RADIO LEGEND GENE DECKERHOFF — ‘THE VOICE’ — EASES TOWARD THE SIDELINES TALLAHASSEE livingFALL 2022 SPECIAL SECTION
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Sports broadcaster Gene Deckerhoff looks back on storied career STORY BY EMMA WITMER PHOTOS BY ALICIA OSBORNE
“To me, the basketball years are a big part of my career at Florida State,” Deckerhoff said. “I’m a basketball Jones. I played basketball and scored 32 points against Lake City High School. It got me a college scholarship to play junior college basketball.”
Even after a beloved career filled with awards and recognition, Deckerhoff holds his record-breaking high school game as one of his most noteworthy achievements. He’s proud of the other achievements, too. Deckerhoff
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G ene Deckerhoff could move about Tallahassee unrecognized — if only he’d learn to keep his mouth shut. His voice gives him away. For generations, Deckerhoff has been synonymous with Florida State University sports. Earlier this year, he announced that he was retiring as the Seminoles play-by-play man after 48 years. That’s 48, not 43. Deckerhoff is quick to clarify that number. While most associate the 77-year-old with his 43-year tenure with FSU football, Deckerhoff got his start broadcasting Seminole basketball five years earlier. Deckerhoff has also been the voice of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for 34 years and plans to retire following the 2022 season.
Deckerhoff was approached by the program director and play-by-play sports announcer for WWPF – Palatka, John Tilghman. Gene, I know you’re on the debate team, so I know you can talk. Have you ever thought about getting into the radio business?
“I sent him a note saying, ‘I had an idea that you could help coach Bowden’s television show,’” Deckerhoff said. “Burt sent me a letter back, I wish I knew what happened to it, but it was on Bandit stationery, and he said, ‘Whatever Coach Bowden needs, you just let me know, and I’ll do it.’ ”
For the next 26 years, Reynolds made annual appearances on Bowden’s show. Bowden and Deckerhoff would meet him in Atlanta, Jupiter, Hollywood or wherever his next movie was filming.
During his tenure with the Seminoles, Deckerhoff witnessed, and announced, some of the most iconic moments in Florida State history. He was there in ’78 for the first year of Renegade and Osceola. In ’79, he announced Bobby Bowden’s first 11–0 regular season with binoculars in one hand and the mic in the other. He brought Burt Reynolds, a former FSU footballer himself, into the box for many half-time announcements.
Over the years, a friendship grew between Reynolds and Deckerhoff, so Deckerhoff went out on a limb.
Deckerhoff never hit the court his sophomore year. Instead, his parttime summer gig at the radio station became a full-time job. From then on, Deckerhoff was a radio man, covering sports from Palatka to Gainesville, and eventually, Tallahassee and Tampa.
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Back in ’74, when Deckerhoff first took the mic for Seminole basketball, there was no Donald L. Tucker Civic Center. The team played in Tully Gym, a much smaller court with a crow’s nest big enough for Deckerhoff and his co-host Ed Littler, but apparently not big enough for air conditioning. Those early years hold a special place in Deckerhoff’s heart. “It was hot in that old crow’s nest, but those were great times,” Deckerhoff said. “In 1980, I saw a guy by the name of Les Henson throw up a shot after a missed free-throw for Virginia Tech from 93 feet away and make a basket. A couple of weeks later, the Memphis State head coach got upset with the officiating and walked off the floor. The official told him that if he didn’t come back, he would be forfeiting the game, and he said, ‘Do what you have to do.’
