees.
Benefits of working with community foundations include allowing donors and their families to decide how involved they wish to be, having the community foundation handle administrative and tax filings, and provide legitimacy to the funds. "Otherwise," Craig indicated, "people wonder, 'What's the catch?' "
"Even if the donation is a one-time grant, even $50.00 can go a long way for someone who doesn't have a lot of money. Please know that we who received it are amazingly thankful. You are changing a person's life."
Craig said foundations typically ask for a minimum of $10,000 to dedicate a self-perpetuating scholarship. The foundation then allocates 4% of the total dollar amount ($400 in this case) to be distributed annually, with the rest invested.
Alternatively, you can combine your bequest to a group that already is making grants in the field you want to support. "You don't have to reinvent the wheel," Craig said. You could offer grants with both benefactors' names on them or have foundations share administrative costs but still make separate grants in their own names. If you want to benefit a specific school or department, reach out directly for ways to help them during your lifetime or after your death.
One last option Craig mentioned is treating donations as gifts if the donor is unconcerned about the tax benefits of charitable giving. "Under the current law, a person can give up to $18,000 per recipient, and nobody (neither the giver nor receiver) has to report the money," she stated.
Ultimately, creating a legacy provides you peace of mind knowing your desires are in motion while bringing comfort to family members that a loved one's memory continues on. And it cascades benefits to those fortunate enough to receive a monetary gift.
In her young wisdom, Rosales said, "Even if the donation is a one-time grant, even $50.00 can go a long way for someone who doesn't have a lot of money. Please know that we who received it are amazingly thankful. You are changing a person's life."


How to Leave a Legacy Scholarship

Sheryl Stillman

The author's mother-in-law, Barbara as a child in the 1940sApproaching 91, my mother-in-law is still kicking. She was asked to be president of her senior living residence in lower Manhattan. She edits a political blog for a 100-year-old friend. She goes to more museums, concerts, theater and ballet performances in a month than I have in the past four years. She rides the subway to visit her great-grandchildren (my grandchildren!), and always has her head in a big book or crossword, which she invariably finishes. All that and she makes the best potato pancakes on the planet. 
She won awards and grants, and was pals with Gloria Steinem and other feminist trailblazers.  
That Barbara was super accomplished was never a question. A pioneer in early child education, she's authored multiple books on bullying, integrating science into child's play, nonsexist teaching, even helping boys learn better. She won awards and grants, and was pals with Gloria Steinem and other feminist trailblazers.  
Lately, she's revealed a new side of herself as a memoirist, sharing accounts of her early life as an itinerant tap dancer, chorus girl and TV performer, following a childhood beset by family illness and financial troubles. Her well-crafted "Fragments," as she calls them, show that no matter how well we know someone close to us, there are layers of personal history contributing, like clay, to the role model they become. They're also a reminder to mine the back stories of our older family members while there's still time. 
Almost Put Up for Adoption
Barbara's arrival in 1933 did not look promising. "Mother already had one abortion and now another unwanted baby was on the way," she writes. Her father's dry-cleaning business had collapsed in the Depression and her mother became a "nervous wreck" following the near-fatal meningitis of one of her other two daughters. 
One of Barbara's headshots for modeling and theaterAlmost put up for adoption, Barbrara's grandparents intervened and offered to raise the third child. Born with an infected navel and severely underweight from her mother's chain smoking, Barbara lived with her grandparents for five years after her father relocated to California with her two older sisters (Barbara surmises now that her mother suffered a breakdown). It was a blessing, thanks to an Irish nanny who showered her with love and trips to the park, though Nanny also claimed her nightly dose of Milk of Magnesia was ice cream. 
The family of five reunited in 1938, crammed in a three-room apartment in northern Manhattan. "Life was very tense," Barbara writes. "My mother sewed hats at home to bring in much-needed extra money. She worked late into the night, in the kitchen since my father slept in the living room. She often seemed angry at my sisters. Once when they did not meet her standards for dishwashing, she made them do everything over again — lots of yelling." 
But suddenly, Barbara was her mother's pet and showpiece, given tap lessons and thrust into the life of a "theater kid." Performing at a bungalow colony's casino night, wearing a "blue-checked, short taffeta costume," she recalls doing a hat dance "baring one shoulder and peering behind me with a coy look — how inappropriate for a seven-year-old." But it brought down the house. Acting and elocution lessons followed and she learned to recite poetry and dance with flowing scarves. She was cast as a refugee in a play for Russian war relief, arranged by a great aunt who was a Communist sympathizer. 
A Stage Name and Vying to be Miss Video Venus 
Soon she had an agent and was auditioning for radio spots at Young & Rubicam, though her voice was deemed too squeaky. Given the stage name Barbara Fields (rather than her last name of Rosenfeld), she landed a bit part in a Broadway-bound comedy written by Phoebe and Henry Ephron (Nora's parents), uttering the immortal line, "It looks like two fried eggs on a plate."  
Thanks to her tapping skills, she [earned] $75 a week wearing gingham dresses with matching bonnets, circus outfits and Rockettes-style costumes
The play bombed after road tryouts but Barbara was on a roll, appearing on an NBC quiz show, a Spiegel catalog and as a dancer on a TV show called "Rainbow House." She was also a chorus girl, tapping her way through state fairs and vaudeville houses across upstate New York. For another TV variety program hosted by band leader Paul Whiteman, she competed for the coveted role of Miss Video Venus (she was runner-up). 
At 16, she was attending professional high school alongside Rosita Alverio (later Rita Moreno) and Dick Van Patten, taking jazz dance classes taught by Bob Fosse and drawing a crowd when she and her boyfriend did the rhumba or jitterbug at school dances. She played an extra in a movie and Cordelia in a production of "King Lear."  
Thanks to her tapping skills, she went on tour with the Horace Heidt Orchestra, earning $75 a week wearing gingham dresses with matching bonnets, circus outfits and Rockettes-style costumes in a road show called "Kids Break Through," hitting hot spots like Peoria, Indianapolis, Altoona and Dayton, Ohio, as well as Chicago and Lincoln, Nebraska. It aired Saturday nights on CBS affiliates, sponsored by Philip Morris.  
"I did a camel walk," she recounts of a typical bit, "which involved twisting my leg from front to back very quickly while traversing the stage. A circus number had gold-colored, short costumes with red pompons (gaudy and hideous). There was a romantic piece with gowns and ballet lifts with our male partners. We wore high-heels and one of mine came off during a performance. In true show biz fashion, I finished the dance with one operative shoe." At her high school graduation, legendary composer Richard Rodgers handed out her diploma. 
Showing Her Moves to a Great-Granddaughter  
Barbara holding a great-grandchildAlthough she continued dancing at Sarah Lawrence College — more Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham than Ann Miller — she focused on her studies in child development and left the stage lights, especially after meeting a "charming guy in a fedora," whom I later knew as my father-in-law, Jules. She never looked back, until recently. 
"What did I take away from those years?" she muses. "I loved the discipline of dance — my idea of a good Saturday was to go from one class to another — ballet, tap, acrobatics, Flamenco. From drama I learned diction, poise, voice control. I earned some money and felt independent on the road. Later in my career as an educator, my theater life gave me confidence on stage, giving keynote addresses, conducting workshops, presenting to funders or debating controversial issues." 
These days, when my six-year-old granddaughter visits in her tutu, she'll show off a move she's picked up in her own dance class. When pushed to demonstrate, "Baba" will join in with a smooth soft shoe and twirl, her arms extended delicately like Ginger Rogers, or rather, like Barbara Fields.  She can still bring down the house. 


