A New Tradition of Elder Council

Elizabeth McDougall got an extraordinary gift for her 75th birthday: A roomful of people asked her what she had learned in all those busy years--and then eagerly listened to every word.

But her listeners got an even greater gift: a full day of memories and musings, fears and philosophizing, presented at a gathering of Ojai Valley elders.

“We find ourselves listening to elders from other traditions but too seldom to our own,” said Jack Zimmerman, director of the Ojai Foundation, which hosted the event recently at its rustic retreat in the hills of Upper Ojai.

Zimmerman, 66, led a council circle of half a dozen people ages 63 to 79 (and several others a bit younger) through four hours of thoughtful discussion. About 20 “witnesses” listened and took notes, among them City Councilwoman Suza Francina, who buzzed the eight miles up from town aboard her electric bicycle.

“What does it mean to be an elder?” pondered McDougall, a nurse who has lived at or near Thacher School since 1952. “It means that you look in the mirror and are amazed at the changes because you don’t feel any different.”

It means viewing the Yugoslavia bombing through eyes that saw World War II, said David Essel, retired teacher, naturalist and ex-Marine. Our duty is to question inhuman solutions to the inhuman power grabs of history’s Milosevics and Stalins, he said. “I feel ashamed of having fallen for the propaganda.”

It means assuming the role of family leader, ready or not, said Alan Rains, 63. “I’m the eldest in my generation in my family. We’ll have some problem and I’ll say, ‘Oh, I’ll ask Pop.’ . . . And then I remember that now I’m Pop.”

The Ojai Foundation teaches council--the pass-the-talking-stick method of communicating that you may remember from Scout camp--to everyone from inner-city kids to corporate teams to married couples. The goal is to make the world a better place through speaking and listening from the heart. Even in freewheeling Ojai, its organic collection of solar-powered geodesic domes and Mongolian yurts and its educational / spiritual gumbo of meditation, Native American ritual, psychology and reverence for nature are viewed skeptically by some. Especially those who recall a lively weekend with poet Robert Bly a few years back when the tribal drumming got a little too boisterous and scared the neighbors.

“About 10 years ago I visited here and said, ‘What is this place?’ ” said Lloyd Fellows, 71, Methodist minister, retired clinical psychologist and former Cal Lutheran instructor. Foundation employee Lola Rae Long told him, “It’s a wildlife refuge.” “And she was right,” he said. “There needs to be a place for people who don’t like all their ideas and beliefs squeezed down into safe little bites.”

Venturing into this world of woo-woo was a bit of a stretch for Rains, a rock-solid Chamber of Commerce type whose family department store has anchored downtown Ojai since 1914, before there was an arcade. Trim and tidy in green sweater and khakis, Rains preferred a chair while the rest of the circle hunkered a bit creakily on meditation cushions in the round, sun-splashed embrace of a canvas-covered Mongolian yurt. But he gamely shared memories of growing up in Ojai, spoke passionately about the valley’s natural beauty and offered to young people the idea that kindness never goes out of style.

Others in the circle seemed more comfortable digging into their decades-deep strata of experiences and emotions.

“I only speak for myself,” said Carmen Robertson, 76, long-ago co-founder of the Ojai Arts Center and all-around wild woman. “I was born independent, as my mother told me when I was 7. I don’t try to be dignified or worry about what others think. I say, ‘Good morning!’ to my favorite oaks, to the Chief [Chief Peak in the Topatopa Mountains]. I love it when he has a snow mustache--it makes me laugh.”

Sanford Drucker founded the Living Treasures program many years back to honor older residents who have contributed so much and inspired so many. Now 79, he has become one himself.

“The word for me is ‘connection’--to the Earth, to the water, to the sky,” he said. “To hear the symphony of silence. To know that, at any age, I can connect to the universal knowledge.”

Like several of those present, Drucker had spent the previous day at the Ojai Youth Summit. His formula for encouraging younger generations begins very close to home.

“My gift is to be the best role model I can be right now by pledging to love myself, to keep myself healthy, to be the best person I can be. I’m not asking anybody else to do it. I will do it, and that’s enough for me.”

McDougall offered a dig for her newest celebrity neighbors: “My wish is that people who put gates on their house would see the error of their ways.” But then, “I have so many questions in mind but I don’t have any answers. When you’re older you have more time to think about things than when you’re in the deep of living.” To young people: “Lighten up. There’s a whole lot of funny things going on.”

The talking stick passed to Robertson, who distilled her philosophy to its essence.

“Try to live as wholly as you can--body, mind and spirit.”

Big grin.

“And keep on truckin’!”

Doug Adrianson is the editorial page editor of the Ventura County Edition of The Times. He can be reached at doug.adrianson@latimes.com.