60PLUS // OPENER
’T
for snowbirds to fly south. It’s hard for me to imagine being a snowbird, though. I genuinely enjoy Nebraska’s winter months: the blowing snow, beautiful scenery, and families gathered for holidays. IS THE SEASON
These days, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas is arriving earlier every year. Santa’s face appears in promotions around town as soon as we clean off Thanksgiving dinner plates. Nevertheless, my heart warms with anticipation for candy canes and silver lanes aglow. But not everyone in the Lemke family is—in the words of Bing Crosby—“dreaming of a white Christmas.” One of my granddaughters will be traveling to Japan, taking advantage of her school’s winter break. Japan is still in the northern hemisphere, and it can get quite cold in the winter. This granddaughter, Sarah Lemke, must take after me—not being a snowbird and all. (She is a contributing photographer with Omaha Magazine.) Japan is a truly remarkable country, and I feel so blessed to have traveled to Japan on multiple occasions over the years. Although Christmas is not a national holiday in Japan, the holiday is celebrated by many throughout the country. Devout Christians may shudder at the thought, but it’s true that Christmas has become a commercial holiday (enjoyed even by those who do not observe the date’s religious significance) all over the world. In Japan, there are many unique Christmas variations that American travelers—including my granddaughter—may discover to be delicious. Local restaurants have capitalized on the occasion to create Christmas ramen (designed to look like a Christmas tree), sashimi Christmas cakes (with raw fish), and seasonal bento boxes (lunch boxes produced with artistic flair). It came as a surprise to me, but Kentucky Fried Chicken is a beloved Christmas dinner in Japan, thanks to the long-running marketing campaign “Kentucky for Christmas” (which the American fast-food franchise launched in 1974). Call me old-fashioned, but when I gather with family and friends for Christmas, I think I’ll stick with a more traditional family dinner spread. Merry Christmas!
Barbara Foster
Contributing Editor NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 • 60PLUS
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CURIOSITY // STORY BY NADINE VODICKA // PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARAH LEMKE // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
The
Crow
Andy Acker
and the Artist T
HERE IS A flock of metaphorical
crows hovering over Andy Acker. Crow-related artworks, meanwhile, have taken over the Omaha-born artist’s home studio in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. The 69-year-old Acker creates bizarre sculptures out of carvings and miscellaneous domestic detritus: keys, old coins, nuts, bolts, and other random bits. A figurative painter earlier in his art career, he cuts a striking figure himself at just over 6 feet tall, slender, with glistening white hair and beard, a boyish smile, and mesmerizing green eyes. Crows are now his figurative obsession. Acker says they started creeping into his work 20 years ago. He began crafting sculptural assemblages when he was working at Heartland Scenic Studios in Omaha. At first, they were just fun projects using leftover bits of wood from the carpenters in the studio. But the pieces eventually took on deeper artistic and philosophical significance for the artist. “I love to find art in our everyday surroundings and to show others the beauty in a tree shadow, patterns in broken parking lot surfaces, peeling paint, or our sunsets,” says Acker, who moved to the Milwaukee area with his wife in 2013 to be closer to grandkids. He began seriously considering a career in art as a student at the University of NebraskaOmaha in the late ’60s. He majored in art, dabbling in various mediums—oil and acrylic painting, sculpture, drawing, ceramics, etc.
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After graduation, he joined his wife’s family business helping out at the New Tower Hotel in Omaha. Eventually, Acker found his way into teaching art at McMillan Junior High. He taught there for 10 years and adored his students. After teaching, he spent the subsequent decade painting large canvas backgrounds and building stage sets for local theaters, museums, commercial clients, and various other venues. Starting during his time as a junior high school art teacher, Acker would draw cartoon caricatures of departing colleagues as goingaway presents. All the co-workers would sign his poster-sized drawings. “We would zing them with all the things they would say,” he says, explaining how the caricatures would roast the outgoing colleagues with funny quotes written onto the posters. “We had one teacher that would come into the teacher lounge and cuss about kids like a railroad worker. He hung it in his den, and it was popular. I also did that for retiring co-workers at Heartland Scenic Studios.” Cartooning was another of Acker’s favorite artistic formats before the crows flew into the picture. “I used to always do our Christmas cards as cartoons, but even those have been taken over by the crows,” he says. His interest in crows began in Omaha. One morning, while driving to McMillan to teach art classes, he heard a crow caw. It seemed to be following him. The bird flew alongside his car through several lights. Finally, it gave one last “caw, caw” and turned into a cemetery nearby the school.