My Mother-in-Law, the Tap Dancing Showgirl

Allan Ripp

In 2021, my mother was buried at We Love Where We Live cemetery in the river town that she was moored to her whole life.
The cemetery's official name is St. Mary's, but Mom and I gave it a nickname due to the town's official roadside welcome sign (catchphrase: "We love where we live!") having been erected beside the boneyard's western border.
Scott Saalman's motherSeeing "We love where we live" so near tombstones was not lost on our shared sense of humor (dark), nor was the farewell message, ripe with reincarnation overtones, on the other side of the sign: "We hope you come back."
A parent who loses a child often becomes the ghost.
My baby sister's body was delivered into the dirt there during the 1960s. We used lightheartedness to cope with darkness. The nickname was not a dig against the town. Tell City, Indiana was Mom's heaven on earth. If anything, it was simply commentary on unfortunate sign placement.
Tombstones are nothing more than postage stamps for a different kind of delivery. I recall brotherly pride while holding my baby sister for the first (and only) time, a moment that, in hindsight, foreshadowed a life lesson: sometimes the first time is also the last time. 
Loss of a Sisterly Presence 
Mere hours later, my sister was rushed to the emergency room, vanishing for good, returned to sender, due to a medical gaffe (admitted by the doctor). The resulting emptiness, the void of a sisterly presence, has deepened as I've aged. Often, I have tried to fill the hole, perhaps explaining why nearly all my friends are female.
How my parents felt about their loss, I try not to imagine, what with having a son and daughter of my own. A parent who loses a child often becomes the ghost.
I imagine my sister grown now, looking over my shoulder as I write this, her face reflecting from the computer resembling my mother's face. This brings a chill to my spine, a burn to the eye. Halos and holes. Holes and halos.
My Mom, the Consummate Host 
I didn't cry at Mom's funeral home service, nor later at We Love Where We Live. I was too busy welcoming visitors. One trait I gained from Mom was a compulsion to be a consummate host. She loved introducing people to one another, point out commonalities and forge connections. She greeted Walmart greeters before they greeted her. 
Scott Saalman and his mother Mom was a diner hostess, a role she loved and shined at. I was fond of watching her smile and joke with customers and offer advice as guests aired personal angsts while picking at blue plate lunch specials. Like Lucy van Pelt manning her 5-cent psychiatric help booth, the "doctor" was always "in." Though Mom lacked a college degree, she did re-up her annual subscription to "Psychology Today." Many people reported to me how she had helped them through a difficult time.

As a teen, Mom aspired to attend college. She actually saved enough money from high school jobs to attend fall semester at a business college in Evansville, as well as pay rent on a ramshackle apartment. On her first day at the apartment, she unpacked her suitcase, but never returned, not even to retrieve her things, feeling too out of place in an urban environment. 
A rich Evansville couple who owned a large department store learned of her housing plight through the college and invited her to live in their large home. They threw her a welcome party, inviting their rich friends, but Mom, mortified by the attention, failed to show. Ultimately, a woman running the local YWCA took her in, and in return, Mom babysat for her child.
Mom did well in secretarial courses, especially shorthand writing. During the semester, though, she became pregnant and was married on New Year's Eve. Pregnant, too poor for a second semester, she quit college.
Living Her Dream 
Twenty years later, in 1983, she sent me to college via the wages and tips she saved, entitling me to the dream she once aspired to for herself. In 2022, my daughter Delaney earned her bachelor's degree in English. Mom was excited knowing Delaney enrolled in college. Unfortunately, she died before Delaney earned a diploma. I imagined Mom proudly applauding from the rafters during the graduation ceremony.
For graduation, I gave Delaney a business school shorthand pin that Mom earned for an "80 WPM" milestone, which Dad had discovered after her death. That Mom secretly kept this pin for nearly 60 years is a testament to her college dreams.
I finally cried on the evening of Mom's funeral, oddly enough, after deactivating her Facebook account.
I finally cried on the evening of Mom's funeral, oddly enough, after deactivating her Facebook account. 
I had created her account years before the Stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis. She loved Facebook and the many get-well wishes and prayers posted by friends during her five-year cancer war.
I sobbed not only because of a sudden surge of remorse, which I expected, but also due to an unexpected sense of guilt for believing I had hammered the proverbial final nail into her coffin. Yes, she died from a cancer detected far too late, but it was that final Facebook click I made and the subsequent erasure of her social media existence that represented the permanent deactivation of her earthly existence. 
Her death, which had seemed so surreal, suddenly felt most real. Mom would want my reflections to end in positive light, so I'll end this with two truths, both of which I'm most certain: She loved living her life, and she loved where she lived.


