War Then, and Again

They’re too old to donate blood and too weak to go out and volunteer. So, after dinner on most nights, a small group of residents at Woodland Park Retirement Hotel in Woodland Hills gathers around 103-year-old Sadie Vilensky and helps make patriotic badges to raise money for the American Red Cross.

“This is our response to the stress of it all,” says Vilensky about coping with the feelings of grief and guilt, rage and fear that sometimes overwhelm them since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “And now there’s this weird war,” says the center’s oldest resident, who was 16 when World War I broke out in 1914.

Vilensky, the fifth of nine children and the only surviving sibling, has been “through every catastrophic battle--except the Civil War,” she says, getting a laugh from her circle of companions. They value Vilensky’s sense of humor, especially now, in time of war. But don’t misunderstand their need--their desire--to laugh. They mean to get on with their lives. They represent a generation of survivors who have lived through the Great Depression and World War II. They remember when airplane travel was a luxury, when black and white television was all the rage and when telephones weren’t wireless. They’ve seen polio wiped out, while a cure for Alzheimer’s disease remains elusive. They’ve aged gracefully despite the wheelchairs and walkers.

Resilience is their strength.

And now, the badge-making effort has raised their spirits at a time when their world has been jolted--yet again.

There’s Millie Barron, who moved here the day before the attacks and has since been fighting a depression that is zapping her enthusiasm. Carolyn Taft is dealing with the memory of the 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Bernard Himelstein accepts that war--as surprising as this one is to him--will always be a part of his life. The Sterns, married for 57 years--Thelma and Henry--refuse to give in to fear. And, Vilensky, a small woman with a quick wit, inspires others with her “give-’em-hell” attitude.

Born in New York City, Vilensky is a self-described TV news junkie. She watched the terrorist attacks on the tube and except for the nightly movies shown in the home’s video room, doesn’t watch much else.

“This war with Afghanistan struck us like it was the end of the world,” says Vilensky, who copes by staying on top of the news and never missing afternoon bingo. “If anyone here wants to know something, they ask me.” Vilensky moved into Woodland Park three years ago from an apartment in Los Angeles where she lived for 30 years. Her room is filled with photos of her two grown children, Edwin and Betty, and their adult kids, as well as honors for her volunteerism and work as a hospital office manager and later, as an executive secretary. She retired at 75.

For 56 years Sadie was married to Sol Vilensky, an accountant, who died of cancer in 1978. A matchmaker arranged their first date. Sadie recalls saying to Sol back then, “If you give me a small diamond, this match is off.” She credits her husband for teaching her “to be a fighter.”

“I’m not afraid,” she says pounding her fist on the table, startling a few of her friends who all agree that when Sadie talks, everybody listens.

“You have to adopt a no-fear attitude to get you through the day,” she tells them. “Look, I was there for the first World War and even saw President Wilson wearing a high hat riding in his coach with his wife. My two brothers were taken to war and they came out OK.”

She remembers during World War II having to use rationing coupons “for butter, even for stockings and things like that, but we managed.”

She recalls the night she and Sol sent their only son, now 74 and living in Santa Ana, off to World War II to serve in the Navy. She put him on the train at Los Angeles’ Union Station and then “cried bitterly” as she and Sol returned to their West Adams Street apartment on a trolley car.

“My tears were coming down like the rain that night. Now, I see our young people going off to war and I feel sorry for the parents that have to say goodbye because I remember the night I did that.”

Still, she says this war is different. “I feel this war will be worse than any I’ve been through. But I’m not fearful. I’ll continue to cope with a normal life as much as I can, because you are here today and today is what matters.”

Barron, 84, says she feels too vulnerable and frail to return to all things normal. The evening of Sept. 10 was her first night in the retirement hotel. The next morning “I woke up to a different world,” she says. She thinks about her husband, Ben, who served in the Air Force’s Flying Tigers during World War II. She was married to him for 64 years until his death a year ago--a loss she is still coping with as she adjusts to her new life away from her Sherman Oaks home. She speaks to her son, Dennis, 60, who lives nearby, and two grown grandchildren.

She tells everyone around the table that even though she feels “very secure” in her new surroundings she’s deeply depressed “because this--terrorism, war, anthrax--is so overwhelming to me. I just can’t conceive and absorb it. I recognize the full meaning of what is going on but I can’t watch TV the way you do,” she says to Sadie.

“I have no feeling of wanting to do things. I used to be very upbeat,” says Barron, who retired only seven years ago after 36 years as a secretary in the endocrinology and diabetes units at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Ben worked in the hospital mail room for 21 years. She recalls her love for work, volunteerism and exercise. “Now the feelings I’m experiencing are beyond my comprehension. The enormity of this ... I just can’t ... I don’t know how....”