Acker went about his daily routine. But the crow’s cawing nagged in the back of his mind. He began to notice crows more and study their behavior as well as the historic place that the crow has in history, literature, and art. A crow is often a symbol of either bad luck or death, but that is not always the case, he says. A crow may be a symbol of life, magic, and mysteries. The prophetic bird also symbolizes intelligence, flexibility, and destiny. Soon, Acker started to notice crows appearing almost everywhere he journeyed. He began to study crows, and that eventually led to them appearing in his varied mediums of artwork— painted, sculpted, carved, and showcased in mixed-media assemblages. In his art, the crow offers a reflection on the human condition, a foil for various universal struggles. For example, “Crow Dreaming of Becoming a Man” shows the carved bird riding on a train engine. “My future is to continue to experiment with different media and characters from nature to explore human feelings of isolation and wonder, leading to bigger questions relating to our human condition,” Acker says. His work last showed in Omaha during a group exhibition, Tinkerbell’s Mausoleum: Assemblages from Whimsy to Macabre, at the historic Florence Mill’s ArtLoft Gallery on July 1-Aug. 31.
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ACTIVE LIVING // STORY BY MEGAN FABRY // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN AND PROVIDED // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
The Queen of Omaha a r Ice arb a
B os t e r F
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// ACTIVE LIVING //
T
HE ICE RINK
is smooth like glass. A young woman glides across the surface, breaking it in with her skates’ sharp blades. Across the rink, her coach watches closely, analyzing each move. Barbara Foster has been working at the Tim Moylan Tranquility Iceplex as a coach since it first opened in November 1995. Throughout her extensive career, she has coached students as young as 2 and as old as 82. Foster was born and raised in the small mining community of Noranda, in Canada’s Quebec province. She attributes her perfectionist tendencies to her no-nonsense upbringing. “The best part about teaching is the relationships,” Foster says with a smile. “There is no better job, and I get a lot of satisfaction from feeling that I’ve impacted my students.” Named after Barbara Ann Scott—a Canadian Olympic gold medalist and world champion in figure skating—there was little doubt that she would become comfortable at the rink. Her father put her on the ice for the first time when she was only 2 years old, during the intermission of a local hockey game. Her first pair of skates were actually hockey skates. Dad was a high school principal and also refereed games in his spare time. He laced up her tiny skates, and she was a natural on the ice from the very beginning. Foster’s parents knew then that she would live up to her namesake. As a young student of figure skating, she trained with coaches in the summer, but was left to practice on her own during the brutal Canadian winters. She trained at a recreational rink, where she would come in through the back door and practice before school every morning.
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// ACTIVE LIVING //
“Figure skaters have techniques that even hockey coaches don’t quite understand,” Foster says. “It really helps if you can break it down and help them get the most out of their legs while their body is still handling a puck.” When she was 14, she began training with Hans Gerschwiler, a World Figure Skating Champion and silver medalist at the 1948 Winter Olympics. When Gerschwiler moved to the United States in 1960, he asked Foster’s parents for permission to take her with him to continue her training. “He was an incredible skater for a long time,” Foster says. Foster trained with Gerschwiler in New Jersey and eventually became a teacher for his young students. While there, she developed a passion for coaching. “The best part about teaching is the relationships,” Foster says with a smile. “There is no better job, and I get a lot of satisfaction from feeling that I’ve impacted my students.” Since her days in New Jersey, she has coached all around the Midwest, Australia, and New Zealand. A perfectionist by nature, she stood out from other coaches and pushed her students to achieve the goals they placed for themselves. She eventually settled down in Omaha with husband Larry Foster, who retired from his job as the director of Council Bluffs Parks in August.
After knee surgery this past February, she was in Boston to support two of her students who went to the U.S. Adult Figure Skating Nationals in April. After her first back surgery in 2013, she was lacing up her skates again after three weeks of recovery (instead of the three months that doctors had expected to be necessary). While teaching has always been a passion of hers, there is one passion that surpasses all others: her family. As a grandmother of nine, she is often on the road to visit her grandchildren, who are scattered across the country from Jacksonville, Florida, to Olathe, Kansas, to Takoma Park, Maryland. Each summer, the grandchildren make a trek to Nebraska for one of their favorite annual events: “Camp Nana.” Foster started Camp Nana when the oldest grandchildren were toddlers. The parents drop off the grandkids for two weeks of fun-filled activities and bonding time. “I never had an opportunity to be connected to my cousins,” Foster says. “I just really wanted to make sure that I could provide that opportunity for my grandkids.”