She Loved Where She Lived

Scott Saalman

Volunteer Fire Departments are, when the alarm goes off, almost the only example of enthusiastic unselfishness to be seen in this land. They rush to the rescue of any human being and count not the cost.— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The author training to be a volunteer firefighter in upstate New YorkIt's 29 degrees and the sun has long since departed. About 15 of us are standing in a semicircle outside the firehouse in East Berne, New York. We're shivering in various states of undress, waiting for the instructor to emerge and, in his signature semi-stealth manner, start his timer and say, "Go!"
By the fourth time through, it feels like my jacket sleeves and gloves are full of molasses.
This is the "donning" drill, the ritualistic start to every class in this 79-hour course for state certification as an exterior firefighter. The 25 pounds of boots, pants, jacket, fire hood, helmet and gloves that constitute "turnout" gear for structural firefighting are piled at our feet.
On the instructor's signal, we have to get it all on, zipped up, cinched up and Velcroed inside of one minute. I clock in at a gratifying 55 seconds — the first time. Then we're told to shed everything and we do it again. And again.
By the fourth time through, it feels like my jacket sleeves and gloves are full of molasses and I'm lagging.
Firefighting for Beginners, of All Ages
It's worse when I'm standing next to a 16-year-old, trying to match her agility. (Sixteen is the youngest age at which they allow trainees into the course; there is no upper age limit but I was confirmed to be the oldest student in my class.)
It took me by surprise, how fast I could wear myself out just by dressing. Of course, at home, my partner isn't standing over me with a stopwatch.
Cardiac-related events accounted for 43% of on-duty fatalities. 
The course, known by its shorthand "BEFO" (Basic Exterior Firefighting Operations) essentially eats your life for three months, three-to-four-hour classes two evenings a week and a couple of six-hour Saturday trainings.
The course stresses practical skills like "throwing" extension ladders up against buildings or handling fire hoses. These are where you find out if you and the fire service are made for each other or a laughable mismatch. A 2½-inch attack hose with nozzle is a force to be reckoned with. Fully "charged" — pressurized with water — think of it as a 100-foot python that does not want to be moved.
Another revelation: I had no idea how hard it is to pick up and throw a 50-foot roll of fire hose so that it rolls out in a straight line. Luckily, I found that a good way to build upper-body strength is doing curls with the 1,400-page "Essentials of Firefighting" textbook.
Plenty of Classwork, Too
Much of the course is taught indoors, before a seemingly endless procession of PowerPoint slides, obviously designed to test our mental endurance and durability of our "glutes." During the unit on effective radio communications, one slide offers the helpful tip to "try to pronounce words correctly."
Volunteer firefighter training in upstate New YorkWhen Ben Franklin created the prototype for the modern volunteer fire company in 1736, I doubt he ever envisioned BEFO (or the longer course known as "Firefighter One").
Life in the volunteer fire service used to be largely improvisational and frankly, a little ragtag in many cases. Over the years, the increasing load of required training has produced a much more professional cadre but can also be a drag on recruitment and retention, which is the biggest challenge to modern-day rural fire companies.
A Job for Everybody
In New York State, the more ambitious BEFO grads advance to the interior firefighter course. This is the one for those who can't wait to strap on an additional 30 lb. of air pack and charge into burning buildings.
I'm fortunate, the way this state has structured things, to be able to opt out of that and concentrate on less strenuous but no less important functions, such as driving the engines and operating the pumps. Even if all you can do is direct traffic, help wash the engines after a call, or flip pancakes at the ubiquitous fundraising breakfast, there's "a job for everybody," as the chiefs like to say.
When I first started appearing at company meetings, the chief must've sized up my gray beard and thinning hair and began vetting me by asking, "How is your heart?" He informed me that heart attack was the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths among firefighters.
Volunteer firefighter training in upstate New YorkIndeed, the National Fire Protection Assn. reports that "cardiac-related events accounted for 43% of on-duty fatalities over the 10 years ending in 2021, the largest single share." And statistically, at least, age certainly amplifies the risk.
According to the same report: "The death rate for firefighters aged 60 and over was almost three times the average. Firefighters aged 50 and over accounted for about half of all the on-duty firefighter deaths over the five-year period, although they represent only one-quarter of all the career and volunteer firefighters in the U.S."
Cancer is also a rapidly rising threat, given the toxic gasses released by the combustion of synthetic materials throughout modern buildings.
The Benefits of Joining the Service
For me, the risks and inconvenience of joining the fire service have been outweighed by the benefits. "Chief" among the benefits (besides riding in fire engines) has been a path to community engagement, new friendships and lifelong learning, not to mention the prophylactic against becoming a terminal sofa spud.
When I finally downloaded my state certificate as an Exterior Firefighter in late December, it gave me as much pride as my college diploma or any journalism award.
But I still wonder, at 67, how many years of active service I have left in me. Those who have been doing this for a while know the value of staying in shape. A former chief of my company has recently added pushups to his morning routine, "just to see how many I could do," he explains. "I'm up to 70," he brags.
So is he — almost; he'll be 70 on his next birthday.


