Schaefer's Milestone Highlights Common Dilemma
Many Seniors Put Off A Life-Changing Move

By Mary Otto
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 4, 2008; C07

It was a highly public version of a drama that has touched many families. Former Maryland governor William Donald Schaefer, 86, famously stubborn and growing increasingly frail, refused to move out of his Pasadena townhouse.

After a fall in March, some friends and associates worried that he was no longer safe living on his own.

So longtime aide Lainy LeBow-Sachs devised a ruse. While she kept Schaefer busy over a long lunch at a restaurant last month, movers descended on the townhouse, packed up all his belongings and reinstalled them in an apartment at the Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville.

Schaefer, who was initially angry about the deception, has, according to some accounts, settled into his new place. A bachelor, he has no family to agonize over the move, but within his inner circle , there are mixed feelings. Schaefer did not return calls for comment.

The complex emotions surrounding this milestone in the life of a man who spent decades in the public eye -- as state comptroller, two-term governor and four-term mayor of Baltimore -- are familiar to experts who have helped families weigh these choices with elderly loved ones.

"We call these ethical dilemmas," said Kelley Macmillan, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, who has studied aging for more than 20 years. Sometimes the decision is made in a collaborative way, and at other times the choice to move is delegated, by necessity or default, to another person. LeBow-Sachs has power of attorney for Schaefer.

As the first wave of 80 million baby boomers heads toward retirement, the percentage of residents 65 and older is expected to double in many Washington area communities in the next 20 years. The shift mirrors what is happening nationally. Many lawmakers, public policy experts and municipal planners are trying to anticipate how to meet the changing housing and health-care needs of a growing population of elderly residents.

At the heart of such change is the need to weigh the loss of a loved one's freedom against the benefits of a more structured environment. That loss often stirs fear.

"People believe they will be prisoners," Macmillan said.

If those concerns contributed to Schaefer's resistance to moving, he appeared to make light of them at a lunch Thursday in Baltimore with old friend Edwin F. Hale, chairman and chief executive of 1st Mariner Bank.

"I go into my room, and they lock the door," Schaefer told Hale, describing life at his new place.

"Are you kidding?" Hale asked.

"Yes," Schaefer said, "I'm kidding."

Hale is convinced that Schaefer is settling in well. "He's doing fine," Hale said. "He's getting acclimated."

The Charlestown Retirement Community, with its campuslike setting and focus on social life and fitness, is likely to provide a stimulating home for Schaefer, said Andrew Goldberg, who directs the Department of Veterans Affairs geriatric research center in Baltimore.

"You get a vibrant man who has lived his life in first place, and you do all you can do to keep him mentally and physically active," Goldberg said. "Going to a retirement home doesn't need to be a life-changing event."

Yet in some cases, such a move can feel like a small death.

In his research on aging, Macmillan said, he interviewed an older man who summed up the choice this way: "The tension I have to balance is the tension of staying at home versus giving up," the man said. "I err on the side of the tension."

In some cases, Macmillan said, families and friends figure out ways to help elders remain in their homes through the use of adaptive equipment and a network of assistance. Municipal and county governments often provide advice and resources through their offices of aging.

Former Schaefer spokesman Mike Golden, who has known Schaefer for 30 years, said his old boss should have been allowed to stay in his townhouse.

"His residence in Pasadena could have been retrofitted with a chairlift," said Golden, who continues to worry about the way the move was handled. He said he spoke with Schaefer on the telephone April 27.

"He told me it was a lovely facility, but it wasn't home, that he wasn't happy about it at all," Golden said.

LeBow-Sachs said she is convinced that this move was the best thing for Schaefer.

"I never felt so right about something," she said. "I couldn't bear the thought of him falling down the stairs."

For some time, she said, she had her eye on a sixth-floor apartment, with a view of the Baltimore skyline, at the Catonsville retirement community that she was sure would be perfect for Schaefer. When she recently got word that the place had become available, she knew the time had come. Since the move, Schaefer has been treated like a celebrity by his new neighbors, she said.

"I guarantee he will be mayor of Charlestown," LeBow-Sachs said.

Timing is often at the heart of the decision to move, said Matthew McNabney, a physician in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

"There is a balance about when it is wise to make the transition -- not too early and not too late," McNabney said. He added, "That Governor Schaefer postponed it as long as possible is typical and understandable. "

McNabney said the story of Schaefer's move has served a useful purpose.

"As someone who is very visible and in the public eye, [Schaefer] brought that into everyone's living room," he said. "It eliminated some of the mystique about the transition."

LeBow-Sachs said the decision to help her mother move into a retirement facility after the death of her father was in many ways simpler. "They had been married for 68 years. She knew she couldn't stay at home."

LeBow-Sachs said she thinks such changes are often difficult for everyone involved.

"When you love someone, you want to make their life better," she said. "Even when you know you are doing something right, it still doesn't make it easier."

She continues to hear remarks about her talent for trickery.

"People have been saying, 'I'm never going to lunch with you.' "