As a 74-year-old retired coach, she still enjoys teaching students of all ages, but she says she does not miss the rigorous seven-day training schedule she once lived by.
For the last 23 years, Foster has worked with youth and adult hockey players, and she even worked with the University of NebraskaOmaha men’s hockey team to help correct players’ skating technique.
In the past five years, she has undergone numerous procedures, including two back surgeries, total knee replacement, and treatment for a torn rotator cuff in her shoulder. But she refuses to let these procedures discourage her.
“Figure skaters have techniques that even hockey coaches don’t quite understand,” Foster says. “It really helps if you can break it down and help them get the most out of their legs while their body is still handling a puck.”
Although she considers herself retired, she does still instruct a few students (teaching two days a week instead of seven). Even aside from her teaching, Foster says she would be at Tranquility Iceplex at some point every day doing a variety of jobs and chores that need to be completed: mounting figure skate blades, selling equipment at the rink’s pro shop, and fitting customers with new skates. “It’s allowed me to have a lot of diversity,” Foster says. “So even at this age, where I’m not actively teaching, I have lots of other interests that keep me involved with the rink and the people in it, which is the fun part.” Foster says she is never bored because of all the activities she has taken on. She works at the rink, teaches lessons, spends time with friends and does Pilates, which helps align her spine and strengthens her back. “I am really looking forward to skating again,” says Foster, who gets on the ice with her students for instruction but is not attempting toe jumps, double axels, or triple lutzes. “After my knee replacement, I’m struggling to be able to demonstrate the power that correct technique can generate. I think that as everything settles down, I would like to get myself feeling really comfortable again on the ice.” Foster is an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. She holds students to her own high standard of excellence, too. They shouldn’t expect coddling or ego-stroking. If that’s what a student wants, then Foster says, “you’re with the wrong coach.”
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 • 60PLUS
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FEATURE // STORY BY LEO ADAM BIGA // PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY BOYS TOWN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
From Japanese-American Internment Camp to Boys Town Christmas and Other Bittersweet Memories During World War II // 96 //
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Toshio “James” and Margaret Takahashi with their children at the Boys Town Farm, 1944 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 • 60PLUS
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Clockwise from top: Uchiyamada and Takahashi families with Father Flanagan in March 1944; the Takahashi family outside their residence at Boys Town; Father Flanagan and children during Christmastime // 98 //
60PLUS • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
FEATURE // BOYS TOWN
X
ENOPHOBIC FEARS RAN wild after
the Empire of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. promptly entered World War II, and nearly 120,000 JapaneseAmericans were relocated or incarcerated in internment camps across the country. The Rev. Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town, strived to calm the hysteria in part—while alleviating the trauma falling upon his fellow Americans—by sponsoring approximately 200 Japanese-Americans from internment camps to stay at his rural Nebraska campus for wayward and abandoned youths. Among them were James and Margaret Takahashi and their three children. They joined the individuals and families escaping to Boys Town from prison-like internment camps. Flanagan offered dozens of families a place to live and work until the war’s conclusion. Some remained in Nebraska long after the war. Many used Boys Town as a stopover before World War II military service or moving to other American cities and towns, says Boys Town historian Tom Lynch. Few outsiders knew Boys Town was a safe harbor for Nisei (the Japanese word for North Americans whose parents were immigrants from Japan) who lost their homes, livelihoods, and civil rights in the fear-driven, governmentmandated evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.
“It was a very disruptive thing,” she recalls. “I was very upset by all of this. I can remember being confused and wondering what was going on and where are we going. I couldn’t understand all of it.” She and her family joined hundreds of others in a makeshift holding camp at the Santa Anita Assembly Center, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Stables at the converted race track doubled as spare barracks. Food riots erupted. By contrast, at Boys Town, the Takahashis were treated humanely and fairly, as the full citizens they were, with all the comforts and privileges of home.
The Takahashis were provided their own house and garden within the incorporated village of Boys Town’s boundaries. James, father of the family, worked as the grounds supervisor. The children attended school. The family celebrated major holidays—including unforgettable, bittersweet Christmases—in freedom, but still far from home. None of it might have happened if Maryknoll priest Hugh Lavery, at a Japanese-American Catholic parish in L.A., hadn’t written Flanagan advocating on behalf of his congregation then being relocated in camps. Flanagan recognized the injustice. He also knew the internees included workingage men who could fill his war-depleted employee ranks. He had the heart, the need, the facilities, and the clout to broker their release from the Civil Exclusions Order signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Marilyn’s initial impression of Flanagan
was of Santa Claus with a cleric’s collar: “Father came to meet us at the station. He had this big brown bag of candy. I will always remember that candy. It was so thoughtful of him to give us that special treat.”
