Ida Davidoff remembers showing up as a college freshman seventy-nine years ago. That was at Simmons College in Boston where President Henry Lefavour gave a talk to the entering students on the subject of sex. The dominant image that stays in Dr, Davidoff’s memory is “the girls that had fainted and were carried out.”

But her focus does not remain fixed on the past, however hilarious. Instead she says “I am the wave of the future.” By this she means to indicate the range of her activities. She sees clients as a therapist, gives talks, receives awards, and works on a book to be entitled Youth – a Gift of Nature, Aging – a Work of Art.

Among other enterprises, Dr. Davidoff works out with her personal trainer, takes singing lessons (recently she serenaded a friend with “Happy Birthday” sung over the telephone), and gives expression to her philosophy of life.

That philosophy features several points that fit nicely with my own. First is an acceptance of change as a condition for vibrant life. Connected with that is an acceptance of losses with a spirit of liberation freeing us to seek substitutes. And, finally, a new balance between dependence and interdependence that allows us to accept help from others while continuing to do what we can do for ourselves.

After two difficult years filled with health problems, Ida Davidoff has grown accustomed to dealing with her physical self as it misfunctions. She has developed a familiarity that allows her to speak both sternly and sympathetically.

Here’s the line she has developed for addressing this issue: “Now, Body, I hate to be so angry at you, but I have to let you know how I feel about this. From now on I forgive you.”

She also shows skill at asking herself vital questions and then answering them. “What do you do when you are feeling anxious?” asked this perceptive 96-year-old. “I try to help someone, I read big-print books to a neighbor.”

Dr. Davidoff was one of many speakers at a recent conference sponsored by the Simmons College Graduate School of Health Studies. Participants were urged in advance by Dean Harriet Tolpin to bring with them someone from a generation older or younger than theirs, as many in the audience in fact did. A show of hands revealed that members of every decade from the twenties through the nineties were present.

Dean Tolpin stated the purpose of  the gathering – to promote dialogue about successful aging. And she assigned everyone this post-conference task: when you go home,  “you must talk about one thing you learned with a family member or friend.”

She also termed appropriate the conference’s sponsorship by a women’s college. After all, she observed, in age-related crises “women are the primary decision-makers . . . not only for themselves but for other family members and even their friends.”

Such decisions, she stated, should be shared decisions. They should also be taken before crises actually occur.

Keynote speaker was Margery Silver, associate director of Harvard Medical School’s study of 100-year-olds. Among her slides was a photo of the oldest American currently alive, surrounded by members of her six-generation family. This Philadelphia-area woman is 118, her daughter 96,  and her granddaughter 50 – perhaps an image of the way more families will be age-shaped in the future.

Dr. Silver pointed out characteristics shared by the centenarians she has studied. She herself was surprised to discover how many of them live in three-deckers, usually on the second floor with relatives on at least one of the other levels.

Many of these oldest people have a lively sense of humor, notably the person who was asked what is the greatest advantage of outliving most of your contemporaries.  The answer always gets a rise from an audience:  “No peer pressure.”

Contrary to popular opinion, these survivors are not isolated and alone. Their personal relationships remain strong. In general, they like to learn new things. On a scale that measures neuroticism, they score low and they deal with stress better than other people. It’s not that they are stress-free, it’s just that they know how to handle it. Their secret weapon may be their ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Others probably did not notice another trait of centenarians that caught my attention: they avoided exposure to the sun. It confirms me in my view of sunbathing as a practice that makes one’s skin age faster.

Late in the conference I interviewed several of the graduate students present. One, Quincy Eagler, when asked what he thinks about old age, answered  “I think it’s great, I think it’s kind of what you make of it. If you just kind of know now and prepare for it and change your life style, I think it’s as fun as any time in your life. It’s not something you look at negatively.”

Richard Griffin

“What was the greatest surprise of your life,” a Harvard student asked Billy Graham three weeks ago. His answer took just two words: “Its brevity.”

Not surprisingly, this famous evangelist has found the passage of years swift. When you move around the world as often as he does, and have an appointment calendar as crowded as his, it must be hard to keep track of the years.

He has certainly come a long way from his boyhood, when he worked on his father’s dairy farm in North Carolina. He looks back on those days fondly, with two incidents in particular standing out.

When he was sixteen years old, he recalls, the first of two significant visitors came by. It was Babe Ruth and Billy got to shake hands with him.

Later, however, a second  person arrived who was to have a incomparably more powerful impact on the young man. This visitor was a preacher who “spoke with tremendous conviction and urgency.”

At a meeting of some four thousand people, the preacher asked for anyone who felt moved to step forth and be born again. “I got up out of my seat,” Billy Graham recalls, “and stood in the front.” It was the moment when the direction of his whole life would be set.

“I had gone through a revolution, and become a new person,” he says of the experience. When he woke up the next day everything seemed different.

These are the vibrant recollections of a man now eighty years old. He has entered a new era when many things have become hard. Pain has become a constant companion. Of his Parkinson’s disease, Rev. Graham says, “It doesn’t kill people, it just makes them wish they were dead.”

