In Strangers, Centenarian Finds Literary Lifeline

These three disparate characters are part of a ragtag crew that cycles through the worn one-bedroom Murray Hill walk-up where Elizabeth Goodyear, who recently celebrated her 101st birthday, is confined after two knee operations. A lifelong lover of books, Ms. Goodyear lost her sight about four years ago, but in its place has acquired a roster of readers who stop by regularly, bringing with them dogs, gifts from their international travels and offerings of dark chocolate, the elixir she has savored daily since she was 3.

Usually there is something going on here, Ms. Goodyear observed the other day during Ms. Sandleben’s weekly visit. It’s strange. You’d think if you got to be 101, nothing much would happen. But it does.

It started with a neighbor two generations younger, who once asked Ms. Goodyear to watch her bags while she ran back upstairs to fetch a bow and arrows for a trip to Maine.

As Ms. Goodyear grew more frail, the neighbor, a yoga instructor named Alison West, started stopping by to kiss her goodnight each evening. On learning that Ms. Goodyear had outlived her savings, Ms. West raised money to pay for her rent-controlled apartment and part of her home health aide’s wages. Then, about five years ago, she posted a sign seeking readers at yoga studios downtown and sent out an e-mail message that was forwarded and forwarded again.

Liz has no family at all, and all her old friends have died, but she remains eternally positive and cheerful and loves to have people come by to read to her or talk about life, politics, travel or anything else, the message read. She also loves good chocolate!

Reading to the blind or the elderly is hardly novel. In New York City, two well-established programs, Lighthouse International and Visions/Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, have hundreds of volunteers who make home visits or read to clients at their offices and in senior centers. The National Federation of the Blind provides a free telephone service through which people can hear articles from more than 200 newspapers and magazines, and the Jewish Guild for the Blind offers a similar program using special radios.

But the casual, organic way in which this particular group came together around Ms. Goodyear is a window into the way New York can be a small town, the way strangers become a community, the way books, reading and, especially, stories bind people together.
I remember looking forward to seeing you, but also looking forward to hearing what’s happening next in the book, Ms. Sandleben, the 30-year-old tattooed yoga instructor, told Ms. Goodyear the other day. I was relieved when you told me that I was the only person reading the story because I didn’t want to miss out on anything.

Rebecca Feldman was one of the first to visit Ms. Goodyear, and has since married, become a nurse and enrolled in graduate school to become a midwife. When I first started visiting, I was afraid she’d be dead the next time I came, said Ms. Feldman, 31, who is eight months pregnant and plans to soon bring a new baby to meet Ms. Goodyear. When I tell people about her, I say I have this 101-year-old friend. I don’t think of it as volunteering anymore.

Ms. Goodyear was born in 1907, a premature twin delivered at home in, as she said, a suburb of Philadelphia whose name I cannot remember. (Her twin, who weighed just a pound, died within an hour of birth.) On doctor’s orders, she said, she was placed in a bureau drawer with hot water bottles and fed whiskey and cream via medicine dropper.

She came to New York in 1928, seeking a stage career, but said that after six months at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, they told me I had poise, personality and good looks but no acting ability. Instead, Ms. Goodyear had a variety of jobs, including assisting the lighting director for the New York City Ballet and theater press agents. In between, she wrote or collaborated on 20 plays  including two, Widow’s Walk and The Painted Wagon, that made it to the stage and saw many more, the titles of which she ticks off, alphabetically, in her mind to stave off loneliness and boredom.

After a brief marriage and an ectopic pregnancy, Ms. Goodyear moved to the Murray Hill walk-up in 1961, when the rent was $69. Everything was red, she said, laughing at the memory of asking a co-worker to repaint for her. The windowsills, the walls, the hall, the doors, everything.

She has taken dance lessons from Martha Graham, had drinks with Duke Ellington, spent a couple of hours with George Balanchine and his cats, and accompanied Gypsy Rose Lee, actress and burlesque entertainer, on a game show. One visitor recalled listening to Ms. Goodyear’s stories and then racing home to Google unfamiliar characters.

I think I only remember the amusing things; I don’t remember any depressing things, Ms. Goodyear said in an interview. I think I just put them out of my mind. I know everybody has things that they want to forget, but I don’t even have to forget. I just don’t remember

Ms. Goodyear now has an aide from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to help bathe, move and feed her. Her only medications are a monthly shot of vitamin B12 and one daily Tylenol her doctor prescribed because, as she put it, I guess I have to do something. Because she can no longer leave her apartment without an ambulette, her doctor makes house calls once a year.

He says he has to worry about his younger patients, Ms. Sandleben said.

Ms. Goodyear may have a glass eye and some teeth missing, but she can recite detailed plotlines from books she read 60 years ago.

A couple of weeks after her 101st birthday, her refrigerator contained five bottles of Champagne and dark chocolate in truffle and bar forms. Birthday cards from her 100th were strung across a wall of the living room, above the plastic-covered table holding the beloved books the volunteers-turned-friends have been reading. Many are novels by Rumer Godden, a 20th-century British writer whom Ms. Goodyear adores.

Glamour photos of Ms. Goodyear from the 1920s sit on the television. Four decades of bound copies of Theatre World line the hallway shelves. In Ms. Goodyear’s bedroom are a hospital bed and a couple of stuffed dogs. A ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ sign is posted by the front door.

Ms. Nolan, the graduate student, started visiting Ms. Goodyear two years ago, but since moving to Colorado last August to study poetry, she calls once a week and reads to her over the phone.

Mr. Kalinowsky, the real estate broker, said he also began visiting Ms. Goodyear two years ago, after both his father and his grandmother died, because he missed being close to people from other generations.

Ms. Sandleben brings Ms. Goodyear chocolates from Costa Rica, Zurich, SoHo. And when she was away in Arizona on Ms. Goodyear’s most recent birthday, she got her whole family on the phone to sing to her.

I don’t know how I ever managed to do it, Ms. Goodyear said of her numerous friendships.

You hook them in, Ms. Sandleben teased.

They come, Ms. Goodyear responded, and for some reason, they always come back.