It’s ‘game on’ for these players
Since 1974, Nancy Sacks has had a standing Monday evening engagement. The 66-year-old realtor gets together with five other women for a weekly mah jongg game.When Sacks began this tradition, she and the other women were young mothers who all belonged to the same philanthropic organization. Forty-two years later, some of the players have moved on (Sacks and her friend Sue Belle are the... READ MORE
An ear that helps the blind read
On a recent Friday, Bob Gallagher and Sharon Palmer-Royston skim the front page of the Washington Post, taking note of tongue-twisting or unfamiliar names and words — from Oded Revivi the mayor of Efrat, an Israeli town in the West Bank, to the Iraqi village of Tiskharab outside of Mosul.Soon, they will begin reading these stories aloud on a special radio frequency to thousands of... READ MORE
A look back at 70 years of TV
TV’s arrival, depending on how you see it, can be marked at any of a number of moments in the last century.Maybe 1927 — when 21-year-old Philo Farnsworth transmitted the image of a horizontal line to a receiver in the next room of his San Francisco lab. Or maybe 1939 — when the RCA Television Pavilion opened at the New York World’s Fair with the exciting... READ MORE
With siblings, it’s complicated
Our relationships with our siblings are, generally speaking, the longest relationships we have. “They are with us throughout life,” said Geoffrey L. Greif (rhymes with “life”). “They’re like a shadow.”Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, has been teaching and practicing family, group and individual therapy for... READ MORE
Leisure World designer moves in
Back in the mid-1960s, upper Georgia Avenue was a two-lane road heading into farmland in Montgomery County, Md. But a 610-acre plot of farmland abutting the road — carved out of the area between Aspen Hill and Olney — was about to become one of the largest retirement communities of its day in the U.S.Harold Navy, just a few years out of architecture school at Howard... READ MORE
Flood doesn’t drown most dreams
“I’ve lost everything — furniture, jewelry, glassware, sterling, crystal chandeliers — I’m lucky to be alive. But I’m going back. Absolutely.”Those are the words of Joan Eve Shea-Cohen, the 73-year-old owner of the Classics and Collectibles antique shop, which was left in shambles — like so many other businesses along Main Street in Ellicott... READ MORE
Relationships in retirement
We talk a lot about how retirement affects our finances. But do we talk about how retirement affects our relationships? Probably not as much as we should, says Baltimore life coach Barbara Harman.“Retirement brings a lot of emotional changes,” Harman said. “Some people are prepared for them, but most are not.”Recently retired psychiatric nurse Pamela Worthington,... READ MORE
Area athletes go for the gold
Sometimes slow and steady does win the race. Ask Mandy Whalen, who didn’t see herself as having much athletic potential during her early school years. “I was always the youngest and slowest person in my class,” she recalled. Fast forward to the age of 70 or so, when Whalen rediscovered sports and started to participate in the Northern Virginia Senior Olympics (NVSO). This year,... READ MORE
Cop now writes crime books
After serving four years as a Marine, 25 years as a Baltimore City police officer, and 18 years as manager of an insurance fraud unit, Dick Ellwood took to retirement armed not with golf clubs or travel plans, but with pen and paper.Originally intending to tell the story of the four generations of his family in the police department — his grandfather, father and son have also served ... READ MORE
Cop’s third career: TV star
“In my adult life, everybody either hated me or was afraid of me or both,” said Joe Kenda of his 19 years as a Colorado homicide detective. But that reaction has turned on its head.Kenda is now the star of a true-crime drama series on the Investigation Discovery (ID) network. In the show, which runs in 163 countries and is translated into 100 languages, he narrates... READ MORE