was inducted into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, Florida State University Athletics Hall of Fame in 2002 and Florida Community College Activities Association Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2013, he received the National Football Foundation’s “Chris Schenkel Award” and has been named Florida Sportscaster of the Year 14 times by the National Sportscasters & Sportswriters Association. The list goes on. “Coach Bowden used to tell me, ‘Gene, if you’re in halls of fame, that means you’re getting old,’” Deckerhoff laughed.Despite his age, Deckerhoff exudes the same youthful, excitable energy that has kept fans on the edge of their seats for decades. One might suspect Deckerhoff’s characteristic announcer voice is an affectation. If so, it is a tough one to shake. In casual conversation, his voice is more relaxed, but even still, it maintains a certain grandeur. Listening to him recount an endless stream of game-time highlights and behind-themic stories, one cannot help but hang on every word. When asked where he was first bitten by the broadcasting bug, Deckerhoff had no clear answer. Despite an encyclopedic knowledge of every FSU football and basketball game to occur in the last half-century, he has some trouble pinning down this pivotal moment.Itmay have started in high school when Deckerhoff manned the PA system at his brother’s football games, or it could have been in the summer of 1962, when he and a friend rode his motor scooter some 22 miles to the 95.1 WAPE Jacksonville radio station to represent his high school as student council president. Whatever the exact moment, there is no debate as to when his career began in earnest. After his freshman basketball season at St. Johns River State College,
“I’ll never forget the late Bill McGrotha from the Tallahassee Democrat who wrote that they should never tear down Tully Gym. They should take it apart piece by piece and send it to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.”
Reynolds’ star power proved to be quite a spectacle for FSU fans who, according to Deckerhoff, lost all interest in the halftime show when Burt was in the box.
With his schedule opening up postretirement, Deckerhoff says he hopes to make some longtime dreams come true with his wife — like watching the leaves change in the mountains — and it’s about time, he says, they make that trip.
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SPECIAL SECTION Call him a homer, if you wish. That tag will scarcely bother Gene Deckerhoff, whose decades-long relationship with Florida State coaches, athletes and athletic directors has been grounded in mutual respect and fondness. In the lower photo, Deckerhoff poses a question to FSU men’s basketball coach Leonard Hamilton.
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“I always just say, ‘You know, God is going to tell me when it is time to hang it up,’” Deckerhoff said. “It’s not like I’m shuffling my feet right now, but I’m not running sprints anymore either. It was a tough call, but it was time.”
To this day, Deckerhoff maintains that his longtime friend and head coach of the Florida State Seminoles football team, the late Bobby Bowden, was one of the finest people he has ever known. In many ironic and, at times, confounding ways, Deckerhoff and Bowden’s careers seemed to mirror each other. When Deckerhoff and his wife Ann moved into their first Tallahassee home, a next-door neighbor mentioned that the house’s original owner, Robert Bowden, was coaching football up in West Virginia. The two worked in tandem to produce Coach Bowden’s television show, and when the Buccaneers reached out to Deckerhoff about announcing their games, Bowden agreed to shoot the show in the middle of the night, giving Deckerhoff time to hop on a plane to wherever the Buccaneers would play“Henext.was the most incredible human being I have ever been around,” Deckerhoff said. “I look around, and almost everything I have here in my office has something to do with Coach Bowden. I have every one of his books, I have the movie they did and I got to live that experience, you know? It’s the highlight of my career.”
Needless to say, Deckerhoff hasn’t had a fall weekend off in nearly 50 years. He and Ann spend their weekends jet-setting around the country and beyond balancing their time between the ACC and the pros. Between the flights, drives, games, television shows and countless hours of preparation, Deckerhoff has given the best years of his life to the fans. Now, it’s time for a few “Peoplevacations.keptasking when I was going to retire,” Gene said. Not long ago, Gene ran into Morris McComb at an FSU basketball reunion. McComb was the assistant coach to Hugh Durham when Deckerhoff first started broadcasting basketball for FSU and could not believe he was still taking the airwaves.
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The Tallahassee Senior Center hosts a wide breadth of courses, classes, excursions, clubs and games that promote social engagement as well as physical and mental fitness. Currently, the senior center offers more than 20 fitness classes across 10 different locations, not counting access to pingpong tables, pickleball, billiards and
bridge clubs at the center itself. There are dance classes offering instruction on everything from swing to square dancing, a multifaceted arts program taught by professional artists, and classes, seminars and expos devoted to health education and lifelong learning.
