Coro Oldsters Want to Reinvest in the Community

They’re typical graduates: enthusiastic, idealistic, challenged and challenging, eager to get out and leave their mark--for the better--on the world.

The only clue that they are a bit unusual is their class motto: “OLD AGE & TREACHERY Will Overcome YOUTH & SKILL.”

They are 12 persons from 54 to 72 chosen for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Coro Foundation’s first program in Los Angeles for older adults. Called Reinvest, the 10-week program is designed to “channel the wisdom and abilities of older Americans back into the community.” Reinvest is modeled on the regular nine-month Coro program to train young people for leadership in public and private sectors, “practical idealists” in Coro’s terms. Most members of the Reinvest program’s pioneer Los Angeles class--two similar programs have been conducted in St. Louis--already are active in the community, according to Sharon Butler, director of training and leader of the program.

Their dossiers reflect that: a former elected official, arbitrators for the Better Business Bureau, members of the California Senior Legislature, people working in organizations such as United Way and Victims for Victims, people involved in the Chinese, Jewish and Latino communities, people who are advocates for children, libraries, education, health care and for the elderly.

Their goals are serious, their commitment unquestioned. They are also an exceptionally witty bunch, and “the Reinvestors,” as they are called, sparkled last week at their graduation ceremonies and reception at California Primary Physicians, a downtown medical center that was host for the event.

Mary Jimmie McLaughlin, 63, spoke first for the class, each member later adding his or her remarks. McLaughlin began by citing the criteria for selection for the Reinvest program:

“Commitment to public service and involvement in public decision-making while in retirement; demonstrated leadership ability, intellectual curiosity, self-discipline, flexibility, stamina and the ability to work with others.”

She took a breath, then said:

“We soon found out why stamina was included.”

McLaughlin told of an assignment to examine Broadway from 3rd to 7th streets--the people, the businesses, the milieu, the architecture.

“The day we did it,” she said, “we couldn’t see the architecture and the people weren’t the usual users of Broadway. It was the day of the Lakers’ parade.”

McLaughlin, who is a docent at the Maritime Museum, a Better Business Bureau arbitrator, retired manager of the Housing Authority of Los Angeles and active in the Retired Public Employees Assn. and Zonta Club, then called on each of her Reinvest classmates for comments.

Former Mayor

Louise Davis, 61, former mayor of Monterey Park and president of its Sister City Assn. (and a member of a number of community organization boards), told of the Reinvestors’ assignment to assess “the logic of Pershing Square.”

“I will never, never forget going to Pershing Square,” she said. “I wound up singing a song with a preacher who had been coming there for 51 years. I asked him, ‘Doesn’t it bother you that no one is paying any attention to you?’ He said, ‘I’m giving them The Word. If they’re not listening, that’s their problem, not mine.’ ”

Les Wagner, 63, retired supervisor of pupil services and attendance for the Los Angeles Unified School District who now works as a volunteer for the Los Angeles Roundtable for Children and the USC School of Social Welfare, added a personal note.

“The wonderful thing about having children,” he said, “is that they always have an answer. My son said, ‘Yeah, I know what Coro stands for: Controlling, Opinionated, Retired and Over the hill.’ ”

Milton Tepper, a retired sales manager active in causes for the aging, grabbed the audience’s attention with a line he knew it couldn’t resist.

“Hello,” he said. “I am Milton Tepper and I am 71 and as of 7:30 this morning my blood pressure was 130 over 64.”

He paused for the laugh like a pro (“People always love to know your blood pressure,” he had said earlier), then alluded to the certificates of completion the Reinvestors were about to receive and told a story about Jack Benny getting a prestigious award.

“Benny said, ‘I am not sure I deserve the certificate I am about to receive,’ ” Tepper said, “ ‘but on the other hand I have arthritis and I don’t deserve that either.’ ”

Rose Torrealba, at 54 the youngest of the Reinvestors, used a riddle her grandfather asked her as a child to illustrate her Coro experience--and its nudge to probe beyond the surface of things.

“He asked me ‘What hangs on the wall, is green, wet and whistles?’ ” Torrealba said. “I told him I didn’t know. He said, ‘A herring.’ I said a herring doesn’t hang on the wall. ‘So hang it there,’ he said. I said it isn’t green. ‘So paint it,’ he said. Then I said it isn’t wet. He said ‘If you paint it, it will still be wet.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t whistle.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I put that in to make it hard.’ ”

Degree in Gerontology

Doreen Moore, 57, who has a degree in gerontology and has worked extensively with senior citizens, repeated a slogan she attributed to Margaret Mead. Moore, active in the Older Women’s League, spoke of “PMZ--post-menstrual zest.”

Sidney (Jim) Austin, 68, a retired sales manager active in several volunteer programs, said that his Coro experience had sparked an interest in the political--and taught him something.

“The tangible thing I’ve learned,” Austin said, “is to probe into things--and to be able to pronounce Councilman (Zev) Yaroslavsky’s name.” A few days earlier, in making a report on an issue in Yaroslavsky’s district, Austin and his Reinvestor teammates Louise Davis, Alice Tsou and Toshi Yamamoto each stumbled over Yaroslavsky’s name.

