Volunteer Works Hard to Restore Dignity, Quality to Old Age

. . . Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the tempest-tost to me. . . .

--Emma Lazarus

The Statue of Liberty welcomed many of them, many decades ago. And now, as they struggle with that foreign country of old age, they are welcomed in the same spirit by Betty Sokol and other volunteers at the Jewish Homes for the Aging of Greater Los Angeles.

“Some of their stories are so sad,” Sokol says. “They have outlived their children. . . .” Or the provisions they made for their old age were not enough. “They say, ‘I’m 84 years old. Who would have dreamt I’d live so long?’ ”

In black leather pants and a red nubby-wool sweater that she knit herself, Sokol is trim and quick to smile. The nails are long and a gleaming pink. There’s a peek of black patterned nylons above the high heels. And under the pizazz, there is both simplicity and shrewdness.

$1 Million Raised

Now one of the homes’ five vice presidents, Sokol has served three terms as president of the Vanguards, a Valley-based support group that raises money for the program.

She spends at least three days a week at the homes, overseeing admissions, leadership development, resident life (recreation, diet, and the like).

About 525 people now live at Victory Village on Victory Boulevard in Reseda. When the new $8-million Mark Taper Building at Grancell Village on Tampa Avenue, also in Reseda, opens--this spring, if all goes according to plan--the resident population there will rise to about 325.

Sokol supervised hundreds of details involving the Mark Taper Building’s design, from the grays and blues and pinks and peaches of its interior to the sculpture gardens outside it.

When she talks about restoring quality to someone’s last years, her eyes shine. In talking of the Homes’ goals for their residents, she says the word dignity with the delight of a teen-ager recalling a blast of a party.

The tone becomes slightly humble when she says: “And I like all the hugging and kissing I receive. . . . They are so darling and so loving.”

Both her parents were relatively young when they died. She was the baby in the family, and her mother’s death at the age of 64 was “devastating to me,” she says, “and so this makes up for it.”

In addition, she says, she never knew her grandfather that well and never knew her grandmother at all. “I feel I missed something, I missed that flavor. So I went out there and found it.”

The Jewish Homes have existed in one form or another and have been known by various names since the 1930s. They were consolidated into their present form in 1979, when the home on Tampa merged with the one on Victory, which had been moved from Boyle Heights.

In selecting residents, priority is given to the oldest, the neediest and those who are most alone, Sokol says. ‘We try to stay with people in the area. And we try to stick with residents who don’t have children locally.”

Although at times there have been one or two residents who were not Jewish, she says, “We give priority to those who need the religious services we offer, like the kosher food and observing the Jewish holidays.”

The cost of caring for each resident in good health is about $1,200 a month, and twice that for those who need extensive nursing care, she says.

She explains her devotion to volunteer work by saying, “I always felt I wanted to make my mark on the world.”

Describing herself as “not smart, but dependable,” she says helping others was her “way of thanking the Lord.”

“I’m not a card player, and I’m not an athlete. I tried playing tennis but I was lousy--no one wanted to play with me.”

Majored in ‘Sorority’

Sokol lives in Encino with her husband of 37 years, an industrial real estate broker. They have three sons: 29, 31 and 35. “I’m 57,” she says, anticipating the question.

She was born in Akron, Ohio, and a hint of the Midwest still salts her speech.

“Sorority is what I majored in” during her lone year at Ohio State University, she says wryly, “and going back to school didn’t appeal to me.

As her boys grew up, Sokol worked in the PTA and held office in the Temple Judea Sisterhood and several San Fernando-based volunteer organizations.

Her involvement is second generation. Her parents had actively supported an earlier version of the homes. Six years ago, Sokol entered the volunteer department asking, “Is there anything I could do?”

It is apparent that she found her niche.

In some cultures, a person’s esteem accrues with the years as naturally as a tree acquires rings. But it appears to dwindle in the United States. That we will age is one of those undeniable facts that are so easy to deny. Can you imagine yourself being old? Sokol was asked.

“I can’t imagine myself being 60!” she says with a rueful laugh. “My son, this big man, comes in with his mustache and I think, ‘How can I be his mother?’ ”

‘Fumble and Bumble’

Lack of respect for the elderly, Sokol ventures, “comes from impatience” because “they fumble and bumble.” She looks momentarily puzzled. “Now, I’m a very impatient person, my husband thinks I’m the most impatient person around. . . .”

She shrugs. Evidently, this little wrinkle in her makeup is smoothed out as she enters the Homes and moves among the elderly.

“Most people are afraid of them,” Sokol says. “Like everyone else, I felt a certain fear in getting right out there with the residents.” She laughs. “That lasted about a day.”

Her technique is simple. “The first thing I do is sit down and make eye contact, maybe take their hand,” she says. “You just start a conversation.

“People think it’s depressing. It isn’t! It’s a great way to feel young, you know, when you hang out with 90-year-old people.”

Nevertheless, she concedes that she does not go into the nursing-care sections, which cope with severely ill residents--”I can’t handle that.’

And she admits that the death of several residents she had become attached to was a factor in her concentrating more on administrative work at the Homes.

Another reason for the shift in emphasis was her innate ability. “I’ve always had leadership positions,” she says. “When I was a little girl, I was always ‘Big Mouth.’ ” She pauses. “I’m very organized.”

She says her husband is also active in the Vanguards support group, and that “most of our social life is really built around the Vanguards and the couples we meet there.”

But being a do-gooder does not mean being a goody-goody. Her eyelids droop slightly and her voice assumes the husky edge of passion.

“I love to shop,” she says.