Becoming a Firefighter in Retirement

Craig Miller

It's not that I didn't love my husband, just that I hadn't been liking him much. And I could tell from his distracted expression that he felt the same way about me. 
Not a day passed without muttered complaints about trifles (the volume of his Arsenal soccer game, the way I perched the lid on the mayonnaise jar). Paul could still make me laugh like nobody else, but how long had it been since we held hands across the dining room table?
Casey on a road tripWe'd survived worse in the past four decades. At 22, I tried to leave but couldn't stay gone. Our problem wasn't incompatibility but the struggle to raise a toddler with no plans or money. We started over, thinking we had cracked the riddle of our marriage — as if any couple ever does. 
Paul and I had started over quite a few times when the end of two demanding careers pitched us into the formlessness of working at home.
Just when you couldn't be happier to have chosen your mate, the next life transition knocks you out of your groove. Standing up to a parent, mourning that parent. Buying, then selling the home of your dreams. Sending a child into the world.
Paul and I had started over quite a few times when the end of two demanding careers pitched us into the formlessness of working at home, without any colleagues to stir things up. No wonder we annoyed each other.
A Plan is Proposed 
One night at dinner, I announced my plan: "Let's go back to counseling." I could already see us in Annette's basement office where we sat like school kids as the teacher posed her questions. My favorite, why we fell in love, got the two of us laughing. 
By directing our attention to what we cherished in each other instead of what pushed our buttons, Annette returned us to ourselves. She once told us, "It's a miracle that you found each other."
I thought Paul would say, "Book us in." He didn't.
A few dinners later, he proposed his own plan. He took my hand across the table and said, "Let's get a dog."
We needed a coach to bring us together, not a burden to pull us apart.
A dog. At our stage. Decades had passed since our son was around to play fetch. On top of the obvious drawbacks to this plan — shedding, vet bills, the trips we couldn't take with a dog — there would be fights over whose turn it was to walk the beast. We needed a coach to bring us together, not a burden to pull us apart.
"You won't do a minute more than your share," Paul said. "It'll be fun." I grew up in a household that couldn't see the point of fun. My sister and I learned early that fun would distract us from our purpose, aspiring and achieving. Despite years of therapy from people with diplomas on their walls, I still believed fun didn't solve any problems. 
But Paul really wanted this dog; his face shone at the thought. How badly did I want another round with Annette? Nowhere near enough to disappoint my husband. I swallowed hard and said yes to his plan.
A Happy-Go-Lucky Beagle Mix 
I was in no hurry to disrupt our home with a dog — not that there were many dogs who ticked all our boxes. Living in an eighth-floor condo, we couldn't train a puppy. Every dog on offer at the rescue sites needed either a backyard or experienced owners who could handle complications (health conditions, a history of abuse). 
We finally found a happy-go-lucky beagle mix with a torn right ear. He had received his basic training in a men's prison, home to one of many programs that pair castoff dogs with castoff humans who prepare them for adoption. Well loved by a prisoner who didn't get to keep him, he came to us ready to pass on the gift.
Casey's love made my husband more lovable to me.
We named him Casey. His first act in our place was to pee on a taffeta chair. Surprisingly, I didn't mind. I had nagged Paul about pen marks on the furniture, but I felt for Casey. His claws tap-tapped on the floorboards as he sniffed every corner of his new home.
Then he got on with choosing his favorite human: Paul. I'm not one to roll around on the couch with a dog who can't get enough belly-rubbing, but Paul kept at it until Casey's eyes rolled back in his head and all four legs quivered with excitement. "Aw, Casey! Aw, Casey!" bellowed my husband. 
En route to Casey's foster home, he had been cursing inattentive drivers. The free spirit on the couch was another Paul. All because he loved Casey, who loved him back without reservation.
Casey's love made my husband more lovable to me. Our miracle became real again. And I couldn't help but love the mutt who made it happen.
Dogs give unconditional love, says every dog person I know. True, but they're overlooking something: the love dogs release in their humans. As Casey settled in with us, we softened toward each other.
Paul and I were reprising an old argument — who gets dibs on our small galley kitchen if I want lunch and he's ready for breakfast — when Casey sauntered up to the counter, waiting for cheese to fall. Drool puddled on the floor and nearly sent me flying. I yelled; Casey flinched. "Sorry, Casey," I said, laughing. What do dogs know or care about apologies?
Casey's Point of View 
Paul and I know that "sorry" means admitting you are wrong. We are both so intent on being right that we have always resisted "sorry." Inspired by the drool incident, I looked at our kitchen standoffs from my husband's point of view. Perhaps his first meal of the day might take precedence over my second. I began to ask about his lunch plans before starting my omelet. Annette could have steered me to the same realization, but without any laughs along the way. Casey was fun. And I didn't do a minute more walking than my share.
Casey snoozed in the back seat, lifting his head when he heard his name. His presence knocked the rough edges off the day.
When we consulted Annette, we were too preoccupied with working and paying down the mortgage to bring a dog into our family. By the time Casey arrived, we were ready to shake up our routines and could afford vet bills when he scarfed down something rotten. Neither of us relished walks in foul weather, but taking care of Casey encouraged us to take better care of each other. His unjudging happiness makes us happier — as individuals and as a couple.
As I predicted, we've had to modify our travel habits. Between the cost of boarding and our own reluctance to leave Casey for weeks at a stretch, we don't tool around Europe much anymore. But all three of us are keen road trippers. On one adventure, we moseyed from our home in Toronto to L.A. by way of El Paso. We were crossing West Texas — mile upon mile of barbed wire and oil derricks —when it struck me that marriage is a cross-country road trip, with a lot of nothing between beauty spots.
Casey snoozed in the back seat, lifting his head when he heard his name. His presence knocked the rough edges off the day.  He could think of nowhere better to be than exactly where he was, in the constant company of his humans. I reached for Paul's hand. This was the life.


Dr. Dog, Marriage Maven

Rona Maynard

When I read last week about the disappointed University of Tampa senior who complained on Instagram that her school had cancelled its in-person graduation, I totally understood. 
Allison Clark put out a poll on social media to ask how many would attend an in-person graduation. After 80% said they would, she and two friends set up a GoFundMe page to sell tickets. Quickly, they had more than $25,000 to create their own graduation in Tampa.
Her industriousness and salesmanship were impressive; she was determined to change the course of the story. Of course, Clark and her friends should be entitled to all the pomp and circumstance a graduation ceremony would provide. 
Intellectually, I knew that given the pandemic, it was unlikely the university would invite thousands to gather for this ceremony. 
The completion of a degree is a moment of celebration and joy, one that you should be able to share with the people who accompanied you on the journey — your friends and family.  
If I'm being honest, for the past three years, I have imagined sitting at the ceremony of my own daughter Kira's graduation from law school, sharing the excitement, elation and pride of all of the other families gathered to witness the accomplishment of their loved ones.
So when I read the email that my daughter's ceremony would be virtual, tears immediately burned my eyes. Intellectually, I knew that given the pandemic, it was unlikely the university would invite thousands to gather for this ceremony. 
The Hard Work of Law School
But reading the words on the screen allowed my heart for the first time to catch up to my brain and acknowledge the reality: We would sit in our suburban home, watching on a screen, as Harvard Law School bestowed a diploma on our daughter (who would be sitting right next to us).
I couldn't help feeling cheated. Law school was taxing, to say the least, and it tested my daughter mightily. The reading, the eight-hour exams, the cold calling from professors, the interviews for summer jobs, call-backs, wardrobe choices. Offers. Non-offers. The vying for positions at law journals and clerkships. She lapped up the opportunities to hear from Supreme Court justices, learn from former Senators and mingle with presidential advisers. But then back to the reading. Always the reading.
Kira enjoyed the challenges, but there were times when her spirit was nearly crushed by the weight of it all.
"Just don't even ask, because the answer is always going to be yes," she said one night when I off-handedly said, "Do you have a lot of work to do tonight?"
I wasn't the one experiencing it, but I was watching, and even from 300 miles away, it was difficult. I've felt at once incredibly proud and immensely grateful that it was Kira and not me at law school.  
Hoping for Pomp and Circumstance 
And then came the pandemic. My husband likes to joke that, thanks to COVID-19, Kira was attending the world's most expensive correspondence class. Like students everywhere, she became a virtual lone wolf in her apartment, learning on a Zoom screen from professors who may or may not have mastered the Zoom experience. Even her summer job at a law firm was on Zoom. 
I kept thinking that surely by fall, things would be back to normal. Well, maybe by the spring semester. But alas, it was not to be. Her last 2 1/2 semesters of graduate school were remote.
And yet, to paraphrase the fictional Harvard Law School graduate Elle Woods in the movie "Legally Blonde," "She did it!" And I am so proud of her! Wouldn't a graduation ceremony make it all the more real?
It will not be what you imagined, but that doesn't make it less momentous. 
I felt like a spoiled child as I wrestled with this question. I wanted pomp. I wanted circumstance. My daughter will only graduate from law school once. Even if the university carries through on its pledge to invite students back for a post-pandemic celebration, we'll never recapture the spirit of the actual day.
I was still grappling with the situation when I ran into the cantor from my synagogue. She was facing a disappointing cancellation of the in-person gala that had been planned to honor her 10-year anniversary in the clergy. As with Kira's graduation, the event would take place on Zoom.
"So many people have had disappointments this year," she said when I asked her how she was feeling about the virtual celebration. "Weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals. But I can tell you that as I've watched, each has been special in its own way — and maybe even a little more memorable because they boiled down to the things that really matter."
Her words also brought tears to my eyes. But these tears were different. They were tears of understanding and gratitude. 
I wish I could tell Allison Clark what I now know to be true: You don't need to be in an arena surrounded by thousands of people to mark your graduation. It will not be what you imagined, but that doesn't make it less momentous.
So, on graduation day, my husband and I will toast Kira, her accomplishment and the love that we have for her, all while keeping ourselves and others healthy. That's what matters most. The rest is just pomp and circumstance.


