Getting to Know You : Gerontology: Four USC graduate students living in a convalescent center get a personal view of aging.

Forget the tacky posters, the raucous rock ‘n’ roll and the hustle and bustle of dorm life. For graduate student Irian Diaz, they’re not part of the living arrangements.

Her 250 neighbors would never tolerate such tumult, but not because they’re docile apartment dwellers.

It’s because Diaz, 24, and three other grad students from USC’s Andrus Gerontology Center live, full time, at the Kingsley Manor retirement-convalescent facility in Hollywood.

In exchange for room and board, each of the four students works 16 hours a week at the manor, where the average age of the residents is 82.

For those on the verge of a career in gerontology, the novel living situation offers a first-hand view of the satisfactions and sorrows of growing older.

Diaz, to accommodate her class schedule, spreads her manor duties over four days. She devotes the most time--7 1/2 hours--on Fridays.

To spend a typical day with her is to encounter a smorgasbord of experiences and emotions.

At 8:30 one recent morning, Diaz’s first order was to prepare for a visit by 28 third- and fourth-graders from nearby Ramona Elementary School. She and Susie Lukasek, program director, puttered around in the manor’s sixth-floor Skyroom, which this day would serve as a kitchen where the youngsters would learn how to make Valentine cookies.

Lukasek recalled a time when the manor’s resident centenarian had talked to some other youngsters, who were flabbergasted that a person could be so old; some wanted to touch him, as they might a redwood tree.

As Diaz gathered up flour, baking powder and honey, she related her own amusing tale about another recent Skyroom event: “I was the instructor for a cane drill team. It was called the Ben-Gay Brigade.”

But not all her moments have been as light.

She reflected on the first time, as a gerontology undergraduate, that she had seen, first-hand, life’s inevitable conclusion: “I was working at a convalescent hospital, and I got to know one woman. . . . When I arrived one day at 3 p.m. to begin my shift, she had just died. She was still lying in her bed. Until then, I had never known anyone who had died. That night, I couldn’t enter her room. I couldn’t even bring myself to go by her room in the hallway.”

In gerontology, explained Diaz--who hopes to find work in program development for the elderly when she graduates in May--”they get us to realize that death is a part of life.”

It was, however, a remote concern for the next hour as the children visited and the resident retirees began to arrive for the event.

Alice Andre, 85, was the first there and had time to tell a little about herself: “I was head counselor at Hamilton High School during the ‘50s and ‘60s. That was Sputnik time. We were encouraging everyone to go into physics and engineering.”

Lorena Havlik, who only allowed that she is in her 80s, arrived and observed of the schoolchildren’s visit, “It will be good for a change to hear young ideas.”

Karoline Straky, 82, agreed, saying: “It is good when the young and the old get together.”

In trooped the pupils, taking seats at long wooden tables. Andre and Havlik engaged them in small talk.

Diaz, meantime, bustled about, putting lumps of butter into bowls, handing out cups of honey, pleading: “Make sure everybody gets a chance to stir the bowl!”

Miriam Melhorn, 85, cautioned some youngsters near her: “Don’t use too much flour!”

Soon the aroma of baking dough filled the air.

Eventually, each pupil proudly carried off a heart-shaped cookie.

But Diaz had little time to savor the moment. A hectic day loomed at the institution--a cluster of ivy-covered, red brick buildings surrounded by manicured gardens. It has been on the scene since 1912.

Administrator Bruce Udelfsaid Kingsley Manor offers three levels of services to the aged. Some of the residents, still largely independent, get meals, maid service, linens and other services for $855 to $965 a month. Some need more assistance--help with bathing or dressing--for which they are charged $1,390 to $1,515 monthly. And some residents require convalescent care, which runs $102 to $105 daily for a private room.

At 11 a.m., while en route to the manor’s convalescent area, Diaz stopped at Cal’s Popcorn, a stand run for two hours daily for the past seven years by Cal Tedford, 66, who turns over the proceeds to the resident-run gift shop.

Diaz and Straky shared a 25-cent bag of popcorn before Diaz headed to the grim confines of the convalescent area, where many patients are hooked to oxygen tubes and some are at the last stop on the journey of life.

But no matter their physical condition, most residents in the convalescent section still cherish attention. Providing it is one of Diaz’s duties.

