Iconic Elders

Every time I read (and it's often) about the lack of role models for vibrant eldering, I pause & ponder how much things have changed in my lifetime, not just in my little home town, but around the country.

A couple generations back, when I was a kid, everyone in my little home town rubbed elbows with great role models of fabulous "ancients" (to use Mom's term).  If you drew a circle a 1/4 mile around our little house perched on the Top Lawn, you'd have found Peggy Hyatt, the Raymond Synnestvedts, the Arthur Synnestvedts, Lester & Grace Asplundh, "Grandma" Rose & Pop-Pop" (I was a fictitious Rose, due to living next to the Grubbs & across from Stanley & Gina), Ken Synnestvedt, Andy & Ruth Klein, Miss Cornelia, Miss Ashby.  And there are probably a LOT that I've forgotten or didn't have the pleasure of knowing.

These were people I saw a lot around our neighborhood.  To the list, I'd add my parents' friends - Phil & Doris Pendleton, Benita Odhner, Viola Ridgeway, Willard & Gay Pendleton.  And iconic  elders like the Powells & the Klips, who tended orchards & harvested crops.

What was typical for Bryn Athyn was also the norm across our great country - grandma & grandpas, great-aunts & uncles, living in houses & tending gardens, welcoming their grandchildren & their grandkids' friends in for a glass of lemonade & some cookies.  Older folks I saw as a kid around town or in Soneson's Store, or as a teen at Friday Supper & church.

Was it unusual of me to appreciate from an early age what awesome role models I had in Elmo Acton & George deCharms, church leaders with (respectively) a deliciously dry sense of humor & a propensity for word play?  To realize how unusual it was to walk past Arthur Wells' incredible cacti?  I hope not.  

Like most communities around us, Bryn Athyn is no longer the village it once was.  Fewer & fewer kids hang with friends from down the street;  structured play dates are more & more the norm.  Instead of playing pick up games of whiffle ball down the road or volleyball a few houses up, today's youngsters are more likely to be chauffeured to hockey or baseball or soccer practice, often playing on "traveling" teams that not only take them out of town but also out of state.  

As I wrote about in an earlier post, many whiles back, we've lost the interplay between generations that once was a hallmark of Bryn Athyn.  It's not just that so many of our elders live in Cairnwood Village rather than in homes where we young folks earned good money cleaning house or gardening.  Sons of the Academy and regular Theta Alpha meetings & dinners are distant memories, ditto the Sons Bulletin;  the once "must read" TA Journal is reduced to coming out occasionally.  

Pots & pans sit unused, where committees of women (and occasionally men, under Dave Roscoe & John Acton) of all ages worked together to put on Friday Supper, newly weds & great grandmothers baking chicken & making mashed potatoes et al, getting to know each other & share thoughts & opinions over steaming vats of veggies and huge bake pans of poultry.  We no longer congregate around the round tables at Friday Supper or at one (1) adult church service.

The current challenge isn't that we no longer have amazing elders among us.  Just a brief ponder brings to mind Boyd & Myra Asplundh, along with Kurt & Martha and Bob & Marilyn.  Fred & Greta Odhner, the epic Morna Hyatt, Hyland & Beth Johns, the Annes - Synnestvedt & Hyatt, Doug & Christine Taylor, Carl & Del Gunther, Joy McQueen, Louise Pollack, Carolyn Soneson, Ruth Zuber, and - a bit farther afield - Frank & Louise Rose, along with slews of others I'll think of over the following days.

We are still remarkably blessed to have what so many in American towns have lost - a wealth of iconic elders.  But how to build ways & means to nurture more of a natural connection between them & the almost there (folks like me), the youngers & the just kids?   Been pondering that for many months, without much to show.

Praise be, I dearly love a worthy challenge!