Celebrating Creative Centenarians

Everyone’s doing it. We’re all getting older and accelerating across the decades of life. Positive aging is important and pharmaceutical companies are racing to provide new drugs to extend healthy living. People want to live longer and live healthier. Dr. Thomas Perls has developed a calculator that can be used as a guide to understand your aging potential. “In the United States, where the average life expectancy is about 78 years, centenarians account for about 1 out of every 6,000 people.” Yet it also has been projected that in 2025, one person out of 26 will reach their 100th birthday.

What are the odds of you living to 100 or beyond? There are factors that may contribute to the potential of becoming a centenarian, says Nir Barzilai, M.D. Director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University 80% can be contributed to your environment and the remaining 20% to your genes

And there is a quality of aging that is important. For those who have enjoyed a strong social, intellectual and physical lifestyle, they are more likely to sustain those passions as they get older and reap the benefits.

The following centenarians have maintained their creative zeal and are still enjoying successful lives despite some physical issues that come with aging.


Irving Kahn, (born 1905) Investment Advisor
Irving began his career prior to the 1929 stock market crash and established the Kahn Brothers Group in 1978 where he shares his business with his son and grandson managing over $700 million in assets. Irving works 5 days a week in his Madison Avenue office and reads at least two financial newspapers daily. He has no plans to retire.

Rita Levi-Montalcini (born, 1909) Scientist, Italian Senator
In 1986 Levi-Montalcini and colleague Stanley Cohen received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovery of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF). Remarkably she was the fourth Nobel Prize winner to come from Italy's very small but very old Jewish community. In 1987, she was given the National Medal of Science, the highest American scientific honor. Rita is the oldest living Nobel laureate and the first ever to reach a 100th birthday.

Elliot Carter (born 1908) Composer
Elliot is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer who has been extremely prolific in his older years. Between the ages of 90 and 100, he published more than 40 works and three more since he turned 100. He received the Trustees Award (a lifetime achievement award given to non-performers) by the Grammy Awards and is on the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center where he gives annual composition masterclasses

Eva Zeisel (born 1906) Industrial designer/ Artist
An industrial designer in her early career, she currently designs furniture as well as glass and ceramic objects producing “useful things” with soft organic shapes. Her pieces are in the permanent collections of the British Museum; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Musée des Arts Decoratifs de Montreal; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Knoxville Museum of Art and the Brooklyn, Metropolitan, Dallas, and Milwaukee museums.

Wesley E. Brown (1907) Judge
Judge Brown is one of four of the Kennedy appointees still on the bench and the oldest federal judge in the country. Wearing a tube that feeds oxygen through his nose, he is still active at the court but warns lawyers about lengthy hearings and says “At this age, I’m not even buying green bananas.” He refuses to focus on the hoopla over his place in history or his birthdays, he simply says “I’m not interested in how old I am, I’m interested in how good a job I can do.”

Milton Rogovin (born 1909) Photographer
Milton is a documentary photographer with a social passion. “The Forgotten Ones", considered his most recognized project, is a portrait sequence captured over 30 years showing a hundred struggling families in hardship living in Buffalo.. His work is in the Library of Congress, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Center for Creative Photography as well as other fine institutions.

Alice Herz-Sommer (born 1903) Pianist
Czech pianist and survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, Alice is a steadfast optimist despite having lived a life filled with great loss and difficulty. She is also very self disciplined. Everyday she practices 3 hours starting at 10am, eats the same foods and continues to walk. "… life is beautiful, extremely beautiful. And when you are old you appreciate it more. When you are older you think, you remember, you care and you appreciate. You are thankful for everything. For everything"

Malcolm Renfrew (born 1910) Chemist
Renfrew produced a number of patents while working at DuPont including material for tooth repair and the first method of synthesis which would contribute to what was later known as Teflon. He became a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and on his 100th birthday, October 12, 2010 was declared to be Malcolm M. Renfrew Day in Idaho.

Norman Corwin (born 1910) Writer/Screenwriter, Producer
Norman was always a serious lover of words and drama so his early career in radio was a perfect fit. He has won the One World Award, two Peabody Medals, an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and a duPont-Columbia Award. He is still writing for radio and is a writer in residence at the Journalism School at USC.

Will Barnett (born 1911) Painter
A New York City artist with his paintings in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and the Whitney, Will paints for 3-4 hours every day. His current exhibition is at the Art Student’s League in Manhattan where he began his art studies in 1931 when he moved from Boston. At the age of 10 he knew that he wanted to be an artist and now says “The old masters are still alive after 400 years, and that’s what I want to be.”