In fact, the center has grown so large in its more than 40 years of operation, that they are in the process of designing an entirely new facility, not to replace the Monroe Street location, but to expand its services.
The Tallahassee Senior Center builds community and connection for Tallahassee seniors
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STORY BY EMMA WITMER PHOTOS BY DAVE BARFIELD
“We are starting to expand our outdoor fitness arena because it seems to be very popular and certainly a thing that the adults of today, the baby boomers, are asking for,” Nickens said. “That has been really fun, not only to get people outside
“We are starting to expand our outdoor fitness arena … That has been really fun, not only to get people outside and exercising, but there are so many benefits that come from being outdoors in nature: lower blood pressure, sense of awe, community building.” — Ruth Nickens, Health and Wellness Program Coordinator for the Center
I n the early ’80s, the entirety of the Tallahassee Senior Center’s programming was held in the dining room of a three-story building located at 1400 N. Monroe St. Today, the center not only encompasses the whole building, but it is also bursting at the seams.
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Participants follow along in an exercise class led by Pomeroy Brinkley whose sessions emphasize aerobic activity, flexibility and mobility and incorporate range-of-motion, endurance, resistance and seated exercises.
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“We actually have about 14 outreach sites where we do programming,” said Ruth Nickens, the health and wellness program coordinator for the center. “Some of them are in the city limits like Southside and Optimist Park, but we go out to the most rural parts of the community. We go out to Miccosukee and Chaires. We use commu nity centers, sometimes churches or occa sionally a school — whatever space we can find that will part ner with us to cre ate and facilitate programs in communities.”those
“We are very diverse here, culturally and socioeconomically,” Spellman said. “That is something we are all very proud of. You can go into pingpong one day, and you’ll see a homeless person playing with one of the most affluent people in Tallahassee. When you have a culture like that, word spreads.”
“We started out with a few people, but by about halfway through the series, we had 22 people in the class,” Nickens said. “We just thought that was mind-blowing because there is this stigma to being lonely. People think something is wrong with you if you are lonely. This was evidence that so many people were feeling that way, so from that, we“Wegrew.”experience a great deal of loss in later life, but I think a lot of the loss isn’t just people, it’s a sense of purpose and meaning,” Spellman added. “Sometimes you find people who might have friends, but they’re still very lonely just because of that. That program has done a great job with all types of loneliness.”
Hella Spellman, the director of programs and services for the center, said this unique structure has allowed her and her staff to expand beyond the typical services and culture afforded by a municipal budget.
“We used to have a pretty robust bingo program on Friday mornings,” Nickens said. “For most senior centers across the country, bingo is huge, but a couple of years ago, ours was starting to fizzle. Then we had the pandemic. Now we are back, but they aren’t really asking for bingo anymore. To not have a bingo program is, like, sacrilegious for a senior center.”
Together with the staff at the Tallahassee Senior Center, Spellman and Nickens are breaking stereotypes and building a supportive community for Tallahassee’s seniors regardless of their background.
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Wendy pastelandtechnique,applyCenter.themorningleft,standingDevarieux,inphotoatteachesTuesdayartclassesatTallahasseeSeniorParticipantslessonsincompositioncolorincreatinglandscapes.
Unlike most senior centers around the country, the Tallahassee Senior Center operates as a part of the city government and as a nonprofit, the Tallahassee Senior Center Foundation.
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One program that has gained popularity in recent years is UPSLIDE. Nickens and Spellman began to see a need for the program, which stands for “utilizing and promoting social engagement in loneliness, isolation and depression in the elderly,” about five years ago. They realized that many who were participating in the center’s programs still lacked the foundational support and meaningful relationships needed to live a meaningful, healthy life.