Three years ago he fell and broke his back. Since then, he has again fallen eighteen or twenty times. To make matters worse, his wife has been hospitalized for several weeks. So Billy Graham knows at first hand the travails frequently associated with old age.

His spirit, however, remains clear and strong. As retired senator Alan Simpson said in introducing him, “He is a man of great passion and wisdom.”

I found it fascinating to watch him perform in a setting, the Kennedy School of Government, not famous for its compelling interest in religion. He delivered his formal speech there with unabashed advocacy for God and conviction that Jesus is the answer to basic human problems.

Speaking to the question “Is God relevant to the 21st Century?,” Rev. Graham dealt with three issues. First, human evil and the self-destructive habits that we cannot break. Graham’s answer?: The Bible says that the problem lies within the human heart and God alone can help us.

Billy Graham told his listeners that each one of them, whether they know it or not, yearns for God. He recalled Raisa Gorbachev  once telling him, “You know I’m an atheist, but I cannot help but feel there is more out there.”

The second issue for Graham is human suffering. “I’ve never met a person in the whole world,” he said, “who didn’t have a problem.” But King David in the Bible suffered more than most people, yet he could ultimately say “The Lord is my shepherd.”

And, finally, comes death. Of his own, this confident evangelist says, “Right now, if I died, I know where I would go.”

Graham recommends this prayer of repentance: “God, I’ve broken your laws, by faith I give myself to you.” In response, he says that “God will come into your life and change it.”

The question period drew from students and others fervent expressions of esteem for the man. A divinity school student told him: “I love you, man of God.” Another person said, “Billy Graham is the most popular person in the eyes of man and God.”

A graduate student asked a challenging question: “Did your ministry avoid the big public issues?” Graham offered a disarming response saying “We cannot judge a man’s life until it’s completed. So many things I now wish I had done differently.”

The same divinity school student mentioned above asked a question that also challenged the Christian evangelist. “How does one make the call for Jesus Christ in an inter-faith environment?” To this Graham did not have much to say beyond “It’s the life you live.”

Pushing the same theme further another student asked, “Will God forget all who do not believe in Jesus Christ?” Graham replied that “God is a God of love and mercy, forgiveness and judgment.” He then added that the question itself can only be answered by God.

The session concluded with further praise for the world-famous evangelist, the friend and counselor to nine United States presidents. Said Alan Simpson: “I’d rather see a sermon any day instead of hearing one.”

Richard Griffin

Jane Goodall, famous the world over for her work with the chimpanzees of Africa, is an altogether extraordinary woman. Now 65 years old, she continues her career of passionate interest in and concern for animals. She also cares deeply about the world of nature and constantly recruits others to help rescue that world from the injuries inflicted upon it by human beings.

I had the opportunity to watch Dr. Goodall  speak last week  to a wildly enthusiastic audience that filled a large auditorium at the Harvard School of Education. Some three hundred others, disappointed at the door, listened in another building. The size of the crowd suggests that many people know about the speaker’s magnetic personality and compelling message.

Jane Goodall began by greeting us with loud and prolonged “woohs,” echoing  the sounds made by chimps when they hail one another. This made a unique start in a lecture filled with fascinating anecdotes and heartfelt accounts of a life loaded with adventure. She gives more detailed segments of that life in her just-published autobiography entitled Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.

In the lecture she spoke of her childhood, of falling in love with Tarzan when she was nine years old. The other Jane, Tarzan’s companion, she dismissed as “wimpy.”  When, as a twenty-three-year-old she went off to live in Africa for the first time, everyone laughed at her, except her mother Vanne. In fact, her mother came with her, “two crazy Englishwomen,” as they were regarded forty years ago.

It was the beginning of “an amazing adventure that hasn’t ended yet.”  Jane’s purpose was to learn about the closest animal relatives of human beings so as better to understand us humans. Many of her practices were sternly disapproved by scientists of the time. Not only did she befriend animals and give them names but she also ascribed personalities to them. What she calls her  “worst anthropomorphic sin” was attributing to them both mind and emotions. By now, scientific attitudes have changed: Jane thanks the chimps for helping blur the formerly hard line drawn between animals and us.

Partly as a result of her work, people now recognize how “we are, after all, part of the natural world, much closer to the animals than we used to think.”  However, many human beings, she says,  still “are terrified to acknowledge our likeness to animals.”

Like us, chimpanzees have a long childhood needed for them to learn adult behavior. They also value close long-lasting relationships with one another. In captivity, they can live up to 64 years of age, while in the wild they tend not to last beyond 50. Studies show them capable of abstract thought; their emotional life, however, has proven more difficult to fathom.

Even their champion, Jane Goodall, admits that chimps have a dark side. She has seen evidence of aggression toward neighboring chimps marked by extraordinarily brutal behavior. But they also show that compassion and love are deeply rooted within them.

Goodall decries the human violence, the waste, and the pollution that are endangering the survival of chimps and other animals throughout the world. The crime and violence worked by humans on one another also troubles her deeply. And the rise in the numbers of humans and their need for food present other serious problems.

