WESTWOOD, NJ—Ask these 50 area seniors what they’re getting out of the cardio fitness class at the Recreation Department’s Forever Young Fitness Program, open to those 55 and older, and they’ll mob you.
The benefits, many crowd around a reporter to attest, include improved strength, fitness, flexibility, concentration, and memory, and needed weight loss.
But that’s not really why they’re here. Not essentially.
It’s love.
Almost to a student—women but a few men too—what defines and sustains this Tuesday/Thursday/Friday class is the devotion the group feels for each other and class instructor Elaine Blumenthal and Elaine’s husband, Benno.
The Blumenthals were stricken with cancer recently, and it’s this community that holds and buoys them, even as they give their students a center for purpose and light in their own lives.
Elaine, who describes herself as a child of the Sixties and leads by example of graceful, strong, and languid movements, is a retired dancer, packing master’s degrees in dance and dance education from New York University and in marriage and family therapy from Antioch College.
Benno, Elaine’s technical guru, husband of nearly 26 years and a physical oceanographer at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., is with her at every class.
The classes have rocked on at the Westwood Community Center, at 55 Jefferson Ave., for the past six years and are proudly welcoming. They’re free for Westwood residents. Others pay a small fee.
Separately, Forever Young Fitness offers pickleball—a hybrid of table tennis, tennis, and badminton—and yoga, which is based on releasing stiffness and body tension and improving muscle tone and posture.
The choreography, which Elaine works out at home, comes to life in a gymnasium turned discotheque, with a warm-up, aerobics of rising and falling intensity, work with weights, stretching, and relaxation.
Playlists consist of 15 songs revised by about a third from week to week to reinforce skills and build on variety.
Tackling senior ‘invisibility’
Elaine explains that the program was built on her understanding of the psychology of aging in America.
“To become a senior here is to become invisible. You’ll see, when you become a senior, people look right through you. In the store, people look right through you.”
That’s a concern shared by the unrelated Westwood for All Ages initiative, working to make Westwood an age-friendly community—a place where all people can live well and thrive even as they age.
Seniors don’t face this problem in all cultures, Elaine says.
Here it suggested a way she could help. Elaine credits both Recreation Department Director Gary Buchheister, whom she said “fights, fights, fights” for area seniors, and inspiration from the late Steve Jobs for helping her get the class under way.
“Steve Jobs said you have to give people what they don’t know they want. So I created it,” she says.
And what people of a certain age want is to move to the beat, to have better health prospects in their golden years, and to have purpose post-retirement, with kids and grandkids far flung and lifelong friends perhaps falling away.
And they want to belong. “Just to be seen and visible and acknowledged,” Elaine says.
And if they can do that all while testing their limits to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Moonlight in Vermont,” “Werewolves of London,” “Who Let the Dogs Out?,” and other tunes by generations of artists who performed at their own pace from the 1930s to today, then all the better.
She introduces them to new music, saying, “This is what your grandchildren are listening to,” and they feel it and move to it, making it part of themselves.
As Elaine leads, she keeps an eye out to make sure none of her students is struggling overmuch. And she wants them to know they’re in the center of her world.
“Rule one,” she says, is to know your students’ names. Each of them.
“I cannot believe these young instructors will come in here and teach and they don’t know the names. You have to know the students’ names and talk to them in class and catch them doing good things—‘That was great; that was good’—and I reinforce,” she says.
There for each other through ups and downs, and depths of cancer
That connection runs both ways. As it happens, both Elaine and Benno are cancer patients. Benno’s battling aggressive brain cancer—glioblastoma multiforme, the same type afflicting U.S. Sen. John McCain—and its treatment has been debilitating.
While caring for Benno, Elaine was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She’s all but shrugged off her recent mastectomy, needing “not even a Tylenol after. Everyone’s different, but I was amazed at how pain-free it was. I think it was the prayers,” she says.
“My students, when I had my mastectomy, they brought me food and they helped me. They love me and I love them. They fed me,” Elaine said.
She dismisses her cancer as “just grade one,” or well differentiated, and is quick to say what got her through.
“I’m pretty much cured. It’s just the two of us; we don’t have children or family support. It was this group. It was these students,” she explains.
When Benno was in treatment, Elaine was here. No one misses a beat. Not in dance fitness.
Meanwhile, students have spun off a book club, luncheons, coffee klatches, cards and check-ins for the ill, parties, all the connections of a rich, interdependent, mature adulthood.
In their own words
One participant, Bernard Kearney, who used to bring his mom by for classes, got roped into the program himself and now swears by it.
“I’m one of the younger ones here, and through this I’ve lost 47 pounds. It seems like it’s low impact, but I’m exhausted at the end of the workout. If you really push yourself and do the technique, you’ll see amazing results,” he says.
“I’m an original,” boasts Jim Sladky, 74, who comes to class with his wife, Daisy. “I look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s wonderful.”
Resident Ivy Verrico, Elaine’s student of five years,” says that the class is “Terrific! I have two pinched nerves, and this is so great for my back.”
Bunny Mateosian of Closter says “This is the best $25 I ever spent in my life. This is a class you can do. It’s not over your head. That’s very important,”
Westwood’s Vivian Hines, 84, says she’s Elaine’s eldest student:
“They have made me feel 28, with the exercise and the concern for this entire class. She has rejuvenated this class. Yes she has.”
Student Liz Takach says she danced off 14 pounds in one year.
“Not only did I exercise, I ate healthier, because Elaine kept saying, ‘Push the pizza away, push this away.’ She inspired me. I love her.”
Nancy Holland, of Closter, befriended Elaine and Benno “though ups and downs and sicknesses and they have made me feel healthier and younger,” she explains.
Lisa Lonschein of Westwood says the choreography is built on patterns, “which is very good for the senior brain. I’m retired just for a year and I see a difference with being able to do this,” she says.
Resident Doris Neibart says “I’ve been coming since I’m retired. I had a hip and knee replacement, and they got me back without physical therapy. This is a real joy in life.”
