With someone celebrating their 50th birthday every seven seconds in America, Monika White’s job is about to get hectic. But she’s not a party planner or a gourmet cake decorator. White, 66, is more like a life planner, whose duty is to make people’s golden years as sweet and delightful as possible. And with the largest-ever batch of retirees on the horizon, she’s going to have her hands full.
As the president and CEO of Santa Monica’s Center for Healthy Aging, a nonprofit organization founded in 1974 and dedicated to providing a broad range of health and support services to those 55 and older, it is White’s responsibility to ensure the center is achieving its mission while simultaneously preparing for the future. In this not-too-distant future, 75 million baby boomers will be in need of some sort of service, whether it be counseling over the loss of a loved one, or help balancing a checkbook.
42C,“We are really focused on people aging well … People are living longer, but we also want them to live better,” said White, who has directed the center and its roughly 150 volunteers for the last 11 years. “This center was founded with the goal in mind of providing services that can’t be found anywhere else. I see it as our job to fill the gaps, and with the baby boomers on their way, we will need to adapt like we’ve always done, and we look forward to the challenge.”
White, a social worker and gerontologist with degrees from USC, said she “fell into” social work while attending college, where she was studying English. After a brief stint as a receptionist at a clinic for mentally challenged girls, White became fascinated with social work and went back to school. She got her start directing youth programs at the YWCA. She also taught at her alma mater, and she is still an adjunct professor at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Before she was recruited to the center, White spent several years directing a senior services program at Huntington Hospital.
6B0,“I really didn’t want to leave the hospital, but I had never run an entire agency before,” White said. “So I decided to come here, and it has been wonderful. I love the community. I think Santa Monica is great.”
In an interview with the Daily Press last week at her office at Arizona Avenue and 21st Street, White discussed the challenges the center and her staff will face in the coming years. She also spoke frankly about the need for the increased testing of older drivers following the July 2003 farmers’ market tragedy, in which an elderly driver killed 10. White also spoke about her past — including her short, but fruitful blue-grass career — and shared secrets to living a longer, healthier life.
Is Santa Monica conducive to healthy aging?
“I’m not sure that everyone would agree with me, but mainly because of housing it has become very difficult to live here. Many can’t obtain affordable housing, especially for older people who are on a fixed income. It is a problem. But outside of that, Santa Monica is a great place, if you are already here. It’s very conducive to healthy agency if you take advantage of what’s available. There are a lot of programs and services for older people, whether it’s through hospital programs or through us, the senior center, UCLA, Emeritus College, which is not something you find in every community … The beach is wonderful. The air is better here than in most places in LA. The temperature is better here. We have the farmers’ market, Whole Foods. We have wonderful restaurants, the Promenade, the pier. I think it’s just very conducive to activities. There are a lot of churches here, a lot of opportunities for spiritual involvement, whatever your faith is.
437,“Santa Monica is a great community. People care about what happens here. They are very involved in the community. There are a lot of service clubs. I’m a member of the Rotary Club.”
What’s the trick to aging gracefully?
“You know, we all wish we knew what it was. We wish we knew the silver bullet. It’s really a combination of things. Your genes account for about 30 percent of how you age and how long you live. The rest is up to a lot of choices we make in life, including where you live, what you eat and whether you exercise or not. You have choices.
“There are some things that we know from research, characteristics of people who do live a very long time. It’s about five things … nothing earth shattering. Number one, you have to maintain a sense of humor. That is really important. Another thing is a sense of hope, looking forward to tomorrow … You’ve also got to maintain an interest in something. You’ve got to remain engaged in something, whether it’s a hobby, going to see friends, a faith-based activity, whether you garden … something that holds your interest.
440,“A real important one is an ability to cope with loss. Because as you age, you lose not only people — spouses, siblings, friends — but you also lose your ability to do certain things, a loss of independence. I know people who say, ‘Take my license, shoot me.’ It can be very traumatic. You can’t do a lot of laundry, cooking, shopping. Those are all symbols of independence.
“The thing that really gets us, though, is stress. It is really the big killer. We all need to find a way to reduce stress. You need to learn how to cope with it, not let it grind at you. We all need to find a way to balance stress.”
So what’s your method?
“Well, I play music. I play the banjo, guitar, mandolin, stand-up bass. My husband’s a fiddle player, and we both play a lot of music in our lives … We just went on vacation. It was a cruise with about 100 of us or so. We had a part of the ship just for us where we could get together and jam … Whereas some people will pick up a glass of wine at a party, we’ll come in and pull out our instruments and start playing.”
How did music come into your life?
