On a warm spring afternoon, sitting in a cozy home office with projects scattered all about, a tan and grey dove keeping watch from a nest just outside a huge picture window, and surrounded by the Toby Mugs she and her late husband, Jack, collected in their 50-plus-year marriage, she shared stories of growing up in the tight-knit Eastside Jewish community; how she got into volunteering – it all started with a phone call – and her views on the important role volunteering plays in community well-being and, most important of all, how and why “volunteering keeps me young and alive and engaged.”

What was your early life like: when and where you were born and raised, what did your parents do, where you are in the sibling line-up?

I was born in Cleveland in 1923 and I'm a very firm supporter of Cleveland. I was born in the Collinwood area and grew up in the Woodland area and then moved to the Kinsman area.

My maiden name was Berman, and my parents came from Southern Ukraine. My father came shortly before World War I started. He saved up money to send for my mother and my sister and his father and mother and brothers. They all came over in 1921. My dad sold used cars, primarily. But I was a child of the Depression, so he did many things. He collected papers, copper, used appliances, just about anything he could sell.

My mother was a housewife. We were very poor and I was unaware of it.

My sister was 12 years older. She was born in Russia and was 10 when she came here. I was a surprise baby, so I have to admit, that when I was growing up I was pretty spoiled.

Where did go to school? And in school, what were you good at – and not so good at?

I was good at just about everything. I went to John Adams [high school] and took both the college prep courses and a secretarial course. I took the college prep courses because I wanted to go to college, but I didn't know if I would be able to, financially. I took the secretarial courses because I knew that I was going to be working whether I went to college or not.

You came of age during the Depression. How do you think that influenced the person you are today?

My children laugh because I reuse tinfoil and I save bottles for storage and turn off lights. [Laughs] My children tell me I'm in the dark all the time. And I'm very careful about how I spend money. It's not that I don't spend it, but I think about what I'm doing, what I'm buying.

You grew up in an orthodox Jewish home. How do you think that influenced the person you are today?

I don't know if the orthodoxy influenced me so much as what it meant as far as what my mother and father did. My grandfather founded a small shule [neighborhood synagogue] and my father was president there for 15 years. My mother was very active in our community and did a lot of what you'd call volunteer work today, and she kept a kosher home. I still keep a kosher home, despite the additional cost. My husband came from an orthodox, kosher home and I was happy that our parents could eat at my house when we married.

When and how did you meet your husband, and when did you marry?

I met him when I was 15 and he was 17. His name is Askol Jacob, but when he got into the business world he was called Jack.

I met him at a party where he had come with some friends. He walked me home, about two houses down from where the party was. We started dating in February.

He went to East Tech, and when he graduated, he went to Case part-time while he was working at Thompson Products, which later became TRW.

I graduated in June of 1941, got engaged in September, and we married in December, the same month World War II started.

Since he was working at Thompson Products, my husband had a military deferment, but his brother had volunteered for the service and when we learned about what was happening in Germany, he said he couldn't stay home. He joined the Air Force and was scheduled to go into flight training, but his squadron got the notice to go overseas and that took priority. Eventually he went overseas as a flight maintenance mechanic.

But his first year in, he was assigned to the flight school in Ft. Myers, Florida, so I moved down there with him and got a job in the PX. There was a problem with the manager – he was fired – and they asked me to be the manager. I was all of 19 years old.

When my husband got the call to go overseas, they wanted me to stay on to manage the PX, but he said there was no way he was letting me stay alone at an Air Force base. So I went home and got a job at a clothing design and manufacturing company, Reserve Knitting. At that time, Cleveland was a major clothing manufacturing city, and after the war, too. At that company, I was both a secretary and a model. While I was working I was also going to Cleveland College at night.

After the war, you worked with your husband in his business. What was the business and what did you do?

When my husband came home from the war he opened a tool and design shop – Merit Tool Company – and I went to work with him managing the office. He manufactured instruments for measuring and calibrating blades for jet engines. Because he'd worked at Thompson Products, which was manufacturing parts for planes, they were our first contract.

It was a small shop, originally on 38 th and Payne. Then we built our own building at 210 th and St. Clair, and were in business there till 1963, when Jack sold the business and “retired” at 42.

[Laughs] He didn't retire, he just changed jobs. He got into automobile financing. Then he got into arbitrage [investment and brokerage] work. This was long before anyone else was doing it.

When we bought our first computer, it was because my husband was using it. And that's when our son [Marv] said: Mom, you've got to learn how to use a computer.