She poked her head into some rooms where patients slept. She kept moving along until she reached the room of Zuma Palmer, 93, who was thumbing through a newspaper television section, checking for sports events involving USC, her alma mater. “I like to keep up with whatever they are doing,” she said. “I also watch baseball, golf, any sport.”

In response to Diaz’s inquiry about how she was feeling, Palmer had her usual answer ready: “Oh, fat and sassy.”

For 32 years, Palmer wrote about radio and TV for the Hollywood Citizen-News, which was owned by her brother. She still keeps up with the news, watching the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour as often as possible.

The nonagenarian gestured toward an afghan on her bed, near where her student-friend was seated. “When my mother got out of the hospital, we both crocheted it,” she recalled.

On Sundays, when Diaz works four hours exclusively on this floor, she always allows time to give Palmer a wheelchair ride. “I fell, and now I have to be in convalescent,” Palmer explained.

Reflecting on her age, she observed: “I just take it a day at a time. I’m not out to set any records.”

About noon in the main lobby, Diaz saw Howard Herty grabbing his mail. Herty, who declined to give his age, is a celebrity of sorts among residents because not only does he still drive, he drives a classic.

In the parking lot, he showed Diaz his baby blue, 1957 T-Bird, complete with the two porthole windows.

“I used to work in publicity at MGM,” he said, leaning on his cane. “In 1958, a secretary there sold me the car for $2,500. Every time she sees me now, she wants to buy it back.”

Herty drives it twice a week. Saturday mornings, he has it washed. Saturday nights, he tools over to Lawry’s Restaurant for dinner.

“See, I have 177,600 miles on it,” he said.

Diaz often has heard his recollections of traveling the world six times, visiting 57 nations. She also has heard him reminisce about movie stars he worked with and their quirks--such as Spencer Tracy hating to fly.

At lunch, Diaz joined three seniors in the dining room. As they ate, Helen May Smith, 68, manor president, told how her council has searched for a public library branch within three miles or so of the institution. “We found one, but it had steps, and that is difficult for our residents,” she said.

Sonja Dremin, 75, the manor’s sports and games chairwoman, described Monday night bingo: “Prizes are useful things, such as boxes of Kleenex and envelopes. Also, everybody puts in a quarter, for a jackpot.”

Margaretta Rabe, who declined to give her age, is manor chairwoman of house and grounds. She says she’s proof that it’s never too late for romance.

Ten years ago, she and her true love met over a pool table. “I never dreamed I would marry again,” she said. “But he lived across the hall from me, we got married and nobody knew it for six months. He passed away in 1987. There are many more women than men here--and he was a heartbreaker.”

Seated nearby was the manor’s most senior resident, Peter W. Ross, 101, and his fourth wife, Esther, 84. Ross, a devout man, says: “I didn’t divorce any (of my wives) . . . they are all in heaven.”

He added for emphasis: “I hope it’ll never come to the point where I don’t appreciate a good-looking lady!”

Most days, Diaz and the other students join the residents at meals. But sometimes they must be in the office, typing, filing and answering phones.

While Diaz took care of some chores shortly after lunch, two other USC students chatted about their manor work.

Harriet Edwards, 30, said she sometimes takes residents in wheelchairs for outings.

“My first one,” she recalled, “was a woman who had suffered a stroke and had just recovered. Everybody was so glad to see her back, and she was ecstatic to be back. . . . She asked to stop and look at the flowers. When we were in the lobby, she played the piano for about five minutes. It was the first time she had touched the keys since her stroke. Everybody in the vicinity came over to listen.”

Edwards said she is studying gerontology “because I have always liked older people. A lot of significant people in my life were older.”

Emily Calvert, 22, praised the 7-year-old manor residence program, which is part of the two-year USC gerontology studies, saying: “At school, we focus on professional issues. Here I see application at a practical level.

“And to the residents here, we are the outside world. We are the young coming to them.”

That afternoon, Diaz pitched in to help with a special bingo game for seven residents. They showed that no matter what their ages, they still enjoy the thrill of victory: Prizes such as liquid soap and tubes of toothpaste were happily accepted.

Later, Diaz and two workers took three residents in wheelchairs on a leisurely grounds tour. On the ride, Julia Long, 87, disclosed her simple secret to living a long life: “Be happy.”

By 4 p.m., Diaz’s duties had ended, and she was back in her apartment.

In a matter of hours, most of the manor’s residents would be hitting their beds.

But Diaz would just starting to hit her books.