In My Third Act: Barbara Silverstone on What Activism Looks Like at 94

In this edition of In My Third Act, Lynn Armentrout speaks with Barbara Silverstone of New York City. Barbara has a rich history of movement work, from managing political campaigns to advocating for older adults with vision loss—and she is not slowing down anytime soon.

Barbara Silverstone just turned 94, and while she is no longer able to protest in large marches and rallies, her health is excellent and her activism remains engaged. She joined Third Act a year ago out of her urgent concern about climate change, and now serves as one of three national volunteers who answer the emails that come in to info@thirdact.org. It’s a busy inbox, especially after large Third Act events, and she’s gratified to be of help to an equally busy staff.

Barbara was born in Manhattan and—with a few brief exceptions—has lived there all her life. She has two daughters, one of whom is an obstetrician specializing in high risk pregnancies and the other, very active in the Gallatin Democratic Party in Montana. One of her five adult grandchildren has played leadership roles in the Montana Sunrise Movement. A widow for 15 years now, and retired from a career in social work, she is content living alone in an apartment on the Upper East Side with her dog, Joey. Manhattan is very friendly to older adults, she says. For those with disabilities the buses are accessible, and the cultural opportunities are plentiful.

 

 

As a young woman, Barbara was part of the New York City Democratic reform movement of the 1950s and 1960s, when local clubs revolted against Tammany Hall. She volunteered in the successful campaign led by William Fitz Ryan and other reform democratic district leaders to oust corrupt Tammany Hall boss, Carmine DeSapio. She later managed Bill Ryan’s successful campaign for Congress.

Barbara holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Duke University and a master’s degree in social work from the University of Chicago. In her early career she worked as a psychiatric social worker in services to children and their families.  After receiving her PhD at Columbia University, she turned to the field of gerontology and served as Chief of Social Services at what was then the Jewish Home and Hospital for Aged in New York. While there she was confronted with the challenges facing adult children caring for their aging parents and the lack of public attention being paid to the challenges facing the sandwich generation—the outsized responsibility on middle-aged Americans who support both their aging parents and dependent children.  In 1976, along with co-author and family caregiver, Helen Kandel Hyman, she wrote “You and Your Aging Parent,” now in its 4th edition. As Barbara recalls, it made a big splash at the time.

Her interest in the challenges facing family caregivers later turned to vision loss among older adults and the impact on their lives.  In 1984 she became the Executive Director, and later CEO, of Lighthouse International where she advocated for the creation of environments friendly to the visually impaired including those with no or little sight and those with partial sight (also known as low vision). Abetted by the groundbreaking Americans with Disabilities Act, these changes included greater contrast in interior building design, larger print in publications, and computers accessible to those with vision impairment.

After retiring from Lighthouse International in 2005, Barbara went back to social work part-time, developing and managing training programs for social work supervisors in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Kaplan of Adelphi University. She has now stepped down from her role in this multi-state program and is devoting herself  -as much as her energy allows – to social activism in response to the climate and political crises facing our country. She is deeply disturbed by the recent capitulation of her alma mater, Columbia University, to the dangerous demands being placed on academic institutions by the current administration.

Barbara’s response to those who feel hopeless at this time is to keep moving. She loses hope when she sees some people stepping back and retreating from advocacy roles.  She finds hope in the thousands of Americans protesting loudly, in the advances made in solar energy and in the reports that the profits of the fossil fuel companies are shrinking. Bill McKibben’s messages about climate change were what drew her to Third Act in the first place. Now involved, she feels supported, strengthened and inspired by the volunteers and staff working alongside her.