“Every senior center that we have gone to that is strictly run by the municipality just does not have that dynamic, that culture,” Spellman said. “I think we are fortunate here in Tallahassee because a lot of municipalities will not let them have that nonprofit leg. The city letting us have that nonprofit leg and such a strong partnership has helped because the municipal-run places are run by the people at the top, whereas we are driven by what the participants want.”
and exercising, but there are so many benefits that come from being outdoors in nature: lower blood pressure, sense of awe, community building.”
The curriculum is constantly growing and evolving based on the needs and desires of the roughly 10,000 seniors that take advantage of its services every year. Spellman and Nickens take great pride in the center’s participantdriven approach to its programming and are often surprised by what services attract a crowd and which fall flat.
Family caregivers are vital in our community, and AARP will continue fighting to support these courageous individuals who perform unpaid care valued at $470 billion a year, helping their older loved ones stay at home. For more information on caregiving, you can visit www.aarp.org/caregiving. Family Caregivers
By Chris Turner Learn more at states.aarp.org/florida
@AARPFL| PROMOTION
Supporting
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is Vital in Our Community
AARP offers many caregiver resources for you or someone you may know, including Care Guides designed to take the stress out of family caregiving. The Care Guides are tailored based on your situation or experience, including firsttime caregivers, conflict in caregiving, caring for a loved one at home, longdistance caregiving, as well as those caring for cancer patients and loved ones withAARPdementia. Florida has been working to actively engage not only our members, but caregivers as well. Throughout the pandemic, we transitioned to virtual events and experiences to maintain safety and allow everyone to engage with others. AARP Florida staff worked with partners in our community to provide opportunities, such as yoga classes, art classes, book clubs, and even live music performances featuring the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. Our goal is to support mental and physical stimulation and relaxation to all during these times.
CHRISTOPHER C. TURNER, ASSOCIATE STATE DIRECTOR - COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT AARP FLORIDA
AARP is fighting to support America’s nearly 48 million family caregivers who help make it possible for older Americans and other loved ones to live independently at home—where they want to be. Every day, millions of caregivers help their parents, spouses and other loved ones remain at home. Family caregivers help with medications and medical care, meals, bathing and dressing, chores and much more. Many do it all while also working full- or part-time jobs. Being able to stay at home keeps our loved ones out of nursing homes and may prevent unnecessary and costly hospitalizations. With ongoing struggles and stresses related to the pandemic, supporting our family caregivers has never been more important. You may know someone, a friend or family member, who is a caregiver. The challenges they face, and the care they provide, takes a significant toll on their wellbeing. Caring for older loved ones can be expensive, stressful, and isolating— often caregivers put their own health and wellbeing second, third or fourth.
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C A L L T O D A Y 8 5 0 . 3 9 1 . 5 2 5 7
Now back in the hands of co-founder Jerry Kutz, The Osceola has launched
R e s t a u r a n t s t y l e d i n i n g a v a i l a b l e i n c l u d i n g a b i s t r o & b a r a n d m a i n d i n i n g r o o m T h r e e c h e f p r e p a r e d , g o u r m e t m e a l s s e r v e d d a i l y w i t h t a b l e s i d e s e r v i c e i n a n e l e g a n t d i n i n g r o o m W e e k l y h o u s e k e e p i n g a n d p e r s o n a l a u n d r y s e r v i c e s C o m p l i m e n t a r y s c h e d u l e d t r a n s p o r t a t i o n A f u l l c a l e n d a r o f s o c i a , e n g a g e m e n t a n d r e c r e a t i o n a l a c t i v i t i e s B e a u t i f u l p r e s e r v e g r o u n d s i n c l u d i n g a c r o q u e t l a w n , o u t d o o r f i r e p l a c e , m u l t i p l e p a t i o s , r a i s e d b e d g a r d e n s , c o u r t y a r d s , a n d l o u n g e a r e a s L a v i s h s p a & s a l o n , m a s s a g e r o o m a n d t h e r a p y & r h a b s t u d i
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The Osceola has been a leading resource for Florida State Athletics coverage since 1982.
