Wisdom of a Life Well-Lived: Words of Reflection and Guidance of a 101-Year Old Woman

By Ethel Pearson Levine and Gary Springer

Through a series of articles written over many years, Ethel Pearson Levine teaches us about life through her eyes, giving words of advice about friendship, marriage, divorce, health, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483578118

Book preview

EPILOGUE

INTRODUCTION

Ethel Levine, my grandmother, lived to 101. This fact alone doesn’t make her unusual. What makes her special was the effect she had on my life, along with the lives of her family, friends, students, and the thousands of people who read her timeless articles.

This book is a tribute to her wisdom, her insight, and the ageless truths that infused her writing. On life’s big stage, few knew her name. On a smaller but no less significant platform, she was a powerful and influential force.

Over a period of 30 years, she wrote monthly articles for the Sunrise Lakes condominium newsletter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Her articles embrace universal subjects from marriage and divorce to relationships, aging, and death. She took on subjects that affect us all. Within each article, there’s a message, an affirmation, for living a meaningful life.

If we all lived by my grandmother’s inspirational messages, the world would be a better place. These universal topics will touch all readers, millennials and baby boomers to octogenarians.

Ethel Pearson Levine was born on December 12, 1912, in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, where her father owned a candy store. She was a petite woman, 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighing 120 pounds. I never called her grandmother or grandma. She was always Granny, a softer name, which I felt suited her perfectly.

Granny and I shared a special connection. Far more than my grandmother, she was my friend and role model. She made me feel comfortable and safe. I looked forward to spending time with her and sharing experiences.

When I visited her, we took long walks, played cards and word games, and watched movies together. As a child she played the piano for me, and I sat on the wooden bench next to her and we sang songs together.

Most of all, I enjoyed talking to Granny. I loved hearing about what it was like growing up in Bensonhurst during the Depression. No subject was taboo. I felt that I could ask her questions about anything, and she would answer me truthfully. We talked about wide-ranging topics, from literature and politics to our family’s history. I loved hearing about her travels with my grandfather to Israel, Europe, and Asia. I was awed by her sense of adventure and her curiosity to see the world.

When I relive the countless hours spent with Granny, I still salivate when I think about the tuna fish sandwiches she made me. After she was gone, tuna fish sandwiches never tasted the same. Granny couldn’t understand why I thought her tuna fish sandwiches were so special. It’s just tuna fish mixed with mayonnaise, I remember her saying. But not to me. Granny’s tuna fish sandwiches were special because she made them. She said the secret ingredient was love.

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Politically, she was very liberal. She favored candidates who wanted to help the downtrodden and less fortunate. An ardent supporter of workers’ rights, she believed all people are equal and are entitled to a crack at the American dream.

Granny was a prototype of the emancipated modern woman, an outspoken advocate for women’s rights before it was fashionable. During that pre-women’s-liberation era when women were discriminated against in the workplace, she candidly wrote about what it felt like being a woman in a man’s world in Personal Stories. In an era when women were cast in the background, Granny loved being female.

Growing up in the 1920s, when most women were homemakers and men were the breadwinners, Granny was her own person, a free spirit determined to forge her own career path.

Initially when she graduated from Brooklyn College, there were no jobs in her career choice, teaching. Through a college friend she got a job as a billing clerk at a shirt company. It was there she met a handsome salesman, Richard Levine, my grandfather. She eventually got her teaching license and taught at