Ellen Braunstein
Shelley Geltzer’s experience as the daughter of an aging parent taught her strength and empathy. So did her 19 years as KleinLife program director for older adult services in Northeast Philadelphia.
Geltzer just retired “as a birthday present to myself.” She turns 75 on Dec. 26 and looks forward to a new phase in life for which she can apply what she has learned about aging and “living my best life.”
“I dealt with my own mother for so many years,” Geltzer said. She would call her mother and hear only that “this one died and this one’s sick and she’d cry. I’d say, Mom, do you have anything better to tell me?”
At KleinLife, Geltzer learned her mother wasn’t unique.
“This was the age where people are scared, and this is all they have to talk about,” she said. “Their doctor’s appointments, who’s sick and who’s suffered.
“I learned that there is a need for the kinds of programs and activities that we offered. It’s important that people get up every morning, no matter how they feel, whatever aches and pains, and push themselves to come to our center, to socialize, to be out of the house and away from the TV. It kept them healthy and alive.”
Those who did make the effort taught Geltzer so much.
“The empathy and the strength they’ve given me now that I’m retired. I realize that I have to do the same thing. I have to push myself to get up, get out and do things no matter how I feel. That’s the way to stay alive.”
Why did she wait so long to retire?
“I feel like I’m 39, thank God. I guess the honest answer is that I need structure in my life and, secondly, it was a financial decision,” she said. “We had some stress in our lives earlier, and it was hard catching up.”
Geltzer lives in Langhorne in an over-55 community called Villages of Flowers Mill.
“It was a lot of work two years ago to make the move. We were 37 years in Holland in lower Bucks County. It was something my husband wanted us to do for a long time,” she said. “We knew our house needed a lot of work, and we didn’t want to spend the money for that. Thankfully, the market was still good, and we decided now is the time.
During COVID, she worked part time because there was no indoor programming for seniors unless on Zoom.
“We came into the center twice a week to package food to be delivered to the seniors,” she said.
Geltzer said she became spoiled working just three days a week and “managed to live on that income.” But as things reopened, she knew she didn’t want to go back to 40 hours weekly, which was needed for that position.
She was planning a vacation and put in for her resignation with Nov. 30 being her last day.
“As far as what I’m going to do now, there are a lot of activities in my residential community,” she said. “There are daytime activities, nighttime activities, I have my husband. I’m blessed with that.”
She looks forward to starting a fitness program, saying, “I let myself go and need to get back to the gym.”
The activities that bring her the most joy are mahjong and knitting blankets and ponchos for herself, her grandchildren and others.
Geltzer and her husband, David, have three daughters, Lauren, Sharie and Rina, and seven grandchildren.
Before she worked for KleinLife, Geltzer directed programs for United Synagogue Youth at her synagogue, Ohev Shalom of Bucks County. She also taught Hebrew school at the Conservative synagogue in Richboro.
Geltzer grew up in a traditional Jewish home.
Her father owned a grocery store in southwest Philadelphia and the family lived above it until she was 9. Then they bought a house in Northeast Philadelphia. Geltzer lived there until 1972 when she married her husband, who became an independent insurance salesman.
“When I was young, it was school and Hebrew school. Anything else that I chose to do had to fit around that schedule,” she said. “There was no question about it.”
Gelzer raised her three daughters the same way in a kosher home.
“Jewish life is very important to me,” she said. “I didn’t discourage my daughters from doing extracurricular activities, but there was no choice that Hebrew school was a part of their lives, and they didn’t always love that, of course.”
Her daughters went to Camp Ramah. During their college years, they taught Hebrew school. They also traveled to Israel and Poland.
“I think that the continuation of their Judaism and the way they’re raising their families has a great deal to do with us and what we gave them,”
she said.
Her advice to anyone seeking to retire is to “do it while you’re healthy. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring so make time to enjoy life. If you can do it, work part time if you have a job you love. Keep yourself busy by doing what you enjoy the best.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