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In February of 2022, Camp reached out to a friend whose writing she admired, David Campbell. Together, with some advice from Big Bend Poet Laureate and longtime friend Mary Jane Ryals, Camp and Campbell collect the memories. Camp doesn’t worry about punctuation, capitalization or telling the same story twice. She just gets the memories down on her large-font iPad and sends them to Campbell. What to do next is up to him.
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“I don’t keep up with what he’s doing with it,” Camp said with a matter-of-fact tone. “I don’t feel that it’s anything I need to worry about. He knows that he has the freedom to change things without the original intent being lost. I have no interest in telling him what to do. None whatsoever.”
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It started about two years ago by Camp’s estimation, long-forgotten memories flooding in with vivid detail. She found a scientific article, though she cannot remember from where, that said this was not an uncommon occurrence. As the future becomes shorter, our brains have more time for the past. Still, it felt like more. It felt like an imperative, a challenge, so she began to write the memories down.
Ann remembers her father losing his job as a civil engineer, drawing Hitler with horns during World War II and her grandmother’s garden. She remembers other things too, such as racial segregation, things that dumbfounded her even then. But of the horrors and injustices she remembers from that era, certain memories cut deeper than others. She cries when she tells the story about the young Black girl, Anise, who
“We are hoping, of course, that it will be published,” Campbell said. “Ann will be 93 this year, however, and this is her last big project. She is in remarkable health for someone her age, but as she tells me every day, ‘I could go to bed tonight and not wake up,’ and she’s right. She’s got a bee in her bonnet, as we say, about getting this done fast. So, we’ve set a sort of deadline. One year to get it all down.”
Memoirist Ann Camp is cursed with kindness STORY BY EMMA WITMER PHOTOS BY THE WORKMANS Ann Camp, 92, has given herself a year in which to record her lifetime of ofthewillingofbeenherThroughoutmemories.life,shehasintolerantsufferingandtoadoptperspectiveothers.
A nn Bannerman Camp is a time traveler. In one moment, the 92-year-old walks gingerly around her historic Tallahassee home. Her eyesight and hearing are in decline, so each step risks a broken bone. The next moment, she is three years old unwrapping a refurbished tricycle, the gift her parents weren’t sure they could afford amid the Great Depression.
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Before establishing her interior design firm, Camp said she wanted to be an architect. In her youth, Camp built clubhouses in the bushes around her home. As a student, she worked on a project to design stylish interiors for Section 8 housing on a meager budget. She has kept a dozen or so bird houses and feeders right outside her kitchen windows for decades.
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“I have always had incredible ad miration and respect for her forwardthinking approach, particularly in the 1940s to the 1960s when Tallahassee was still a very provincial, Southern town steeped in all the ugliness of seg regation,” Campbell said. “Ann’s path was never the most popular.”
“I was just telling Emma how you said I put a curse on you,” Camp chuckled.
Despite, or perhaps because of Camp’s emotional response to the memory, she was reluctant to share it with Campbell.
went on vacation with her family to help cook and look after the children so many years ago. “I probably didn’t pay her what she was worth, I can admit that,” Camp said. Anise ate with the family, played with the children and, when she didn’t feel like cooking, traded turns with Camp. It was no different than any other family trip to St. Teresa Beach. Until it was time to go home. On their route through Carrabelle, Camp and the kids stopped at a soda fountain for Coke floats. While Camp milled about the store, Anise sat at the counter with the kids. “I began to notice that the man behind the counter was getting a little unsettled,” Camp remembered. “After we finished, I asked for a Coke, and he excused himself and went into the back room. He came back out with another man, and the man looked at me and said, ‘Ma’am, we can serve them and you, but we can’t serve her.’ That broke my heart, and my children didn’tCampunderstand.”toldthemen that she and her family would not be back. She took Anise by the hand and asked her to sit next to her the rest of the way home. The drive was silent, Camp remembers, apart from Anise’s sobs.