Home computers were not common then, and I couldn't see where I'd need or use it in my non-profit work, but I sat down and started practicing on it, and, well, I got comfortable with it, so we've had a home computer ever since.

And you know, now, that's all they use in the non-profit world. Few are working with paper today and so much of what I'm doing is done electronically, with files and documents and e-mail.

When I had to get a new computer – in 2003 – I found the one I wanted and installed it and the printer myself.

[Laughs] I'm kind of good at things like that. I've always been able to do a bit of electrical work, a bit of plumbing work around the house. And I think that's because there wasn't a boy in the family growing up, so I was always the one who helped my dad when he was making repairs.

So much of your work – both as a volunteer and with your husband – has involved business skills: budgeting, strategic planning, project and program review. Where did you get all this experience?

It was something I just accumulated over time. I started working, at Woolworth's on weekends and in the summers, when I was 13. I took secretarial courses in high school, book keeping and accounting. During the war I worked in jobs that required business and financial and management skills. And after the war, when we started our company, I worked very closely with my husband in our business, for many, many years.

You have been actively volunteering in both the Jewish and the general community since the early 1950s. What got you interested in – and so committed to – volunteering?

A year after my son was born [1955], I was home and got a call from an acquaintance, Ida Solomon. She was with the Cleveland Section of the National Council of Jewish Women and she wanted me to join. I'm not a joiner, but the dues were only $5, so I joined.

Now you have to remember, this was a time when women weren't in the workforce much. If you had an education and a mind and wanted to “do” something, you volunteered, and you volunteered for a long period of time, not just for a day-long event.

A couple of weeks later, in the mail I got an invitation to join the local section of NCJW's volunteer training course. And I joined. This wasn't just an evening thing, it was a 3 month course. You learned! There were classes. There were books on volunteer training and management. There were books about non-profit management.

When I “graduated,” I became a Big Sister at Bellefaire and volunteered as a tutor in the school there for eight years. I also became involved with NCJW's administration and became the section's auditor. Then I became the first-ever vice president for administration and finance. Around that time, NCJW got a very large bequest from the Maurice and Sadie Friedman Trust – $750,000 – and I worked with an attorney to set up the first NCJW endowment fund.

But it wasn't just NCJW's training program that had prepared me for the leadership role I've come to play in volunteering, it was the work I'd been doing with my husband, too.

Who were your volunteer mentors, the people who showed you the worth of volunteering?

When I was a kid, my mother was always volunteering, working with the other women from our synagogue. She'd raise money for lunches by going to the local butchers and produce stores and asking for “donations” and then she'd make a luncheon and ask people for a contribution to raise money for poor people and those who were less fortunate in the community.

Because I was young, wherever my mother went to “ask” for donations I would go with her. [Laughs] You know, I swore that I'd never ask anyone for anything and never volunteer for anything. Never say never.

When I started volunteering with NCJW, women were leaders and they were different. They were doing things that I was interested in and I learned the importance of accomplishment. When my friends ask why I attend so many meetings, I tell them: I'm always learning or I'm always contributing because of what I've learned. That's what volunteering is, learning and sharing.

What was the most important thing you learned from your mentors?

To keep your promise, share what you have learned, and contribute to the community.

Long before you became a “senior,” you were volunteering with senior agencies and advocating for senior services, senior housing, senior programs. What specifically got you interested in senior issues?

I've never really thought about that. But I think it might be when I was a vice president of NCJW, and they sponsored and built Council Gardens, an independent senior living facility in Cleveland Heights, in the early 1960s.

When I went on the board at Council Gardens, that's where I became involved in senior issues. To this day I've stayed involved with Council Gardens and I give Council Gardens the credit for starting me on my “career” in aging.

When I was chair of the board, we built a 38-suite addition there and I flew to Washington, DC, with my senior housing mentor, Sid Spector, and received section 8 rent supplement for the entire project. And that's something I'm very, very proud of.

It just happened that around this time I was asked to be on the Delegate Assembly at United Way, and that's when I started becoming involved with volunteering in the general community. That's when I began wearing a double hat, volunteering in the Jewish community and the general community. And while I've never thought of it, I was bringing the things I'd learned about senior issues with me.

And that gets back to sharing what you learn.

You didn't just advocate for seniors, you were also a strong advocate for children and underserved populations, such as people with AIDS/HIV. So, the question is: What is it about you, personally, that makes you good at going to bat for others?

Empathy….I got involved with the AIDS Task Force because we'd visited one of their after-school programs for teens. I knew nothing about AIDS or the HIV virus. But I saw the need and the difficulty in raising funds. Eventually I became secretary of the Board.