Ruth Gruber (born 1911) Journalist, Photographer, Writer, Humanitarian
Just months shy of her 100th birthday, Ruth is an extraordinary woman who has had an extraordinary career. A new documentary, AHEAD OF TIME,was created to catalog some of the many historic events in her life. By the age of twenty, Ruth earned a Ph.D degree from the University of Cologne and became the youngest person in the world to receive a doctorate. In 1935, she was the first foreign correspondent to fly through Siberia into the Soviet Arctic. Her life was studded by high level social political assignments.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We don't grow older, we grow riper.
Pablo Picasso

An Interview with DR. JAMES GAMBONE: Filmmaker and Gerontologist

As a gerontologist and filmmaker, Jim combines both talents to offer a unique perspective to film. His work also includes training with intergenerational relationships and he has developed the Intergenerational Dialogue Tool™ which is used in many social sectors.

How did your early career in the Peace Corps, PhD degree in bilingual/bicultural education and work as a Drop-OUT Prevention Specialist prepare you for your current work in geriatrics?

I grew up in a multigenerational home in a Pittsburgh ghetto with blacks and immigrant families. I was always around adults from all generations and backgrounds for most of my childhood.

I like to think of myself as not necessarily working in “geriatrics,” but rather as an educator (in the tradition of Paulo Friere and Myles Horton) trying to use my various skills and talents to bring generations closer together and have them appreciate the unique and different values they bring to a shared future.

Can you talk about the functionality and impact of your Intergenerational Dialogue Tool™?

It has been 19 years since I created the Intergenerational Dialogue and Action process. I have organized and conducted dialogues and training sessions involving all living generations in every region of this country, and in parts of Canada, Mexico, England. It has been quite a ride and it’s not over yet!

There has been a doctoral dissertation, two doctors of divinity, and numerous articles and commentaries written about my process. I have also trained nearly 1,500 people over the last 18 years how to organize and facilitate my process and other intergenerational conversations. It is part of my lifelong work and hopefully something I will be remembered for after I am gone.

In terms of functionality, I have not found any issue or opportunity that isn’t immediately enhanced by adding more generations to the mix. My process is based on a pretty simple proposition. What you learn at an early age helps form your core values. These are values that last with you throughout you entire life. That means each generation has different core values. If we learn how to respect, care and cooperate across generations, I believe many of the seemingly intractable problems we face can be solved. I am buoyed by the results I have seen so far.


What brought you to the world of writing, producing and film making?

My first moderate foray into media was in 1976, when I was asked to do “on the street interviews” for a video documentary of Minneapolis’ second May Day Parade. However, my big plunge in video production came when I was working as an investigative reporter. An independent TV producer approached me and asked me to join forces on an hour long documentary he was making on rural poverty in Minnesota. That documentary, “In the Midst of Plenty”, appeared on public television a year and a half later to critical acclaim. It is still being used in rural sociology classes across the country.

My biggest career break came in 1981 when Martin Sheen narrated my first 30 minute film “Agent Orange: A Story of Dignity and Doubt”. It took the veterans perspective and the film was distributed worldwide. That enabled me to get a real understanding of the film and TV distribution business.

What triggered your thoughts for your film The Journey Home ?

At 3AM one morning almost four years ago, I woke up from an unusual dream where an entire film was etched very clearly in my mind. I rushed down to my computer and in 20 minutes wrote The Journey Home. Yes the tile was also in the dream and the Spanish dialogue that opens the film. This had never happened to me in 25 years of filmmaking and it meant I had to produce this film.

Before that dream, I was researching for an on line course I was teaching on the future of long-term care. I discovered a crisis looming ahead in the year 2030, with the swelling of the older adult population and need for more caregivers and care facilities. The problem is that neither our politicians nor the elder care industry have put much thought or planning into dealing with a demographic time bomb. To put it into perspective, as the Baby Boomer generation enters the year 2030, over 30% of our population will move towards either semi-dependent or fully dependent living conditions. Never in our modern history have we had an even closely comparable demographic demand placed on an institutional or governmental system. We are entering a situation where our social structures are going to dramatically change and the model of our elder care system will not be exempt.

The film ends with a simple question: What kind of elder care is in your future? Although the film presents a number of important moral and ethical questions, it is not suggesting a direction to go. It invites all who view it to participate at the Journey Home website ( www.thejourneyhome.us) to join in an effort to create a new vision for elder care. At its heart, The Journey Home is designed to be a film calling people to action and to the realization that the year 2030 is not so far off.

Were there particular hurdles that you had to manage successfully in this project?

Money. Money, Money. It is always a problem with independent films. This being a science fiction film located in the year 2030, posed other hurdles on a very small to no budget. But a very creative and imaginative team of filmmakers, friends who bought advance copies of DVD’s to pay for direct costs and people who believed in the power of a dream made this film possible.

Where can people see the film?
You can view the film, a short documentary, the Making of the Journey Home, an interview with me and a Trailer on our website.

What are you working on now?

I am talking with another filmmaker about producing another short fictional film around the modern experience of being in nursing home. I am also trying to distribute The Journey Home-which has now been an Official Selection in three film festivals,- and I continue to teach MA and Ph.D. students at Capella.