“I don’t want to be preachy,” Camp said again and again. But some stories cannot be sepa rated from their emotional toll, and I asked Camp how she, a Southern girl from a prominent family of one-time slaveholders, knew that racism was wrong. We decided that it came down to empathy. You cannot identify with people that you are unwilling to know. You must expose yourself to their pain and personhood.
“I go out every night with the skimmer and get these beetles that are dying out of my pool because I can’t stand to see them dying!” Alexandre said. It reminded me of something Camp had mentioned earlier in our conversation.
As we spoke, Camp’s daughter, Carden Alexandre, floated in and out of the warm living room where we sat.
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Cursed with kindness, it seems. The mother and daughter laughed for some time about their inability to watch any creature’s suffering.
“I could write a book if I wanted to act like I had the answers to everything. I don’t have the answers to any of it,” Camp said. “With what I am writing about, I would like to think that I would leave every bit of the thought about what it means to the reader.” Ann Camp has entrusted David Campbell, a friend whose writing she admires, to edit her draft of personal history. She leaves the little stuff — punctuation and capitalization and such — to him, and she remains focused on downloading memories.
“All my long life, I have been motivated to shelter,” Camp said. “How we all need shelter, all creatures. If you are going to make someone happy or some creature, they have to have shelter. I began to put all the things that I have been fascinated with — nature, bird seasons, architecture — but I think the underlying theme of my whole life project has been making things better for something or someone.”
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“On our previous study abroad trip to Greece, we had a 30-year-old. People love intergenerational interaction. We’ve had classes where graduates and undergraduates participated.”Annualmembership fees for OLLI are $95, while a semester membership costs $60. In-person OLLI classes are held either on Florida State University’s (FSU) campus at the Claude Pepper Center or at off-campus facilities like Westminster Oaks, Red Hills Village Retirement Resort and Allegro.
There is a wealth of knowledge out there that — whether due to work, personal struggles or the simple desire to graduate college as quickly as possible — we never get around to learning. Thanks to the dedicated staff, instructors and volunteers at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Tallahassee seniors have a second chance to broaden their horizons and form meaningful relationships with their peers in the
Thecommunity.OsherLifelong Learning Institute, or OLLI, as it’s known around town, is a membership-based program that offers dozens of classes, unique excursions, engaging club activities and international travel geared toward people ages 50 and up. OLLI Program Coordinator Terry Aaronson states that there are no age restrictions on membership. “The average age of our members is around 70, but we have people in their 40s and younger,” Aaronson said.
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute proves that curiosity never retires
STORY BY EMMA WITMER // PHOTOS BY THE WORKMANS
H ave you ever wondered what happened to the once thriving shade tobacco in dustry in the Red Hills region? Or how your favorite movies were made? Maybe you are curious about quantum reality and our place in the universe?
According to OLLI Executive Director Debra Herman, history, science and the arts are among the most popular topics selected by the member-run curriculum board, but ultimately, the course catalog is as diverse as the members themselves. These courses are taught by subject matter experts, retired deans and professors from FSU, Tallahassee Community College
OLLI members complete a guided tour of the demonstration gardens at the UF/IFAS Leon County Extension Office. Beds within the garden have differing light and water requirements. Students note the approach taken to the bed that most closely mirrors the conditions at their homes.
GARNET AND GOLDEN YEARS
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108 September-October 2022 TALLAHASSEEMAGAZINE.COM and Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University, among others. With the advent of virtual classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, the OLLI curriculum board has had the opportunity to involve international instructors from England’s Cambridge University, as well. Much like a typical college schedule, OLLI courses are broken up into fall, spring and summer semesters. Unlike a typical university experience, OLLI classes have no home work, no tests and no grades, “We had one member who said that OLLI saved her life. It really means so much to know you helped someone go on if they lost their husband and didn’t know what to do or retired, and then they found OLLI and made all new friends. That’s what amazes me. Their whole friendship circle is people they meet here.” — Terry Aaronson, OLLI Program Coordinator SPECIAL SECTION 6972 Florida/Georgia Hwy Havana, FaithFuneralHome.comFL(850)539-4300 In a world of uncertainty, pre-plan with confidence knowing Faith Funeral Home & Crematory will be INTEREST FREE FINANCING NO HEALTH QUESTIONS | INFLATION PROOF Scott Whitehead, President / Owner Edna Hall-Whitehead, Licensed Pre-plan Counselor thereyouwhenneed us.
