Is it possible to be in your nineties and at the same time be happy? Contact with two dynamic ladies born in 1913 has convinced me that it is.

Best of friends, Helen Grimes and Marcia Kleinman vie with one another in their zest for life. In a conversation of an hour and a half, it’s difficult to keep up with this duo. They bubble over with enthusiasm for almost everyone and everything.

Though both dating from the Wilson administration, they grew up quite differently. Helen’s family was Irish Catholic in Cambridge; Marcia’s was Jewish in New York. The latter’s father owned a window factory in Brooklyn and was affluent, while Helen’s family had little money.

Helen’s education came through the contacts she had with the families she served as a domestic. Marcia had the advantage of graduating from New York University to which she commuted by train.

Both have strong political views, neither cherishing any love for George W. Bush and his regime. Marcia’s political consciousness developed through her post-college work for the American Jewish Congress. She felt radicalized by seeing signs “No Hebrews may apply” and experiencing other forms of discrimination.

For her part, Helen would ultimately rebel against her inherited faith. “That Irish Catholic stuff was pushed down your throat,” she explains. She left the church in her 40s, in part because “I didn’t believe in heaven or hell.” Now, along with her daughter Dot Harrigan, she considers herself a Humanist, rather than a Christian.

Marcia’s evolution differs from that of her friend. “I’m Jewish,” she says, “but I’m ecumenical.” She takes great delight in having wide ethnic and religious variety in her extended family. Among the latter, she mentions a great-grandson whose name is Gabriel Wong.

Helen traces her intellectual development back to a single book that continues to inspire her thinking. That book is Will Durant’s “The Story of Philosophy,” first suggested to her by a Yankee woman in whose household Helen worked as a mother’s helper.

Both women feel devoted to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education where they have been involved for decades. In the spirit of adventure, they take a variety of courses.

Helen laughingly tells of taking a life drawing class and sketching a nude male model. “I did down as far as possible,” she recalls, “and up as far as possible, but I didn’t do possible.”

Not surprisingly, both women draw much of their vitality from contact with younger generations. Of the wives chosen by her two boys, Marcia says: “I fell in love with my daughters-in-law.” As to those different from herself, she boasts: “I call myself the best ecumenical specimen in captivity.”

But don’t let the buoyancy of these women fool you─both have known heartache and disappointment. Helen lost her own mother when she was only eleven. And one of her daughters died of alcoholism at the age of 53.

Marcia’s first marriage ended in divorce when her first son was only two-and-a-half. “At that time,” she observes, “divorce was looked down on.” And she lost a wonderful sister at age 39.

At one point the ladies turned to this writer, asking me to explain why some people have long lives. Clearly, they were addressing the question to the wrong person. They have the answer themselves.

Helen Metros, another woman who recently shared with me her experience of life, says: “I never have time to be sick; I’ve missed but one day of work in seven years.”

Since the mid twentieth century, she has worked at two Harvard Sq    uare restaurants, finding satisfaction in waiting upon many different people, some of them famous. Among the latter she counts John Kennedy, Fidel Castro, Clement Attlee, George W. Bush (in his Harvard Business School days), Tip O’Neill, David Pryor, and Ben Affleck.

“To me they’re not big names; they come in and I wait on them,” she explains. What does count, Helen expresses in a favorite slogan: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”

Like the other Helen, she grew up in South Boston in an Irish Catholic family. In the 1930s there, she says, everyone was poor but doors were never locked and no one went hungry.

Her husband, now retired, comes from the Greek Orthodox tradition. For worship, they are accustomed to go to both Catholic and the Orthodox churches. “That’s part of marriage,” Helen believes, “you incorporate what you have.” Her religious spirit shows in other ways: “I know I have God with me all the time,” she says.

She derives warm satisfaction from a party she gives every year for 50 of the oldest and neediest people around. Also, she sponsors an annual concert at Children’s Hospital.

These activities make her feel happy. So do her family relationships. “I love to be with my grandchildren,” she enthuses. Of her spouse she says: “He’s a good husband, father, grandfather. How can you ask for anything more in life?”

Richard Griffin