In keeping with her book title, however, Jane Goodall still finds hope in the face of huge challenges to the world’s survival. She places this hope in the following realities:

1. the human brain that is powerful and inventive enough to reverse the negative factors at work in the world;
2. the resilience of nature that with human help, as in the instance of the Thames River in her native London, can come back from the brink of extinction;
3. the energy and commitment of young people; and
4. the indomitable human spirit as shown, for instance, in the recovery of South Africa from apartheid.

Dr. Goodall believes that human beings working together can make a decisive difference. To judge by the long lines of her listeners who waited to buy her book and to sign up for her “Roots and Shoots” environmental and humanitarian program, many others agree.

I talked briefly to a young Reading public school teacher, Samantha Genier, who told me, “She made me want to be something and to get involved; she made it seem real, you’re like in the jungle with her.”

Then I buttonholed an older woman, Mary Tonougar, who was also much impressed with Jane Goodall. “I’ve been following her since she was a young woman, on the PBS specials and things like that.”

“Do you share her hope for the world?,”  I asked. “I would like to say yes, but I don’t know, the way things are going now,” Mary replied regretfully. “There’s nothing wrong with her reasons for hope but there’s something wrong with our society today.”

Richard Griffin

My maternal grandfather, Richard Barry, arrived in this country as an immigrant from Ireland in 1871. The ship’s log  recorded his name and lists him as “laborer,” though he was only twelve years old.

Besides the rich genetic inheritance passed on to me, he also gave me two of his names. I treasure his achievements in establishing himself as a successful leather worker and ultimately a factory owner. Even more do I appreciate the way he and my grand-mother founded a family that handed down to me a strong tradition of community service and spiritual values.

From this one part of my family tradition, you can understand why the immigration of other people to America stirs sympathy in me. My strong instinct is to welcome those who have come from other countries to ours. Especially as I enter into later years, I  feel happy about the stimulation that has come with the growing diversity of our national life.

I also admire people who work on behalf of immigrants’ rights. Among them is Miriam Stein, a reader of this column in Arlington, who suggested that I write about an event scheduled for this week. Miriam works at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refu-gee Advocacy Coalition, the agency that is coordinating this event.

On Friday, September 17th a delegation of 80 Massachusetts immigrants and their advocates will travel from Boston to Washington in order to visit the offices of Representatives and Senators. They will be joined there by some one thousand newcomers from the other states.

The date chosen was designated Citizenship Day (formerly called “Constitution Day” ) in 1952, a time appointed for honoring the American Constitution for the freedoms it guarantees us and for recognizing the people who have become citizens here.

On this occasion, the visitors to the capital intend to speak with members of Congress about softening some provisions of three 1996 laws connected with welfare reform. These changes went beyond the intent of many members of Congress and have adversely affected non-citizens, some of whom have lived in the United States for a long time.

The advocates in Washington will ask legislators to fix repressive features of the 1996 laws. The first of the proposed “Fix 96” bills would restore benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps, and SSI (Supplemental Security Income) to immigrants who have lost these supports.

They include children, victims of domestic violence, elders, and people with dis-abilities. Though Massachusetts has replaced these cuts with a program of its own, the Commonwealth is the only state to do so.

A second bill would allow immigrants who are eligible for permanent resident visas to stay here until their applications are processed. Without this provision, many breadwinners have been expelled and forced to wait elsewhere as long as ten years for permanent residency, thus reducing members of their families (many of them citizens) to poverty.

Thirdly, another bill would provide relief and equal treatment to many Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Haitians living in the United States. Many immigrants from Cuba and Nicaragua were allowed to get green cards; this would give parity to the four groups named above.

Finally, the Family Reunification Act of 1999, legislation sponsored by Representative Barney Frank, would stop automatic deportation of long-term legal residents for relatively minor transgressions committed many years ago. Though it may sound like a good idea to bar such people from citizenship, the matter is more complicated than that. Some young people, for instance, may have been falsely accused and yet convicted.

I talked to a woman named Raquel Matthews, an immigrant from Colombia now living in Lynn. Her nephew has been deported to Colombia after having completed a ten-year prison term for possession of cocaine. A U. S. Army veteran, the man has two tee-nage daughters who live in Florida and whom he is not allowed to see.

Of her nephew she says,  “I’m not taking away from what he did, but his whole family is hurt.  It’s not fair, he paid his dues.”

I also interviewed two advocates who are flying  to Washington. Patricia Lambert, a Sister of St. Joseph resident in Waltham and a long-time supporter of people in need, explains why she’s going:  “To me it’s really important as a religious woman to join with others when justice issues are being addressed.”

Sister Pat, now 71, identifies with immigrants much the way I do. Comparing  to-day’s immigrants with her Irish ancestors, she says: “This is the same kind of people looking for the same things.”

Victor Do Couto, himself an immigrant from the Azores at age six, currently directs MAPS (Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers). He explains his involve-ment: “In 1996 some unfair, punitive, and blatantly anti-immigrant legislation was passed. In so doing they lumped all immigrants and all aliens together. They also restricted immigrants who are legal and pay taxes. I have a problem with that.”

So do I.

Richard Griffin