And the other thing is experience. What I've learned I need to share. [Laughs] I've been volunteering for about 55 years, so I have lots of experience: in how to do a job properly, what it takes to follow through, how to interact with people.

And I'm not afraid of change . When I see an innovative way of doing something, I don't just adopt it, I share it, too.

Given your background in senior volunteering and advocacy, what do you see as the major challenges seniors face right now?

Recognition of the changes that are taking place for the individual person, especially recognition of the role living longer is playing in aging. Many seniors are the only person in their generation who is still alive. Every one else, friends, family, colleagues, they are gone.

Recognition of the needs seniors have, and of the supports they need to live independently, that's important, too.

Legislators, especially, need to recognize the challenges that must be addressed, what the growing population of seniors means, not just in terms of health care but in terms of caregivers' needs, too.

From your long history and perspective in working with seniors, what needs to be done now to help seniors meet these challenges?

Advocacy, that's the greatest need: advocacy for funds; advocacy for housing; advocacy for health care; advocacy for recreation and socialization programs; advocacy for intergenerational programs… Just because you are older does not mean that you have stopped being able to help and be with and around younger people. And that applies whether you are 88 or 58.

At 88, are you doing what you thought you'd be doing at 58?

No! Back then, I wanted to live till I was 78. I figured I'd have lived in two centuries. But when I turned 78, I was still very actively doing what I'd been doing in my 40s and 50s. And that's even more true today.

I'm thankful that I have the ability, physically and mentally, to still be able to volunteer. I know it's more important for me to do what I'm doing than for those that I'm doing things for. Volunteering keeps me young and alive and engaged.

Maybe this is not an appropriate question, but I'll ask anyway. Do you think of yourself as old?

No, but it's a good question. No one thinks they are going to grow old. I didn't. So you are surprised when you look at your chronological age, because you are not that age in your mind. In your body, maybe, but not in your mind. I'm constantly amazed that I'm 88.

And I'm able to be constantly amazed because I'm active, because I'm interested in so many things, and because I'm interesting.

Mythbusters is all about aging successfully. What's your definition of, and criteria for, successful aging?

I can only quote George Bernard Shaw on that, and I often do when I'm asked to speak.

“Our lives belong to the community and as long as we shall live it is our privilege to do for it whatever we can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. Life is no brief candle to me, it is a splendid torch which I hold for one moment in time and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

That's how I feel about volunteering and it's how I feel about what makes a successful life.

At 88 you have plenty of experience aging well. So, what are Eleanor Steigman's tips, tricks and strategies for aging physically well?

Keep moving. For many years I went to JCC and did the exercise classes there. When I could no longer really participate in the exercise classes, I bought a treadmill. In the past I'd go for weeks not using it, but this year my New Year's resolution was to use it regularly, and so far I have been using it at least three times a week, and sometimes more. Each time it's at least 20 minutes.

Diet-wise, well, I'm not as good as I should be. I “cook ahead,” making meals and freezing things in portions, so I eat normal meals. I'm good about fruit and protein. And I'm not a great one for going to restaurants.

But I'm a nosher [snacker]. And I'm a baker, too, so there's always something, cookies, tea biscuits, and brownies in the freezer for noshing.

What are your tips, tricks and strategies for staying mentally sharp?

I'm working – every day – doing something I like and care about. And I read – a lot.

And I'm always on the computer. I was using it to do a little investing, till everything went downhill in 2008. Now I'm just using it for my work and keeping in touch with family and friends. Just about everything I do requires reading or writing – reports, proposals, etc. – on the computer. And there's e-mail, too. [Laughs] But I have to admit, with all the spam you get, that's gotten to be a real chore. I was gone for 10 days, and when I returned I had almost 2000 emails, mostly spam.

With over 50 years of volunteering under your belt – so to speak – you've got a list of accomplishments and awards that probably are a yard long. That said – and I know this is a tough question – which accomplishment are you the most proud of? And why?

The recognition I get is appreciated, but I can't say that one award or recognition is more special than another. They were all given in recognition of things I care about. And whether it was a local, state or national award, I'm grateful for them all.

This has been a pretty wide-ranging interview. What did I not ask that I should have?

You didn't ask me about how supportive my husband and family were.

My husband was very supportive of all the volunteering. After he died, seventeen years ago, at 73, I realized what a gift he'd given me. Because of how supportive he'd been, I had something to fill my life outside of family. I was able to not just go on, but to become even more involved in the community. And one thing I realized from that was that so many people don't have plans for going on, after they retire, after a spouse dies.

That's made me even more aware of how fortunate I was to have the volunteer and non-profit work to carry on with.

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