Levity aside, Coro’s Reinvest program, funded by the California Community Foundation, was 10 weeks of hard work for its dozen participants, each of whom devoted a minimum of 2 1/2 days a week to the project. They began with a team survey of Pershing Square and progressed through two-member and four-member study projects, writing reports and giving them orally, to a final review in which they summarized their Coro experience.

Along the way they studied efforts in the corporate sector to reduce high school drop-out rates, ridership and use of the Fairfax Trolley (a neighborhood bus line used primarily by senior citizens), health maintenance organizations, the City Department of Recreation and Parks, the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Department of City Planning and Councilman Joel Wachs’ AIDS study.

“We expect (them to gain) an insiders’ view of public and private institutions, a sense of how they help set the public agenda,” said Sharon Butler, one of two Coro training directors in Los Angeles. “We expect them to continue their contributions with renewed energy and vigor, perhaps having learned a few tricks. . . .

“The two strongest criteria were a demonstration of commitment to public decisions and some indication that they would use the training for the community’s benefit.”

Butler, herself a graduate of Coro’s nine-month training program in St. Louis, would seem to have harvested a bountiful crop of community commitment. Each Reinvestor expressed renewed interest in current volunteer work and/or a newly found area of service.

Mary Jimmie McLaughlin is considering volunteering with a tutoring program in addition to her present interests--and finding time for her five children and seven grandchildren. “I can’t see sitting at home and watching the dust gather,” she said.

Les Wagner said he will continue his work with the USC Roundtable for Children--and begin to serve with Medicare Advocacy Project, which offers free assistance with Medicare problems to senior citizens.

Piqued His Interest

Milton Tepper will continue as a volunteer at USC’s Andrus Gerontology Center and as head of the advisory committee of the National Council on Aging, but he admits that the Pershing Square study piqued his interest: “There is so much to be gained to make it more usable and useful and desirable for everyone--for those who work in the area, for tourists, for citizens who appreciate one little block in the middle of the city.”

Doreen Moore felt she had, in her words, “gone stale” during a year in which she cared for a grandchild. Renewed after her Coro internship (“I feel the world is my oyster”), Moore will work with the Older Women’s League, especially in pushing bills on respite for care-givers and health insurance for women through the Legislature.

Jim Austin also hopes to operate in the political arena, albeit as a volunteer rather than an office-holder. His activities include small-claims court adviser for the County Department of Consumer Affairs, chairmanship of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program advisory council, serving on the board of the Volunteer Center of Los Angeles and as an arbitrator for the Better Business Bureau.

Delores Wong, 64, who has volunteered for the Music Center, Resthaven Hospital and the Chinatown Teen Post, is committed to the Chinatown library, especially the addition of a children’s wing. She hopes that research during the Reinvest program on the Community Redevelopment Agency will be helpful in approaching the CRA for funds.

Louise Davis, whose seven children led to her involvement in Scouts and PTA and eventually to election to the Monterey Park City Council, is a member of the boards of Garfield Medical Hospital, East Los Angeles College and the West San Gabriel Valley Red Cross.

Toshi Yamamoto, 69, whose 60 years of volunteerism stem from her family’s philosophy of doing something each day to help someone else, is an examiner for the State Barber Board and active with United Way and the Los Angeles Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She and Moore did research on AIDS for Wachs and will do more “if he needs us,” and Yamamoto has been asked to serve on Sheriff Sherman Block’s campaign committee.

Will Get a Job

Rose Torrealba says she has to get a job. This time it will be one that will make her happy--and help others.

“It will be in human services,” she said, “but I need to get a salary so I can live. I was working but I wasn’t happy and I didn’t realize why. Now I plan to do something to help people; it won’t pay me as much but I’ll feel better. And you’re looking at a $60,000 to $80,000-a-year woman; that is what I made in previous jobs.”

Torrealba, whose son Leonard, “the future D.A.,” also is a Coro intern, is especially interested in working with the elderly: “They have so many needs. I love children too, but there are so many people helping them.”

Cecil Peterson, 66, is accustomed to titters from the audience when he tells them of his prime commitment: chairman of the County Commission on Pornography, a post he plans to make full time and, with the help of his Coro training, “rock the boat a little bit.” He also is intrigued by what he learned about the school dropout program and plans to look into it further, he said, as well as continue as a senior assemblyman with the California Senior Legislature.

Alice Tsou, 72, also a Senior Legislature assemblywoman and executive director of the Chinese-American Service Center and chairman of the board of the Chinese Committee on Aging, hopes to bring Coro’s leadership techniques to the Chinese community. She is especially interested in mustering the Senior Legislature’s political power to gain national health care: “Health is a right for everyone.”

Seymour Robinson, 69, retired after heading a typography company, is a member of the advisory board of Mayor Bradley’s Office of Small Business Assistance. He is executive director of the Westside Action Coalition, an organization of nearly 30,000 members, and founder of the Jewish-Hispanic Dialogue, a group dedicated to achieving better understanding between the two groups.

Robinson, who is also active with the Westside Jewish Community Center and Jewish Federation Council, spoke of the energy shown by the Reinvestors and the “importance of getting back to the classroom.” And, the graduation and reception over, he had one last comment.

“This,” he said, proudly holding his certificate, “is the first diploma I’ve gotten since I graduated high school.”