Her friends offer support and she appreciates that. “I have to force myself to do things and I’m doing that, little by little--that’s what matters.”

What matters to Thelma, 82, and her husband, Henry, 83, is not succumbing to the fear of terrorists. Nine months ago they moved from their Northridge home where they had lived for 47 years. They have two sons, Mark, 54, who lives in Hilton Head, S.C., and Kenneth, 51, in Los Angeles.

Deciding to move into the retirement home was Thelma’s decision. Shopping, cooking, cleaning house were too much for her to handle because she needs a wheelchair and other assistance. “And I was too lonesome. Most of our friends are gone.”

She turns to Henry and talks fondly about the many letters she received from him during World War II. Henry was a private in two Army airborne infantries--and has since attended 20 reunions. From planes he parachuted into several battles, among them the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of Le Muy, France, in 1944.

In 1978, the Sterns visited Le Muy where they were feted with a tour by the town’s shoemaker. “You could still see the bullet holes in the top of the town’s clock tower,” Henry recalls. He pauses for several long seconds.

“Our men in Afghanistan have it worse than what we did in World War II because then you knew where the enemy was--and they were the losers who didn’t have the fire power,” Henry says. “This war is certainly not going down the path I fought. And for the life of me I can’t see how we are going to finish them off. I’m not smart enough to know how our leaders think.” Logistically, he does know that they’ve got a different kind of war. Politically, his view is that the enemy is using America’s support of Israel “as the reason to attack us.”

Thelma, like others in the room, immediately flashed backed to Pearl Harbor when the attacks first occurred at the World Trade Center. “When Pearl Harbor happened we didn’t think of the war coming to us. We went to the war which was bad enough. But this war on terrorism is hitting home and it’s very frightening.”

The sound of an airplane now scares her. “I think, ‘Oh, my God, could it happen again?”’ she says, looking up. Moving here and making new friends was the right decision. “I couldn’t take being by myself in a house,” she says.

Himelstein, 95, also finds comfort among his friends here and outside the retirement hotel. Born in Russia, he immigrated at the age of 14 with his parents to Mexico City. He later lived in Brooklyn, New Jersey and ended up in Reseda--for 18 years--after visiting his son, Arnold, 46, who lives in the Los Angeles area.

The widower moved into the home two years ago. Marian, his wife of 43 years, died in 1993. A bulletin board in Himelstein’s room is covered with photos of their four kids and 10 grandchildren. He never served in the military, but during World War II he worked for almost three years as a tinsmith on the refrigeration systems of ships and destroyers in a New Jersey Navy shipyard.

Nothing depresses him. “I accept things the way they come. I have many problems, and if I can improve the situation I do.” He raises his slightly swollen right hand. “It hurts,” he says about his clenched hand. He can no longer enjoy his hobby of story writing because he’s unable to uncurl his fingers, except for one. He’s tried writing with his other hand and has used a tape recorder, “but it’s not the same.”

So he reads--voraciously. “I like newspapers and I know how to read between the lines. Do you want to know what I read between the lines? The people who are terrorists are alone and poor. This is a war of envy because they haven’t got a pair of shoes to wear and why should we have three, four and five pairs? There are those who preach over there that America is the devil. We have to fight against this.”

Others agree.

Taft, 92, brings up Pearl Harbor again. She was 32 then, married two years to Amidon Taft, who was washing the family car when the news flashed on the radio. She ran outside of their L.A. home to tell him. “I remember that very moment. It felt like the end of the world. But I got through it.”

Taft, born in San Bernardino, lived in Fresno before moving to Woodland Park three years ago. Like her friends, she has survived not only national crises but personal ones as well. Her single mother had to raise four children and Taft, the only daughter, had to help the family.

Eventually, in 1933, she earned a college degree from the former Colorado State Teacher’s College. With the depression still on, there was little work. But she landed a switchboard operator’s job at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where regulars Bob Hope, Irving Berlin and Clark Gable would give her chocolates. She also met her late husband, a bellboy, who managed to save $4,000 in tips to buy their first house. Together, they raised two daughters.

“Nobody had money. I think back and remember so many suicides and so much depression,” she says. Now, she can’t help but think about the lives lost in New York, more in the war ahead. “Everyday, there is the fear that something is going to happen that will take more lives.”

Still, Taft, like her friends, is strong in soul and spirit, taking one day at a time, grateful to be alive. “All these years I’ve been growing old with dignity, not fear. That’s the way to do it.”