Visitation programs relieve isolation of the elderly

Renna Khuner-Haber, a sophomore at Barnard College, signed up last fall to visit an elderly person in her neighborhood. That is how she met 95-year-old Abraham Melezin, a Holocaust survivor. Their meeting was arranged by the New York-based volunteer program Dorot, and it has since blossomed into friendship.

Mary Dyan, a 30-year-old software project manager, met her elderly match four years ago, at a St. Patrick’s Day party thrown by the Boston chapter of a similar organization, Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly. Since then, Peg Flynn, 80, has become Dyan’s surrogate mother.

For the 35 million Americans over 65, growing old can be a complicated and solitary journey. But across the country, volunteer visitation programs like these are relieving the isolation of thousands in the elderly community. Intergenerational friendships often spring up--and recent studies indicate these programs can lead to longer, healthier lives.

“There’s good evidence to believe that if the older person senses that she is less lonely, that someone else cares about her and is interested in her life, she’s less likely to have depression,” said Dr. Dan Blazer, editor of the journal Aging and Mental Health. Social connectedness, Blazer said, can reduce the risk of illness and even lengthen life expectancy.

Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly and Dorot (which means “generations” in Hebrew) are two of many visitation programs nationwide. Little Brothers has 1,200 visiting volunteers matched with more than 5,000 elderly in nine U.S. cities and eight countries. Dorot has 9,000 volunteers, mostly matched with aging New Yorkers. Volunteer involvement ranges anywhere from one-hour visits each week to afternoon visits plus rides to doctor appointments or the grocery store.

Volunteers who sign up hoping to improve an elderly person’s life often find that the friendship equally enriches their own lives.

When Khuner-Haber, a 20-year-old biology major, met Melezin, she did not know what to expect. But as Melezin recounted his life, her perception of him and of her own grandparents changed, she said.

Melezin was once a geography professor at Vilna University in Lithuania. During the Nazi regime, he was taken to the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland. At Stutthof, an estimated 65,000 to 85,000 people died. But Melezin survived using a fake name. His wife died, as did his son. In 1948, he came by ship to New York, where he remarried and raised a stepdaughter. Today Melezin lives in a sunny Upper West Side apartment, where Khuner-Haber meets him every Wednesday.

“Hearing his stories makes me remember he’s not just a 95-year-old man,” Khuner-Haber said. “I know my grandparents, in their own ways, have done amazing things. But it’s hard to see that, and it’s making me look at them differently.”

She asks more questions about their lives now, she said, and understands their desire to reminisce.

For Melezin, time has changed the whole nature of his relationship with Khuner-Haber.

“In the beginning, it was some kind of distraction,” he said. Now he looks forward to Wednesdays, especially when there is “something I need to get off my shoulders, or off my heart.”

That sort of initial apprehension is not uncommon for the elderly. Although volunteers are screened and trained, matches are not always successful, and personal boundaries can be problematic.

“People’s personalities are going to vary, so if there’s an elder who’s particularly needy, that elder will most likely not be paired with a volunteer,” said Liz Drew, who heads Little Brothers in the United States. Those elders are matched with Little Brothers staff.

For Peg Flynn and Mary Dyan, the match seemed natural.

“We clicked,” said Flynn, who has blue eyes, strawberry blonde hair and a thick Boston accent. Flynn filled an empty spot in Dyan’s life. Dyan's mother died when she was 16, she said, and she did not know her grandparents well. “Peg is someone I would pick for my family,” she said as the women chatted in Dyan’s living room.

Flynn grew up in Massachusetts, where she married Frank Flynn. He was a hotel chef; she worked in hospital food service. But in 1977, her husband died after battling emphysema. Then she learned she had a crippling nerve disorder. Doctors said she would not live past 1980 and that she would never walk again. “I’d just lost my Frank,” she remembered. “At the time, it was really a whammo.”

A doctor suggested she contact Little Brothers for extra support. Now, 11 years after she first joined, Flynn shares a close-knit friendship with Dyan. They frequently have lunch together, and they tour Boston Harbor on a boat every summer.

For some, the social engagement these volunteers offer is crucial to survival. Up to 15 percent of aging people suffer from depression or significant symptoms of depression, Blazer said.

“The perception of whether one is isolated or lonely may be as important or more important as the actual availability of people in their lives, in terms of health outcomes,” he said.

But how true is that? Can matches like these really improve health?

“Oh yes,” Flynn said, nodding enthusiastically. She recently gave up full-time use of her wheelchair in favor of a walker.

The support goes both ways. “It’s been nice to have someone consistently there for me,” Dyan said. She finds that as the years pass, she looks to Flynn even more as a surrogate mother.

“And a surrogate grandmother soon,” said Dyan said, who is expecting her first baby in July.

E-mail: ard2113@columbia.edu