If Graduation Happens on Zoom, Did It Really Happen?

Andrea Atkins

Anyone who has visited a kindergarten classroom knows that the phrase "ants in their pants" expertly describes the behavior of a group of wiggly 5-year-olds. So, 13 years ago, when Harold and Shirley Kobliner, of Queens, N.Y., visited their grandson's class to read a story, their friendly use of that expression to describe the energy in the room provoked much laughter among the children and "stopped them in their tracks" – so to speak.
Shirley and Harold KoblinerAs Harold explained in the introduction to the new book "So to Speak: 11,000 Expressions That'll Knock Your Socks Off," his wife Shirley (like Harold, a retired educator) proceeded to ask the kids for more expressions about bugs and they didn't disappoint – "busy as a bee" and "a social butterfly" were just two that came to their minds.
They filled every page of 26 notebooks, and countless cardboard dry cleaner inserts, with the expressions. 
He wrote: "As we drove home, we couldn't stop giggling. After I pulled into the driveway, Shirley turned to me with bright eyes. 'You know,' she said, 'this would make a great book.' I had been thinking the exact same thing."
From there, it was "full steam ahead" as the couple began collecting all of the well-known (and some not so well-known) expressions they could find – with no Googling allowed, per their own decision – from friends, family, books, newspapers, theater and everyday conversations.
Harold and Shirley Kobliner used dry-cleaning cardboard inserts to jot down the expressions they collected. They filled every page of 26 notebooks, and countless cardboard dry cleaner inserts, with the expressions. According to their daughter, Beth Kobliner, a personal finance journalist and author, her mom was recycling before it was "au courant" and "on trend."
"Every few years, when they'd reach a milestone like five thousand, or seven thousand, expressions, they just wanted to keep going," she says.
When the list reached 8,000, and the couple knew they wanted to get to at least 10,000, Harold offered his grandchildren $1 per expression. They were more than obliging, so much so that he eventually had to stop.
"He told them he was going broke," Kobliner says with a laugh. (Because "money doesn't grow on trees.")
A Project With Purpose 
Her parents committed to curating the expressions for as long as they were able. After Shirley's death in 2016, at 86, Harold continued gathering expressions – often from his caregivers eager to share their favorites — until his death from congestive heart failure at 90 in May 2020.
"When my mom died, my dad thought he might stop because he said it had been 'their thing' and something they'd worked on together," says Kobliner. "But when we were sitting Shiva [a Jewish period of mourning] in his apartment for my mom, people started talking about the book. They'd say, 'Oh, I thought of an expression for you.' He realized he wanted to keep going. And it did give him real purpose."
When their project first began to take shape, the Kobliners divided the expressions into 67 categories, with themes ranging from Animals, Luck and Foreign Language to Earth, Fire, Water & Air, Numbers, and Royalty. Some categories have more entries than others (Body, for example, has over 1,000), but all contain multiple expressions.
"Bear with Me," an illustration from "So to Speak" "My mom had the most fun categorizing them," says Kobliner. "When they'd get about a hundred more expressions written down, they'd go through and put them where they belonged."
There's also a "bonus category" featuring the Kobliners' favorite family expressions, which include Nana-isms, expressions frequently used by Shirley's mother who learned them from listening to the radio, such as "she's highfalutin."
Another charming feature of "So to Speak" is the illustrations, which Kobliner says she and her father were able to decide upon together before his death.
Since the book's release, Kobliner has heard from language experts praising her parents for amassing such a comprehensive collection.
"The publishing company Simon & Schuster sent us all these old-fashioned illustrations from the British Library – there are more than one million in the public domain," she says.
The two carefully selected the cover images, including the illustration for a particular expression that was meaningful to Harold.
"He wanted the illustration for "a feather in your cap," says Kobliner, explaining that while a soldier in the Army in 1950, her father pioneered an educational program for his fellow soldiers to learn to read so they could receive their high school diplomas. "The New York Post wrote a piece about him, 'Bronx Boy Makes Good.' He was even honored with a parade on Governors Island in 1955."
After Harold died, Kobliner finished the final copyedits and shepherded the project to its completion; "So to Speak" was published in December.
"Truth Be Told," Word Games Are Fun 
Since the book's release, Kobliner has heard from language experts praising her parents for amassing such a comprehensive collection. "A lexicographer said this book furthers the field of computational linguistics," says Kobliner. "My parents would be so proud of that."
While poring over the expressions and the accompanying art is enjoyable on its own, in the front pages of "So to Speak" are suggestions for 25 games that players of all ages can enjoy together.
One, called Mrs. Malaprop, challenges the participants on how well they really know various expressions (is it "all for naught" or "all for not?"; answer: naught). The game is exclusively available for Next Avenue readers here.
"As people are spending more time at home, games are on the rise," says Kobliner. "Playing games is a way to increase intergenerational family bonding, away from screens."
Her own three children, one in high school and two in their twenties, grew up learning these expressions shared by their grandparents. "It really made them aware of language," says Kobliner.
Above all, Harold's and Shirley's love for words and the value they placed on learning made a lasting impression on the entire family.
"My mom and dad really wrung the joy out of life – which is one of their expressions – and I want to be as exuberant about life, and about language, as they were," says Kobliner.
In other words, Harold and Shirley were "a perfect match."


