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By Jackie M. Young
Special to the Star-Bulletin
“It’s never too late for anything. And live for the present; treasure the past but live for now.”
Helmi Wilby
95-year-old retired teacher, who lives independently in Waikiki
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ON A BALMY Sunday afternoon in June right after her 95th birthday, more than 30 friends - ages 10 to 80 - of Helmi Wilby’s gathered to celebrate her moving one year closer to the century mark.
The hobbies and occupations of these many friends reflected Wilby’s own diverse interests: student to art instructor, financial adviser to gardener, videographer to librarian. They also represented her secrets to aging well: having a wide support network, continuing to pursue interests and being positive.
A retired third-grade schoolteacher born in Nevada, Wilby lives independently in a cozy one-bedroom apartment in Waikiki with her plants and her cat, and still takes senior-citizen classes at UH.
“Helmi’s an inspiration to me and to everyone else in the Lifelong Learning program,” said Rebecca Goodman, director of the Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning at UH. “She’s a true lifelong learner, eager to discover as much as she can about the world.”
Wilby does her own cooking, and shops weekly with the help of one of her many friends. Another helps her clean house, and more help maintain her 5-by-18-foot plot in a community garden. “I would never be able to live like I do without the most incredible network of friends,” she said.
Her daughter, 66, retired recently from Punahou School, where she worked as a psychologist. She lives next door. (Wilby’s son died in 2000, at 59, while flying an Ultra-Light airplane.)
Driving until a few years ago, Wilby has adjusted to taking the Handi-Van. “The drivers are courteous, thoughtful - though they do go over the bumps a little fast sometimes, so I just bring a little cushion with me,” she said. In the house she has a cane, and outside she uses a walker.
At age 90, Wilby endured a total right knee replacement. Even more telling was her recovery last year from a broken pubic bone. She fell during a visit to her cousins in Finland. “There’s always something good about things,” Wilby noted, “and it’s that I never would have gotten to know my family as I did, if I hadn’t had my accident.”
A friend of 22 years, Mary Flynn, a retired pathologist, noted that “Helmi was a virtual prisoner in that wheel-chair after her fall. But now she’s bounced back, and she continues to be so active - just a great role model for independent women.”
Wilby is the eldest, and last survivor, of her siblings: Sisters Helen and Ann died in 2005 and 2004, respectively, and brother Toivo in the ’70s. She also had a stepsister and stepbrother, both of whom died long ago. Her parents were immigrants from Finland; her father died when she was 7 and her mother during her freshman year in high school.
Wilby put herself through high school and college by working and by winning scholarships and grants; she graduated from Pomona College with a Bachelor of Science degree. But she quickly found that no one would hire a woman as a research scientist in those days, so she signed up for teacher’s training at Claremont College in California. There she met and married Frank Whitby (who became a school administrator) in 1938.
“Frank was a morning person; I was an evening person,” Wilby reflected wistfully on her almost 60-year marriage. “We complemented each other. I was a scientist; he was into literature. Through him, I learned about the great classics and about music.”
Frank, who died 10 years ago, was “a rebel and quite adventurous,” she said. Three years before they were to retire, they took a one-year sabbatical in Europe. “We spent four months in Italy, four months in Spain and four months traveling to places like Greece and Yugoslavia.”
In Florence, Frank bought a Lambretta motor scooter. “I used to sit behind Frank, with my legs crossed, sidesaddle, just like the other ladies in Italy,” Wilby giggled.
They shipped the scooter to Greece, where they got into an accident. The front tire picked up a nail, and the scooter started to list from side to side, finally going down. Wilby confessed to her rescuers that Frank had had some wine before the fall. “They said it was a good thing he had had the wine, so that his reflexes were slower, otherwise he would’ve braked too quickly and we would’ve been really hurt!”
After all her life’s adventures, what advice does Wilby have for other seniors? “It’s never too late for anything. And live for the present; treasure the past but live for the now.”
Good advice from someone who just might live to be 100.