In a building for older residents of Lower Manhattan, Sterling Lord, 99, is using his lockdown time to start a new literary agency. Like agents everywhere, he said he was about to seal a “huge television deal” for one of his authors. He could not talk about it yet, he said.
Further uptown, Janet Wasserman, 85, a historian, is using the time to research an article on the infamous Dutch forger Han van Meegeren, a model for Patricia Highsmith’s character Tom Ripley. “With the internet,” she said, “everything I need is all there.”
Gordon Rogoff, 88, a theater professor and director, is rediscovering the joys of reading for pleasure, something he had not been able to do for a very long time. On a recent evening, he was preparing to start Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park.”
“It’s a guilty pleasure, but I don’t mind taking it, especially now,” he said.
The coronavirus, which has afflicted people of all ages, has been especially punishing for older people, isolating them in their homes or killing them at a disproportionate rate. People age 70 and up account for two-thirds of all coronavirus deaths in New York, though they make up less than 10 percent of the population.
Yet many New Yorkers in this age group are thriving during this catastrophe — skilled at being alone, not fearful about their career prospects, emotionally more experienced at managing the great disruption of everyday life that is affecting everyone.
Their stories are not everyone’s, of course, and it helps to have an active life of the mind. But amid the grim daily tallies of deaths in nursing homes or elders living in fear and isolation, they offer a counternarrative of resourcefulness and perseverance.
“I’m fine,” Ms. Wasserman said the other day, taking a break from her research and twice-daily walks with her dog. “I’m not complaining. In 85 years I’ve seen just about everything that can happen on this planet.
“If you haven’t lived as long as I have you might think this was the worst thing that ever happened. But people who know history know the difference.”
Those who have made it past 80, beating the national life expectancy, have already demonstrated resilience that is in need right now.
“The reality is that older adults as a group have a positivity bias,” or tendency to see the good side of situations, said Gary M. Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Their pessimism and anxiety tend to abate with age. They’re no longer striving for material achievements, so what matters to them now is what’s emotionally satisfying. They’re more likely to say, I’ve been through this before.”
For Ms. Wasserman, organizing her life to avoid germs is nothing new. She had her spleen removed almost 50 years ago after a mysterious infection, and has lived with a severely compromised immune system ever since. For her, exposure to even commonplace bugs can be life-threatening.
“This is very much standard operating procedure for me,” she said of life under lockdown. “If I got sick, that’s a different story. I seem to be healthy. I can easily contact my physicians by email. I don’t go out much, but so what? I do this all the time.”
She said she had not offered coping advice to her younger relatives, but tried to be a “living example” to them of how family support, even without physical contact, was “as important as having enough food and getting one’s medicines.”
On April 11 she celebrated her 85th birthday with far-flung relatives via Skype, a tool she had used in the past but not often. Now it meant regular visual contact with her family, more than she had before the pandemic.
“The only thing missing was the cake and candles,” she said. “But who wants all those candles, anyway? We’re lucky to be in this era where we can do this.”
Sterling Lord started his first agency in 1952, launching the career of Jack Kerouac, and when he was asked recently whether he was still working, he said that he was — in fact, one of his authors was older than he: the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose most recent book, “Little Boy,” came out near his 100th birthday last year.
For Mr. Lord, who left his old agency last year, the pandemic has been an inconvenience because he cannot hire assistants to get the new agency going, he said. The building, which provides meals and some other services, sends a daily count of how many residents and employees have gotten sick or died from the coronavirus, but Mr. Lord has not paid much attention.
“I think there are five or six cases in the building,” he said, though the daily sheet said 33 infections and 8 deaths.
“Am I nervous about the virus?” he said. “Yes. But not that nervous. Because we’re doing everything we can to not let it happen. And so far we’ve been very successful. I have not been out of the house at all since this thing began. It’s very little change. With my work, it’s very easy for me to go the whole day without going outside. ”
For Gordon Rogoff, the virus and the city’s virtual lockdown were the third in a series of blows. He had spent nearly a decade in the role of caregiver for his husband, Morton Lichter, a painter, playwright and actor who had Parkinson’s disease. Together they shared an Obie award for a 1976 production of Mr. Lichter’s play “Old Timers’ Sexual Symphony (and Other Notes)” that Mr. Rogoff directed. When Mr. Lichter died on Jan. 9 in their home, Mr. Rogoff was both liberated and alone. While he was grieving, he fell and injured his knee, immobilizing him. Finally, as he was ready to move around again, the city shut down.
“I was really quarantined two weeks before everybody else, because I couldn’t walk,” he said, speaking by telephone from a living room filled with Mr. Lichter’s paintings. The apartment, where he has lived since 1962, is rent-controlled — reason enough never to die.
“I’ve settled on a very strong, conscious thought — that I must not allow this to hurt me any further than it already has,” he said. “I don’t expect to get the virus, frankly. I’m pretty well protected here. I wash my hands a lot. But I don’t feel I’m likely to be a statistic. And like Morton, I have so much more to do, so I’m working that way.”
He added: “Those of us who are older are singled out for a form of house arrest. I like it, actually. I’m recovering some sense of space and time that’s been lost in the hectic arrangements in which we live on a daily basis. I hadn’t realized how deeply immersed in the bustle of contemporary life I have been. One musician, for example, said to me, This is the sabbatical I’ve longed to have. I can see the point, I really can.”
He had to cancel the memorial for Mr. Lichter, which had been scheduled for St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. Maybe next year, when he can also celebrate his own 90th birthday — another reason to survive. In the meantime, there was a shelf of novels calling to him, and a piano he had not played for years.
“There’s a lot about this timing that is not so terrible for me,” he said. “I know it is for so many, and I grieve for them. But I find myself turning it upside down. And that’s really very pleasing.”
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