Several years ago, when having lunch with my old friend Buz, 91, who lived at Broadmead, he told me, “In order to keep my mind sharp, I decided to memorize the 150 Psalms from the Bible.” He then recited Psalm 119, the longest.
Not to be outdone, I recited the few Psalms that I knew by heart, with Buz joining in. It was great fun. In addition to memorizing the Psalms, Buz had just completed another play. He had several produced in his lifetime.
Two years ago, Buz passed away. At 96, his body had failed him, but his mind was still sharp.
“Anyone who stops learning is old whether at 20 or 80,” said industrialist Henry Ford, adding, “Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
For those not as self-motivated as my friend Buz, there are many stimulating courses to take and to teach all over town. Teaching in the Johns Hopkins Odyssey program keeps me young. Because some of my students, or participants, as I prefer to call them, are older than I and are experts in their fields, I need to be at the top of my game, so to speak. Whether I am teaching plays, short stories, poetry or novels, I always re-read and research — history and criticism.
Several of my super-smart senior participants during the past 15 years have included an 82-year-old Hopkins and Harvard graduate, who practiced law for 56 years before recently retiring; JoAnn, retired from Maryland Public Television; Eileen, a former elementary school teacher and her husband, Mike, a retired emergency medicine physician, who now writes plays; and Tom, a newly retired cardiologist who loves Shakespeare.
But I am not the only instructor in the Odyssey program who finds great mental stimulation. Circuit Court Judge Stephen Sfekas taught a popular course on the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi judges, then taught “The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson,” a timely course that I took and enjoyed.
Pete Kakel, an insurance broker for 37 years, returned to university at 53, earning a Ph.D. in Modern History, and has been teaching courses at Odyssey for the past several years. Each course focused on a historical event of the time: The Holocaust, the Vietnam War, the New Deal. Discussions focused on how academic historians have explained the American Revolution that included an all-day trip to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
Odyssey, however, is not the only program in Baltimore geared to older adults. Courses at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, offered at Johns Hopkins and at Towson University, and the Notre Dame Renaissance Program, occur during the day in contrast to Odyssey’s courses, scheduled mostly in the evenings, making them more convenient for some.
The Community College of Baltimore sends instructors to retirement communities, such as Edenwald, where a good friend has taught a popular course on Historic Churches and Synagogues in Maryland.
In her review of Gail Collins’ “No Stopping Us Now,” “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, 83, said, “If you’re 70-plus, you could be Speaker of the House, as Nancy Pelosi was, sit on the Supreme Court, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg did, or work for ’60 Minutes’ (Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney lasted into their 90s).”
Or as researcher and writer Paula Spencer says: “The brain you have is the brain you build.” Whether you choose to memorize Psalms, write plays, take or teach courses, just keep on building your brain.
— Lynne Agress, Towson
The letter writer teaches in the Odyssey Program of the Johns Hopkins University and was president of BWB-Business Writing Inc., a writing and editing consulting company.
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