By Stephen Silver
When we spoke to Andrea Green, she was just exiting a dance class at KleinLife in Philadelphia. She’s there, she says, five days a week most weeks.
The 73-year-old Green grew up in Wynnefield, West Philadelphia, before moving to Northeast Philadelphia at age 17. She graduated from Lincoln High School, attended Temple, and earned her master’s degree. Then, she taught for 33 years in the Philadelphia public schools before retiring about ten years ago.
After marrying, she lived in Bensalem, where she and her husband had four children and eventually ten grandchildren.
Green’s husband passed away during the early days of the pandemic, although not from COVID-19 itself.
“I was kind of very sedentary for the next year and a half or so,” she said. “No one was going anywhere. Everything was closed. And I finally decided I needed to live, so I called KleinLife and said, “Is there anything there for a senior?”
And there certainly was.
“Now I am very, very busy at least five days a week,” she said. “I don’t know how I had time to work before.” This includes working out at 10 in the morning, every day besides Shabbat, “with a group of ladies on Zoom.” After that, she heads to KleinLife, which is about 10 minutes from her home.
“I walk on the track on Monday,” she said of her routine. “Wednesday, I do dance classes there, Tuesday, Thursday, I do exercise classes there, cardio and weights, and then Friday, I play Rummikub there, and I walk on the track again. So I try to do my 25 miles a week.”
In doing that, she has made “so many” friends, Green said. Several of them got together, back in the spring, to hold a Passover seder, and they have gathered for Rosh Hashanah dinners as well.
“We just did a Pesach Seder where a friend of mine and I wrote the Haggadah, typed it up, made copies, and we had 140 people at the seder,” she said.
“I don’t think I knew anybody at KleinLife when I came here,” she said. “And now I can’t tell you how many people I do know because there are too many to count.”
“You can tell people I am very happy that I have made it to this point,” she said. “I’m hoping to go another 21 years at least, maybe 31 years at least, and I figure keeping moving will get me there.”
For that, she’s appreciative of the friends and opportunities KleinLife has given her.
“I love KleinLife,” she added. “I really think that it has put a spark in my life again. It makes me happy.”
Stephen Silver is a freelance writer.