Recalling a Simple Life in Brooklyn
Jessie Singer Sylvester moved anonymously through old age in Brooklyn in the 1970s, absorbing one loss after the next — her job of 59 years, her beloved sister, her friends, her sense of security, her sharp mind. Still, she soldiered on, attending to her sister until she died, cooking and cleaning for herself, going to classes at the local senior center and visiting parks, museums and what she called “the Botanical.”
It sounds so ordinary and unremarkable, which is exactly why Ms. Sylvester, 22 years after her death, is experiencing a rebirth of sorts as Every Elder. A film of her life, “Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn,” has won awards at film festivals from Los Angeles to Moscow, and will be shown on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan.
New York City’s commissioner for aging, Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, is showing it at senior centers across the city as a teaching tool to sensitize staffs to the inner lives of New York’s elderly. Schools of social work are using it in courses on aging.
“It really drives home the point that life is not made up of great big events. It’s an accumulation of little things that happen every day that can make or break you,” said Ms. Barrios-Paoli.
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