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“Still, (the members) love it when the professor gives them a booklist,” Herman said. “They get the books and read them and ask all kinds of questions. The professors often say, ‘This is why I chose the teaching profession. These are people who really are interested.’ They aren’t on their phones. They want to be in class.”
“Word of mouth is everything,” Aaronson continued.
allowing members to engross themselves in the material that is of interest to them without the stress of a red pen.
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Over time, the program grew. By 2011, membership reached its goal of 500, enough to qualify for the Osher Foundation’s $1 million grant, but they did not stop there. Five years later, membership had doubled to 1,000, and OLLI accepted a second $1 million grant to continue its vision.
“When we started, there was no Osher,” Aaronson said. “We were low, low on any kind of FSU radar. We were just a small little program.”
“When I first started, people would have no idea what OLLI was. There is still some of that, but now when I go places and say I work for OLLI, so many people will say, ‘Oh, I love OLLI!’ It has really gotten around.” ◆
While COVID-19 and the transition to online learning led to a minor drop in enrollment, Herman said, virtual classes have allowed members from outlying communities to participate like never before. Before the pandemic, there were about 1,200 members enrolled in the OLLI program. Today, that number sits around 850, but now that in-person classes are up and running again, Herman and Aaronson are seeing a resurgence in participation.
“We send out evaluations at the end of every semester,” Aaronson said. “We had one member who said that OLLI saved her life. It really means so much to know you helped someone go on if they lost their husband and didn’t know what to do or retired, and then they found OLLI and made all new friends. That’s what amazes me. Their whole friendship circle is people they meet here.”
This is not the first time OLLI has worked to grow its membership. Today, the program is run through an endowment from the Osher Foundation, a national organization that supports 124 membership-driven senior education programs around the country. At its inception in 1992, the program consisted of just nine founding members and a vision.
“We have a lot of benefits of membership,” Herman said. “It’s not just paying a fee and taking classes. You can join in all these field trips. Some have a cost; some don’t. They just need to sign up online. Same with the socials. People really find their comfort zone with the book club, for instance, and then they meet on the outside and do things and have birthday parties. It just blossoms.”
Herman often says, “They come for the classes but stay for the friendship.” OLLI’s various clubs and social events are an opportunity to make friends and stay active, something that can become increasingly difficult with age.
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Claude Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy houses some of the na tion’s premier voices on aging who, through research and policy efforts, are working to better understand and address the issues facing America’s ever-growing el derly
Claude Pepper Institute creates a better future for senior adults
lorida State University’s (FSU)
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Thepopulation.ClaudePepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy has two branches: the Pepper Center, which seeks to influence public policy, and the Pepper Institute, which conducts research. Though tech nically separate entities, the Center and Institute inform one another, and now more than ever, they work in lockstep thanks to the recent appointments of Pepper Center Director Dawn Carr and Pepper Institute Director Miles Taylor. Taylor, who assumed her current position in 2021, and Carr, who took office in 2022, have a longstanding collegial relationship and friendship. In addition to the women’s fascination with the process of aging and
STORY BY EMMA WITMER // PHOTOS BY DAVE BARFIELD
Pepper Institute director Miles Taylor and Pepper Center director Dawn Carr share a fascination with factors that influence the later years of life. Both spent years as caregivers for family members.
A MORETOMORROWRESILIENT
This experience, coupled with an injury that halted Carr’s budding musical career, led her to the University of Miami, where her academic deep dive into later life began.
