SEATTLE — We don’t know how good we have it with our cellphones and bike shares. Our labor laws and dating apps. Our good hips and sharp eyes.
And yet, the residents of The Summit at First Hill retirement home wouldn’t trade their lives for any of those things. That would mean losing their own stories and memories, things they have not only lived, but lived to tell.
That’s the take-away from “The Faces of The Summit,” a photo exhibit that captures the faces and words of more than 20 residents ranging in age from 85 to 102. The exhibit is hanging in a horseshoe of hallways on the home’s first floor and is open to the public. There’s no plan to take it down.
When the exhibit opened one recent Sunday, the place had the feel of a school event. Excited family and friends filled the lobby while residents jockeyed their walkers around corners, lingered near their own photographs or sat on couches, basking in the new attention.
The exhibit was planned by Marilyn Israel and Leslie Block of The Summit’s Life Enrichment team. They couldn’t believe the response. Just that morning, two residents were on the TV news, and here I was with a photographer.
“We didn’t think of it being newsworthy,” Block said.
“Our intent was to create an interesting activity for the residents,” Israel said. “We were trying to honor the elders.”
Said Block: “We look at people, but do we really see them?”
Residents volunteered to be part of the exhibit, and had their hair and makeup done by volunteer Valerie Spencer — a Mary Kay representative.
“I think when they get to be this age sometimes they give up hope,” Spencer said. “And they think, ‘Why bother?’ Here, they felt like Queen for a Day. Younger.”
“And empowered,” Israel added. “All of a sudden, they felt very special.”
“It shows in the pictures,” said Block. “They got swag.”
Photographer Jessica Keener, who is just 30, said she was changed by her experience with the residents.
“I don’t get to interact much with older people,” she said. “And I learned that I want to do that more. Because I learned so much. So many of them don’t take things too seriously.”
Block did most of the interviews. She started by asking residents for advice. If that drew “a blank stare,” she would ask them to describe a favorite favorite memory.
“Some people would say, ‘My life was boring,’ and I’d ask, ‘Where were you born?’ and then once they started talking … ”
That’s how they learned that resident Michaela Lobel, 94, had been hit by an SUV while crossing the street in her native New York City, where she lived until just a couple of years ago. (“I came here, naturally, because of my daughter,” Lobel told me. “Ninety-seven percent of the people are here because of their daughters.”)
Lobel told Block about the doctor who took her right hand as she lay in the street, asking if she knew her own name, and the messenger who took her other hand and told her, “Yo, Momma. You’re gonna be all right.”
That’s also how they learned that resident Anne Mezistrano Hirschhorn was born in a house at 27th and Yesler 89 years ago, and that her first job was at the Yesler Avenue branch of the Seattle Public Library.
“I had been there so much, they knew me well,” Hirschhorn said. “Paid me 25 cents an hour.”
Frieda Feinberg was born in Dresden, Germany. When she and her mother tried to board a ship for the United States, they were turned down. Two days later, they boarded another boat and learned the first one had sunk.