The oldest Takahashi child, Marilyn, was almost 6 when her family was uprooted from their Los Angeles home and way of life. Her gardener father lost his agricultural nursery.
“We felt welcomed and did not have fears about our environment. The German farmers nearby were friendly and kind,” remembers Marilyn Takahashi Fordney.
Helping identify “good fits for Boys Town” was Patrick Okura, who ended up there himself, Lynch says. “It sort of started a pipeline to help bring people out,” and Flanagan “eventually took people of all different faiths,” not just internees from the Catholic parish that started the effort. “People from that parish went to the camps, and they met other Japanese-Americans, and they started communicating about this opportunity at Boys Town to get out of the camps.”
During her family’s fourmonth camp confinement, Marilyn’s parents heard that the famous Irish priest in Nebraska needed workers. James sent a letter making the case for himself and his family to come.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 • 60PLUS
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FEATURE // BOYS TOWN
“People could leave if they had somewhere to go,” Marilyn says. “Permission didn’t come right away. It took writing back and forth for several months. Then, when we were all about to be moved to Amache [Granada War Relocation Center] in Colorado, the head of our camp sent a telegram to the War Relocation Authority. He received a telegram back with the necessary permission. We were released to Boys Town Sept. 5, 1942.” Boys Town became legal sponsor for the new arrivals. “It was very radical helping these people,” Lynch says. “Father thought it was his duty because they were good American citizens who should be treated well. But it wasn’t universally accepted. What made Boys Town unique is that we were way out in the country, so we were our own little bubble. Visitors really wouldn’t see the internees much. The men worked the farm or grounds. The women tended house. The kids were in school. But they were there all throughout the village.” A similar effort unfolded at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where 100-plus Nisei students continued their college studies after the rude interruption caused by the “evacuation.” During her Boys Town sojourn, Marilyn first attended a nearby one-room public school. She later attended a school on campus for workers’ children taught by a Polish Franciscan nun. Besides the standard subjects, the kids learned traditional Polish folk dances and crafts.
“We are forever grateful Father Flanagan hired my father to take care of the grounds,” Marilyn says, “because it enabled us to get out of that internment situation.”
Flanagan is part of her holiday memories, she says, as “he always made a point to come to our Christmas plays, and we would always take a photograph with him.” For the resident boy population, Flanagan “played” Santa by visiting their apartments and handing out gifts.
According to the Takahashi family’s file in the archives of the Boys Town Hall of History, Margaret said she was taken by Flanagan’s humanity, that she “could feel this warmth. I’ve never felt that from another human being. He was so full of love that it radiated out of him.”
She continues: “We built an ice rink and would skate in front of the farmhouse or in front of the brick house. We even made an igloo one time. It got so tall the adults came out to help us close the top with the snow blocks because we were too little to reach it.”
According to Lynch, Flanagan considered the newcomers “part of the family of Boys Town.” They could access the entire campus or go into town freely. Leaving altogether, though possible, was not a realistic option.
The Takahashis started their new life in an old farmhouse they later shared with other arrivals. Then Boys Town built a compound of brick houses for the workers and their families. “Single men lived in a dormitory on campus,” Lynch says. “Boys Town didn’t host many single women because Father would find jobs for them in Omaha, where they would stay with families they worked for as domestics.”
“They could leave at any time, if they really wanted to, but there was nowhere to go [without authorization]. They would have been detained and returned,” he says.
From Santa Anita, the Takahashi patriarch was allowed to go to L.A. to retrieve his truck and what stored family belongings he could transport. James drove to Nebraska to meet Margaret and the kids, who went ahead by train.
“Christmas and midnight Mass was very special at Boys Town,” she says. “It was something we looked forward to. I will always remember getting bundled up to face the blizzard-like winds. My father would carry each one of us to the truck. We would head off in the dead of night in that blasted cold to get to the church, which was dark except for the altar lights. The boys would be in a long line in their white and black cassocks, with red bows, each holding a big lit candle. They would begin to sing and come down the main aisle. It was an awesome sight and a special experience. The choir was exceptional. There was always one singer with a high-pitched voice who did a solo. It was amazing.”