A Couple Finds 11,000 Ways to Share A Love for Language

Julie Pfitzinger

"Keep working. Don't quit. You gotta live until you die. Don't ever back away from anything." Those words have been a lifelong motto for Charles Monroe Boyett and the exuberant answer to this reporter's question: "What advice would you have for someone who wants to live a long life?"
Charles Boyett at home in Chico, Calif.At age 91, dementia is tugging at the edges of his memories and eroding some of the finer details of a lifetime of experiences. But Charles still has much to share.
I first met him in the spring of 2020. He was living at the same care facility in Chico, Calif., as my mother. Before COVID-19 took hold, I would join my mother for lunch, and we often shared the table with Charles.
I was just a little ol' boy in Texas and lived on a farm all my life until I left home ... There wasn't anything important about me. But I wanted to go on and be whatever I could be.
From our first meeting, he stood out. He appeared for meals and activities always neatly dressed; crisp pressed shirts, dress pants with pleats, a large Texas-esque belt buckle, shoes freshly polished and hair carefully combed. He was the classic image of a gentleman.
Had he served in the military, I wondered? Who was this man? Once his son, Marc Boyett, gave the green light for an interview, I met up with Charles again.
"When opportunities come your way, make the best of it," said Charles, as he reflected on his life's journey and Air Force service. He had never been out of the United States before joining the military, "But before it was all said and done, I had been around the world," he said wistfully.
My recollections of initial interactions with Charles were that he always had a smile or pleasant word to exchange. He took part in singing lessons. He joined the group exercise classes. During Friday afternoon happy hour events, I would spot him singing and clapping in time with the performers.
At our lunch sessions with my mom, Charles told elaborate stories about his Air Force days.
Later, my mother would ask, "Do you think Charles has really done all these things?"
What seemed like exaggeration to us turned out to be the chapters of an eventful life.
Polio, Charles Manson and California Wildfires
Charles began his career in the Air Force where he received medical training and worked as a surgical technician during the Korean War. He was also assigned to the so-called "flying lung" project, which the Air Force set up to transport patients during the 1950s polio epidemic.
"I try to get [people] to think of themselves as being better than they ever thought they were."
His collection of personal memorabilia documents his experiences and offers a glimpse into the medical innovations of that time.
One photograph shows him working alongside a patient in a portable iron lung machine. The SAM Lung — named after the School of Aviation Medicine that designed it — was small enough to fit inside a cargo plane. Charles was part of the team that retrofitted the Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter to accommodate the SAM Lung.
He recalls the period when polio spread unchecked as "extremely frightening." But by the mid-'50s, Charles and his fellow airmen had an important role to play in stopping the virus when a polio vaccine became available. He traveled the world helping deliver inoculations to military personnel and civilians.
"You got vaccinated," he said of the military's immunization program. "People were not given a choice."
Charles wasn't a pilot, but he helped make modifications to many aircraft. A patch on his Air Force cap attests to his role as a member of the C-141A Test Team. The Lockheed military transport aircraft was designed to carry cargo and troops over long distances. It had its first flight in 1963. Once again, Charles found himself working to help refit a plane into a flying surgery and medical transport aircraft.
A polio patient in a portable lung machine is loaded on a planeAfter he retired from the Air Force in 1967, Charles spent another 20 years working as a medical technician at San Quentin Prison in California. He remembers interacting with famed, notorious prisoner Charles Manson. But that's as much of the story as he's willing to share. 
Charles said his main priority was making sure that the prisoners got the best care available. "I didn't want to do anything that would make their lives worse," he said.
He concluded his working career with another 20-year stint, this time at the California Conservation Corps, where he worked in education and recruiting. He helped corps members get their high school equivalency diploma, and during the fire season drove tankers and crew trucks. He retired from that job in 2001.
And now Charles has a new chapter to add to his life.
'He Brings so Much Joy Into My Life'
At the end of 2020, his son, Marc, decided to move his father out of the care facility and into his home. COVID-19 was taking a heavy toll on residents of the nation's long-term care facilities, and he wanted to protect his dad from the virus.
Charles Boyett with his wife, Wanda Lee Jackson Boyett, at a square dance competition"I wasn't quite prepared," said Marc, who never imagined he would be a caregiver. "Dad was weak and there were some things going on I had not been told about. I questioned, 'Did I take him away from a situation that was better for him and put him in danger?'"
In the months since, father and son have adjusted to the change, and Marc said he has learned a great deal, including not treating his father like a child — a common misstep when adult children take on caregiving duties for a parent.
"I'm a lot stronger than I thought; emotionally stronger because it can be trying [caring for an aging parent]. But I do believe I made the right choice because he's happy," said Marc.
"I've never known my dad to not be happy," he adds. "He brings so much joy into my life." (Charles, sitting nearby, laughed and his eyes lit up upon hearing this.)
Insights to Share
As we wrapped up our visit, I asked Charles what he remembers most fondly about his life's journey.
He lovingly described his wife and children and recounted global travels, all the while holding a warm smile and a gleam in his eye.
"I look back at my life and I was just a little ol' boy in Texas and lived on a farm all my life until I left home," explained Charles. "Until then, I hadn't done anything and there wasn't anything important about me. But I wanted to go on and be whatever I could be. I knew I had work to do to try and do the very best I could, wherever I might happen to be," he said.
During his time in the Air Force, Charles Boyett (in white coveralls) helped transport polio patients in a portable iron lung machine that helped them breathe.Charles and many other older adults have lived through important, historical moments and have valuable lessons and insights to share.
Spending time with him reminded me that advancing age and infirmity don't diminish the gifts we can offer others. Charles' can-do attitude is infectious, and he appeared to inspire my mother. When she talked about his stories, she seemed to have a renewed interest in living.
A natural mentor, Charles sees something special in everyone.
"Some people for some reason or another don't think they are good enough to do whatever they are supposed to do, and I try to get them to think of themselves as being better than they ever thought they were," said Charles.
I'm grateful for the time spent with Charles for myself … and my mother.
This article is made possible with funding from the NextFifty Initiative.

