December 2004

Author Explores Secrets of Aging... with Grace and Attitude!

"What's your secret?" That's a question Anne Snowden Crosman, SOC/MA '68, has asked dozens of older Americans about how they've managed to stay young, fit, productive, and optimistic. Their answers, as varied as their histories, appear in her recent book, Young at Heart, Aging Gracefully with Attitude, which she graciously brought by the AU alumni office a few weeks ago.

Crosman, who was the first woman hired by CBS Radio Network to do newscasts full-time, has made her career as a journalist in Europe and the United States, contributing to NBC, AP, and Voice of America radio; as well as the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and Newsweek. She compiled Young at Heart after more than 12 years of interviewing outstanding older Americans about how they've managed to "defy age with zest, work and healthy lifestyles."

“Aging in America is the single most important social issue of our time. More people are living healthier lives than ever in our history,” she says.

In the last couple years, Crosman has crossed the United States twice, covering more than 20,000 miles to promote her book, now in its third printing and winner of the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in independent publishing. During that time, she has signed thousands of books and spoken at hundreds of retirement and assisted-living homes, senior centers, schools, and libraries about the many interesting people she had the privilege to meet and talk with – including Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Drs. Linus Pauling and Benjamin Spock, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Mrs. Normal Vincent Peale, Les Paul, Steve Allen, Art Linkletter, Gordon Parks, Molly Yard, and 50 others.

Here are just a few of the gems she brings to light:

• Founder of the Washington Performing Arts Society, Patrick Hayes, says one of his tricks to deal with stress is to curl his toes. “It’s an old actor’s trick,” he explains, meant to ensure actors don’t show their stress in their necks and shoulders.
• Retired Senator and scholarship founder J. William Fulbright deals with age by making fun of it. “You know, she’s a grandmother,” he jokes at his wife Harriet.
• Pilot and flight instructor “Mama Bird” Evelyn Bryan Johnson, says “Every day I go up, I see something I hadn’t seen before.” The Guinness Book of World Records-holder for the most flight hours logged by a woman brags that she’s one of the seven female (of 100 total members) of the UFOs - United Flying Octogenarians.

Although Crosman calls Scarsdale, N.Y., home, she’s heading for Sedona, Arizona, for a bit to take in a part of the United States she has not yet experienced. Also on her horizon: plans to write 20 more books with subjects ranging from new American immigrants to family businesses, philanthropists, and organ-transplant recipients. She has already begun the next two.

-Melissa Reichley

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