508,“Well, there’s no rhyme or reason for it. There’s nothing in my background. I was born in Shanghai, China: a refugee family from World War II. I lived in Shanghai for eight years before we moved to Minnesota. My parents fled Germany for Shanghai and were relocated with the help of this agency that was working with thousands of families after the war … I’m an identical twin. My sister also plays banjo. We both maybe started hanging out with a bad crowd, but we started playing this Appalachian style, pre-blue grass kind of music, and we’ve been playing ever since.
“I had a working band for 10 years, made a couple of records. That was a long time ago (laughing). It was a group of five women. We were called Old Mother Logo. That’s the name of a 300-year-old fiddle tune from the British Isle. We worked a lot, actually. We used to do a lot of performances for Disney, Knott’s (Berry Farm) and Magic Mountain. We did a lot of those. I had to break the band up because I really had to get my real career going. I never meant to be a musician, but now my music is really a large part of my social life … That’s my release. Some people create art, others do yoga or write poetry. Whatever it is, people need something to balance the stress because we are living in a stressful time.”
The population shift with baby boomers is coming soon. How is the center preparing for that?
“It’s a huge population shift, and the boomers are an interesting population. They are increasingly the caregivers of the elderly, they are certainly shifting. This year, 2006, the first batch turns 60. We are trying to reach younger people because we would like to say to the boomers: You are going to live a really long time, and you should do some planning around that and take look at where you are going to live and who’s going to be around to take care of you if you need it, and what are the resources in your community and so on. Boomers as a group are just beginning to be studied, and we’re finding them to have the greatest level of denial about aging. Some of that is good because you don’t want to dwell on become old and decrepit … it’s really about 20 percent of the population that we consider older, and most are much older — 85 and older — who need a lot of help.”
Are you looking ahead in terms of fundraising?
“It’s funny that you mention that. We are about to embark on our first-ever fundraising effort to be able to expand our programs and to be able to sustain them for the long term. We call it our ‘Evergreen Campaign’ because we want to be around for a long time. We are looking to raise $3 million in three years. We are just now doing all our planning for it. We are going to go out into the community, and hopefully the community will see the value of having this resource here, if nothing else, for information, if nothing else, for a place they can call if they have a mom or aunt in Iowa that we can help. We really network across the country, so if you have an aunt in Iowa, we can connect you. We are really experts in locating and accessing services, and that is a valuable service we provide in addition to the more hands-on, direct services we provide.”
Ten people lost their lives in Santa Monica’s farmers’ market tragedy because of an elderly driver at the wheel. What was your reaction to that?
“We immediately sent our professional mental health workers down there to work with the people there who needed counseling. We made staff available following that for anybody who wanted to come in. People who saw that were traumatized. It really brought the issue of aging and driving to the forefront. I happened to be traveling the following month after the accident, and I was in Germany and people said, ‘Oh, Santa Monica, isn’t that where …’ It was universal. Everywhere we go, people say, ‘Ooh, I’m trying to get Mom to stop driving.’ So we do classes to help families notice the warning signs of when they should get a family member to stop driving. Because it truly isn’t about age, it’s about mobility. But with age comes less ability.”
Should there be laws to make older drivers take driving tests annually?
“Yes, I believe so. I know from working in the field for 30 years there are some very normal and natural things that happen with age. You reflexes are slower. You can’t see as well. Those are normal things. That doesn’t mean you can’t drive, it just means you should be checked more often. There’s no magic age to get tested, but statistics on accident reports, 70 to 75 years old, accidents go up … And when older people do get in accidents, the damage tends to be more severe and they find it harder to recover physically.”
Is there a certain technology or advancement in medicine that has helped increase longevity more than others?
“Without question, the advances in medical procedures in general have helped a lot. We used to die from heart attacks and strokes. Now we live. In a way, it’s one of the problems. We live with the things we used to die from, so that means we live longer but that doesn’t necessarily mean we live well. But yeah, we can stay alive for a long time … Some say what started us on the road to longevity was when we started washing our hands after going to the bathroom, you know, not passing those germs, bacteria. Some say it was pasteurizing milk. So in other words, there’s no one answer. But clearly advances in medicine are way up on the list.”
As a resident of Santa Monica, what do you love most about living here?
“Well, besides all of the things I mentioned before, we love the range of places, from McDonald’s to the Pacific Dining Car. For us, there are lots of places to go, cultural and socially. We love the weather here … We like the sense of community here. I’m involved in the Rotary. I’m on the board of the Santa Monica College Associates, so I’m very involved in the community. I can’t go to a restaurant or store without running into someone I know, and I love that.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 6, 2006. Read the original PDF.