Adele

Adele, 103, graduated from college at 83 with a degree in Fine Arts. She got her first computer—a gift from her daughter—when she was in her early 90s. She hated it."When I first got my computer, I wanted to throw it out the window, but my daughter was in California and with the computer she could say hello to me every day," she says.

 

Even though she is nearly 20 years older than the next oldest senior in the Virtual Senior Center project, Adele was by far the most experienced computer user in the group when the project started. Yet, except for keeping in touch with her family, Adele didn't do much with her first computer. That all changed when she joined the Virtual Senior Center project.

 

Today, Adele uses interactive technology to record a personal video blog, participate in art and calligraphy classes and discussion groups at the Selfhelp Benjamin Rosenthal Senior Center, and engage in religious services streamed live from the New York Central Synagogue. And she enjoys looking in on large group activities at the senior center, such as tai chi and ballroom dancing in the auditorium. "I can see them dancing, and I feel like dancing myself," she says. "It's wonderful." Adele also uses her computer and a small webcam to talk face-to-face with her social worker and family members who can't visit frequently. "I am in the best place now: Modern Land. I love it here," she says.

 

Born and raised in Manhattan—"on Christie Street, near the Bowery"—Adele says, "I'm a New York girl; I love New York. And I love Manhattan. When I got married in 1940, I crossed the bridge to the Bronx." After bringing up two daughters, Adele worked part-time in local schools until she retired, but her lifelong passion is art. Her paintings cover and lean against the walls of her apartment in one of Selfhelp’s senior housing buildings in Queens, where she has resided since 1997. "Before I did mostly watercolors, but now I'm learning to paint and draw with the computer," she says.

 

Adele's warmth, humor and unstoppable enthusiasm for new experiences inspire everyone she meets, so much so that she has become a celebrity at Selfhelp Community Services, even though she only occasionally leaves her apartment. Other seniors and staff at the senior center have gotten to know her through her video blog, and the classes and discussion groups she "attends" with the help of interactive computer technology in her apartment and at the senior center.

 

"I have many more friends now than I ever did before," Adele says. "It has made me better, more open. Before, I was a closed person in my room with my secrets. Of course, now there are no secrets about me. Everybody knows me. Adele's advice to herself and others is simple, straightforward, and heartfelt: "Open the closet and live in the world."