In her new role as a champion for public policy on aging, Carr is working to estab lish better, more clear channels to commu nicate with legislators than have existed in the past. She sees opportunities to leverage this research to increase financial assistance to combat poverty, intervene in early life to promote positive overall life trajectory and reimagine the modern work environment in ways that could benefit an aging workforce.
In recent years, Taylor and Carr’s re search has, in large part, been centered around the concept of resilience. Rather than studying resilience in the traditional sense, by simply measuring outcomes in the face of hardship, researchers at the Pepper Institute have developed a first-of-its-kind data set to study resilience as what Taylor and Carr call an “internalized resource.”
Taylor said. “We know that you cannot change a lot about a person once they have reached a certain age. You cannot change that someone has been a smoker their whole life. You can’t change whether they got a college degree or have a lot of financial re sources. But internalized resilience is some thing that there is potential for boosting.”
“It turns out that older adults are experts on resilience,” Taylor said. “They have had life experiences, challenges and hopefully a lifetime to develop the things we know protect us and give us these resilience re sources: spirituality, relationships with each other, a sense of purpose in life, family — things that give us meaning.
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“You talk to someone hiring, and they will say, ‘I want someone who is young and hungry,’ but there are people who are hun gry at every age,” Carr said.
Like Taylor, Carr spent much of her for mative years as a caregiver. Before pursu ing her interdisciplinary studies in social gerontology, Carr attended Arizona State University as an orchestral trumpet player.
Here, the two have explored a wide range of research topics from the challenges mil lennial caregivers face to equitable distribu tion of services across demographic lines, to cognitive impairment and delayed or phased retirement because of increased lon gevity and economic imperative.
“I grew up with my grandmother, so ag ing and older adults have been a part of my life forever,” Taylor said. “I started working on topics related to how to keep older folks as independent, especially functionally in dependent, as long as possible.”
In the years, fellowships and degrees that followed, Carr and Taylor formed a bond, eventually leading Carr to leave her position at the Stanford Center on Longevity to join Taylor as a researcher at the Pepper Institute.
“This has been one of the most robust predictors of health that we have seen,”
factors related to later life, Taylor and Carr share a personal connection with their sub ject matter, a kinship that has guided their efforts through an experiential lens as much as an academic one.
“There are all these benefits of hav ing new models for work that won’t just help older people but help people who are younger. Not everyone wants to work full time. There are a lot of people who are mo tivated to have a part-time job, but there is no structure for that. For some odd reason, we set this bar for what number of hours is associated with being able to qualify for benefits. That policy alone could change all kinds of things.”
While there, she was largely responsible for her elderly grandmothers and eventually her ailing mother, who lost her battle with cancer while Carr was still in her early 20s.
“You can’t be in a resource-deprived place and be expected to adapt and bounce back,” Taylor later added. “When you think about issues facing older adults, things like Medicare, social security and financial sol vency, these things are extremely important as a baseline necessity.”
“The end-of-life story was really intense in my early 20s,” Carr said. “My whole life was just surrounded by elderly people. I spent more time around the elderly than people my age, even in college, which is unusual. Usually when you are in college, you’re around young people and partying. I was doing none of that. I was caregiving. Caregiving and playing bridge with people in their 70s and 80s.”
Taylor, Carr and the team of researchers at their backs have not cracked the code on resilience just yet, but they are not deterred. Each study brings them one step closer to understanding how to bolster our society and ready us for an uncertain future.
Carr’s research and policy efforts around the “new retirement” is particularly rele vant during the nation’s ongoing (and much reported) workforce shortage.
Exhibits at the Pepper Center depict scenes from the life of Claude Pepper, who represented Florida in the U.S. Senate and later served as a congressman. As chairman of the House Committee on Aging, he championed reforms to Medicare and Social Security. He was born in Chambers County, Alabama, and spent his early years on a farm.
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Resilience, research shows, is supported by interpersonal and financial resources, but these factors do not create resilience. That, Taylor said, is the million-dollar question.
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