Lunch Sessions and Life Lessons With My 91-Year-Old Friend Charles

Julia Yarbough

Serita Jones hasn't given much thought to her career.
"Mostly I'm thinking about my feet," she says. "I don't even know if you'd call what I got a career. What I got is a job. Two jobs, to be honest."
Jones is a direct-care worker at a long-term care (LTC) facility in Glendale, Ariz. After a day spent delivering lunch trays and supervising singalongs, she drives a half-hour to a big-box store where she has a job as a cashier. Neither of her employers has ever mentioned career advancement.
"They're not that kind of jobs," says Jones, a 37-year-old Black woman. "Anyhow, you have to have a college diploma or something to be a manager at the facility. I only finished high school."
Natasha Bryant has heard stories like this before. "They're the result of a disconnect in the LTC industry," says the managing director and senior research associate at LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit aging-services providers. "We have diverse frontline staff, but our leaders are predominately white."
Where Are the LTC Leaders of Color?
A just-published report from PHI, an authority on the direct-care workforce, backs that up. It found that workers in the industry are well represented by people of color, but only about 12% of long-term care leaders are people of color.
"Frontline staff were largely people of color who often had to work two or three jobs to make a living wage. We found few opportunities for advancement."
Marvell Adams found similar biases with a more casual investigation.
"My colleagues and I Googled the CEOs of the top 200 LTC service providers in the country," reports Adams, COO of Kendal Corp., a nonprofit elder-care services organization in Pennsylvania. "And then we threw in the top ten percent of the board chairs from those organizations and we came up with nine or ten people of color."
A 2020 report from the U.S. Census Bureau says Americans 65 and older will number more than 77 million by 2035. As the population grows more ethnically diverse, the need for an ethnically diverse elder-care system is a must.
Winds of Change?
It can happen, according to principal players in the LTC industry who claim things are changing on the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) front. 
Leaders are gearing up to address issues of compensation for lower-lever caregivers; the need for mentoring and career-laddering; more and better internships and college-incentive programs that will promote leadership-level courses by people of color.
"It's a lot to go after," admits Adams, who's also a LeadingAge board member. "And because a lot of this is new, we're all still in the talking and organizing stages. Nothing will happen overnight. But it's got to happen, because our workforce is increasing."
"When you start out with no diversity in leadership and your CEO retires, your board of directors will usually bring in a search firm to locate candidates. Are both of these groups made up of white men? Probably."
He isn't kidding. The PHI report found that 4.6 million workers were employed in facility and private-care jobs last year, up from 3.1 million just 10 years before. The study projects another 1.3 million direct-care personnel will join that workforce in the next decade, creating more new jobs than any other single occupation. 
But will direct-care workers be led by more ethnically diverse leaders?
It's possible, says Adams, who points out that other American industries have mastered workplace diversity. But it won't happen in long-term care, he believes, until the industry cops to its own systemic racism.
"When you start out with no diversity in leadership and your CEO retires, your board of directors will usually bring in a search firm to locate candidates," Adams says. "Are both of these groups made up of white men? Probably. So you can guess who they're going to hire when there's no history of diversity among those doing the hiring. It's this insane cycle."
Adams knows that insanity firsthand. He's been in the long-term care field for 20 years, yet only once has a recruiter who was a person of color reached out to him. 
Another time, a white recruiter confided the worst. "She told me I wasn't being considered for a position because I'm Black," Adams recalls. "The employer used words like 'wouldn't be a good fit' which, when you're Black, usually means 'He's not white.' And this was a recruiter whose recruitment package promoted diversity."
A Big Time Blind Spot
Christopher Laxton, executive director of a group known as the American Medical Directors Association (AMDA) and The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, acknowledges that long-term care groups fill executive positions with mostly white candidates found through less-than-diverse search firms. 
"It's a blind spot," admits Laxton. He found out firsthand when AMDA presented a summit last December on the impact of racism on long-term care.
"We focused on facility residents, frontline staff and leadership," Laxton says, "and found stark disparities. Frontline staff were largely people of color who often had to work two or three jobs to make a living wage. We found few opportunities for advancement."
Solutions to the DEI Leadership Problem
Bryant believes placing term limits on board positions is a good first step in creating diversity. "Also, expanding the number of board members would create more intentionality in the industry," she says, "and prevent a decision-making board from being the same white faces year after year."
Paying LTC workers a living wage wouldn't hurt, either. That PHI report found that direct-care workers continued to struggle in poverty-level jobs across all long-term care settings. Fixing that might be the best place to start, says Janet Coffman, an associate professor at University of California, San Francisco. That's because it could reduce job turnover and make the industry more attractive to people of color, who might then be more likely to stay and advance into leadership positions. 
"We've got to start with these difficult, messy conversations with our boards and our leaders."
But neither Coffman nor others interviewed for this story are sure where money for better wages will come from. 
"This is an industry largely dependent on Medicaid for funding, and Medicaid is already strung pretty tight," Coffman points out. Bryant has heard of private-pay facilities charging more in order to pay staff a higher wage but says that doesn't address wage issues at Medicaid facilities.
"While we figure out where more money is coming from, we need leaders to invest in staff development by partnering with community colleges," says Coffman, who co-authored a 2018 report on racial and ethnic diversity in the LTC workforce. "Let's clear pathways for people of color to progress educationally and professionally within their LTC workplace."
Incentivizing education for LTC workers is a new frontier, reports Adrienne Ruffin, LeadingAge vice president of Strategic Initiatives. Toward that end, her organization is launching numerous diversity initiatives and programs aimed at inspiring college students to consider LTC work.
"We worked with twenty-nine students over ten weeks at our recent Summer Enrichment Program," Ruffin says. "About half of them were people of color. We gave them a variety of work opportunities and a mentor to ensure their success, and onsite training and networking opportunities. The students saw the lack of diversity in leadership and wanted to work on that."
"This is a change in culture, and it's going to be a long journey that's just getting started."
LeadingAge has a range of further initiatives planned, including learning modules on LGBTQ+ inclusion; how to engage residents in dialogues about racial justice and why unconscious bias shows up in the workplace. 
The organization's late-October LTC leadership conference will emphasize ways to bring more people of color into management roles and offer sessions on diversity in aging services through seminars with titles like "How to Start Talking about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" and "Creating Brave Spaces for Conversations about Diversity."
Ruffin is all for initiatives, sessions and seminars. "But once we get qualified people of color into leadership roles, we have to support them," she cautions. "I talked to a leader of color who felt lonely in her job. Support from her colleagues would have prevented that. White men are accustomed to support at the leadership level, but we've got to learn to offer it to leaders of color, too."
In the meantime, diversity in the LTC workplace is still mostly just being born. 
"We've got to start with these difficult, messy conversations with our boards and our leaders," Bryant says. "Because this is not a one-size-fits-all thing, and there's no checklist of what to do. This is a change in culture, and it's going to be a long journey that's just getting started."
It's a journey that Serita Jones can't fathom.
"I'd love to get better paid," she admits with a laugh. "I'd love to wear something other than scrubs and have a nice office and not have to soak my feet in ice when I get home at night."
She shakes her head. "But I don't know. Where will I find time to go to school and learn how to be a manager or whatever? And who's going to pay for that? You know what I'm saying?"
This story is part of The Future of Elder Care, a Next Avenue initiative with support from The John A. Hartford Foundation.

