Messages on life come out of creative writing class led by 96-year-old in Teaneck

TEANECK — At 96, Eva Barron still commands the attention of a classroom.

Her assignments have changed slightly from her days teaching creative writing at Teaneck High School. Many now lean autobiographical — vignettes based on the author’s memories, sparked by Barron’s prompts — instead of the fiction her high schoolers once turned in for grades.

And her students have many more years of life experiences to draw on for their work. But the nonagenarian engages and challenges them, just as she did before her retirement in 1993 after decades in education.

Barron began her writing club at Arbor Terrace, the Teaneck apartment complex for seniors where she lives, just over three years ago, when she said she realized many of the activities for residents involved listening or watching, but not actively doing.

“I thought, you know, they’ve had long and interesting lives. We all have something to contribute,” she said. “People joke that old people don’t do anything but sit around and play bingo. We’ve proved them wrong.”

The club’s 10 or so members, who range in age from 70 to 100, include a Holocaust survivor, a minister, a retired dentist and a pharmacist.

One of its most prolific writers is Herb Ehrlich, a 100-year-old who stormed the beach at Normandy during World War II.

Many of the members had never written before joining the club. Others, like Ehrlich, who worked in accounting and finance, wrote professionally but not creatively.

“I did a lot of writing about laws and insurance. This is expanding your thinking,” he said. “She really stretches your imagination with some of the topics.”

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The club's members meet every other week to share their work with one another. In the process, the group has grown closer through hearing each other’s stories and learning more about their pasts.

“This is the best thing I do here. I enjoy it very much,” said Carol Gluck, 92, who has been with the club since its beginning. “It’s a lot of fun. It gives me something to do. It makes you work, even when you don’t want to.”

They rarely critique each other’s writing, but the topics spark conversation and often lead to lengthy discussions. At the end of the class, they get their next assignment, which they complete on their own as “homework.”

“They take it very seriously,” Barron said. “They come about half an hour early and then stay and talk about all the stuff that comes up.”

Katie Pastor, Arbor Terrace’s executive director and a member of the group during its first year, said it gave her new insight into residents’ lives.

“I’ve heard from people this is the most thought-provoking activity we have in this community,” she said, “Families have said how much they appreciate and treasure it. This is a legacy they are leaving — these thoughts and writings. Some of them even read their assignments to their grandchildren.”

At a recent meeting, the residents gathered around a table and shared their most recent work: their impressions of a man based on a picture Barron had pulled from a New York Times Magazine profile of Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, the president of Brazil.

The photo sparked wildly different responses from the writers. One saw a blusterous businessman, another an obstetrician nearing retirement, and another an Armenian professor, newly arrived in New York to teach at Columbia.

For Barbara Davis, a newer member of the group, the picture stirred a memory of her late husband. Susan Carboni, whose son took Barron’s class when he was in high school, wrote a character sketch of Christopher Carter, a 60-year-old man whose recent cancer diagnosis forced him to face his own mortality.

She ended the piece: “Christopher is currently cancer-free. His bodily strength is somewhat recovered, and his hair is growing back. He has returned to work. But his mind is still coming to grips with that question: what’s it all about? How can I live, grow, learn, suffer, love, hate … and then simply cease to exist?”

“And there is no answer,” Barron said after a beat. “That’s a whole short story; now you can try a novel. It’s amazing, really — we have one photograph, and this is what people come up with.”

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Barron is careful not to repeat an assignment. She is a voracious reader and gets her ideas from newspaper articles, current events and poetry.

“I get my best ideas before I go to sleep,” she said.

Past assignments include memories of childhood toys, revisiting old neighborhoods, the place of music in their lives, and whom they would invite to a dinner party.

She also does some things she did with her students decades ago. A writing prompt using the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken,” unsurprisingly, elicited very divergent results from her current students, who have a lifetime of decisions to look back upon.

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“Their work is based on a life of marriage, children, divorce and whatever else happens. It comes out different, but it's fun to see,” she said. “They do terrific stuff.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Writing club led by 96-year-old former teacher inspires other seniors