Where is the Diversity in Long-Term Care Leadership?

Robrt L. Pela

When Judy Beggs sat down at age 49 with a career counselor, she never imagined that 15 years later she’d be providing career counseling to girls on the edge of the Sahara.
Judy BeggsBeggs was in the middle of finalizing her divorce and had her mind set on joining the Peace Corps. But after years working as a lawyer taking hundreds of people through divorce, Beggs says, “I knew there’s a tendency to do wild things after a divorce. I wanted to make a grounded decision.”
At the end of her sessions, the career counselor gave her a list of things people did who had her profile: Peace Corps volunteer was on the list.
“If you’ve got a wild hair, I think you ought to follow it,” says Beggs, who lives most of the year in Denver. “You were sensible when you were younger. It’s time not to be sensible.”
Planting the Seed in Senegal

A year later, Beggs was stationed as a Peace Corps volunteer (and about 25 years older than most) in Guéoul, Senegal — a village of about 11,000 on the edge of the Sahara in northern Africa. Her two-year tour, she says, felt lonely and ineffective.
Beggs was assigned to work with the village’s head medical worker who was not keen on help from a Peace Corps volunteer, particularly one who caught him stealing small fees from incoming patients. She returned home to practice law in Denver, feeling “frustrated and unfulfilled.” And yet, part of her heart was still pulled towards the people of Guéoul.
About 10 years after her Peace Corps tour, Beggs returned to Guéoul with her friend John Montaña, who also lives in Denver. During their visit, the pair sat down for tea with a teacher who told them about the problem keeping girls in school.
When Montaña learned that Beggs was already contributing her own money to keep a few girls in school in Senegal, he said, “Let’s keep a bunch of them in school!” Within a little over a year, in 2004, Friends of Guéoul (FOG) was established as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, with Beggs as executive director. Its vision: by helping girls attend and succeed in school, the overall quality of life in the village would improve and further impact the entire country. This outcome is one that many African countries are striving to achieve.
Impact of Educating a Girl
“When you educate a boy, you educate a man. When you educate a girl, you educate a whole nation.” The girls in Guéoul can recite this African proverb by heart. It may sound cliché, but the impact of female education on a country can’t be denied.
According to UNESCO, girls with a higher level of education are less likely to get married early: Child marriages would decrease by 14 percent if all girls finished primary education. Also, according to UNESCO, girls with more years of education are less likely to have children at an early age and less likely to die in childbirth. Improving girls’ education also decreases malnutrition in the world.
To date, FOG has supported 181 girls. Each year, 14 new girls in first grade (usually from the poorest families in the village) are identified for a yearly $100 “scholarship.” With the extra income, families are less likely to ask their daughter to stay home to work or send her off to get married (so she’s no longer a financial burden). These scholarship girls are called boursières.
In the summer of 2018, FOG offered the first journalism program for Guéoul’s girls through a grant from the Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Imagine teaching a 16-year-old Senegalese girl how to write a story about her life, her village, and/or her country. Then imagine teaching her how to type on a keyboard and broadcast it so that the whole world can read the story. When you empower someone with the ability to share stories, you ignite change that grows exponentially.
FOG 2018 summer journalism student DioDio Diop (who contributed to, and is pictured in, this online story) is one of the boursières who completed high school and is now attending midwifery school. She started receiving the yearly scholarship when she was seven.
Obtaining the high school diploma is not easy. Whether you earn your diploma depends on passing a single exam. Beggs says, “Last year only 46 percent of the students passed.” For the first time in FOG’s history, two of the kids who passed were boursières.
The Future
With help from of a long list of volunteers and donors over the years, FOG has provided ESL (English as a Second Language) summer school programs to children of all ages; ESL training for teachers; journalism classes for boursières and computer literacy classes for the entire community. It also built a computer lab.
While FOG plans to continue supporting girls’ K-12 education, it is also beginning to raise funding for post-high school educational pursuits for graduates like DioDio. The hope is to further establish Guéoul as a digital hub for education and literacy between the new capital city of Dakar in the south and the old capital city of St. Louis in the north (a five- to six-hour drive).
Twice a year for 15 years, Beggs has been making the multi-day trek to Guéoul. There she meets the new boursières and asks them what they want to be when they grow up. “I present them a list of possibilities — ideas they might never have considered,” says Beggs.
Now 78, Beggs admits that as she has gotten older, the journey has became more difficult and the living environment harder to adapt to; but this doesn’t stop her.
“Most physical shortcomings don’t keep you from going on ahead and doing things that are a stretch,” she says, and then asks, “What are the dreams you had as a youth that you absolutely buried?”
(You can learn more about helping the Friends of Guéoul’s mission here.)


Helping Girls in Senegal Achieve Their Dreams

Amanda McCracken

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