Marilyn’s initial impression of Flanagan was of Santa Claus with a cleric’s collar: “Father came to meet us at the station. He had this big brown bag of candy. I will always remember that candy. It was so thoughtful of him to give us that special treat.”
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Marilyn’s experience of losing her home and living in a camp was dreadful. Going halfway across the country to live at Boys Town was an adventure. Her fondest memories there involve Christmas.
“We were happy at Christmas,” Marilyn says. “In the farmhouse, my father would cut a pine tree and bring it in, and the decorations were handmade and hand-painted cones with popcorn strung. He always did the final placement of things so that it looked perfect. We had wonderful Christmas days even though it was difficult to get toys because many things were not available due to the war.”
Weather always factored in. “The summers were extremely hot and the winters so severely cold,” she says. “We had never experienced snow. That was a tremendous adjustment for my parents. But, as children, we delighted in it. We’d run out and eat the snow with jam and build snowmen.” Marilyn recalls visiting Santa at J.L. Brandeis & Sons department store in downtown Omaha with its fabulous Christmas window displays and North Pole Toy Land. The Takahashis were content enough in their new life that they arranged for family and friends to join them there. Marilyn and family remained in Omaha for two years after the war (and anti-Japanese hysteria) ended. “Eventually, my parents decided they couldn’t withstand that cold, and we headed back to California in 1947,” she says. They endured tragedy at Boys Town when Marilyn’s younger brother contracted measles and encephalitis, falling into a coma that caused severe brain damage. His constant care was a burden for the poor family. Another motivating factor for the family to leave was the father’s desire to work for himself again.
FEATURE // BOYS TOWN
Leaving Boys Town just shy of age 12 was hard for Marilyn.
The kindness shown by Boys Town to relieve their plight made a deep impact.
“I was heartbroken because I loved the snow and cold and all my friends there,” she says. “I did not want to go to California and live three families to a house and struggle. I knew what was coming. I also had a pet cat I was sad to leave. My pet dog Spunky that Boys Town gave me had passed on.”
“We are forever grateful Father Flanagan hired my father to take care of the grounds,” Marilyn says, “because it enabled us to get out of that internment situation.”
Her parents had also bonded with some of the resident boys, and with some adult workers and their families. “We went by Father Flanagan’s residence to say farewell, and he came out to bless us and to bless the truck we drove to the West Coast,” she says. As an adult, Marilyn shared her story with archivists just as her parents did earlier.
She came to view what Flanagan did for her family and others who had been interned as a humanitarian “rescue.” Then there were the scholastic and life lessons learned. “A Boys Town education gives you the tools needed to succeed in life,” she says. Even though discrimination continued after the war, the lessons she learned during the internment and the Boys Town reprieve emboldened her.
S
OON AFTER ARRIVING at Santa
Anita Assembly Center, James Takahashi learned that Father Flanagan was hiring individuals with certain skills to work at Boys Town.
James hand-wrote an appeal to Flanagan asking to be considered. He provided references. The priest wrote Takahashi back requesting more information, including how many were in his family, and checked his references, all of whom spoke highly of “Jimmy,” as he was called, in letters they sent Flanagan.
“We considered ourselves fortunate,” Margaret told interviewer Evelyn Taylor with the California State University Japanese American Digitization Project in 2003. (This article for Omaha Magazine merged excerpts from that oral history with original interviews conducted over the telephone and e-mail correspondence.)
“I am grateful that I went through the experience because it made me who I am today,” she adds. Internees were granted reparations by the U.S. government under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Marilyn received $20,000, and she gave it all away.
Here is the text of the original letter James wrote (references excluded):
There are occasions when Marilyn’s internment past comes up in casual conversation. “It is amazing how few people know about this,” she says. “It is now mentioned in history books in schools, but it wasn’t for a long time.”
She divided the reparations money into equal parts for four recipients: two younger siblings who also grew up in poverty (but did not experience the internment camps of World War II), to create the Fordney Foundation (for helping future generations of ballroom dancers), and Boys Town.
Today in camp I heard that you are asking for some Japanese gardeners. I am very interested as I have been a gardener and nurseryman in Los Angeles for the past five years.
When she brings up her Boys Town interlude, she says, “It is always a surprise and I am asked many questions.” The retired medical assistant, educator, and author now runs family foundations supporting youth activities. She credits her many accomplishments to what the wartime years took away and bestowed. “The internment made me an overachiever. Because I was the eldest and experienced so much, I have become actually the strongest of the siblings,” she says. “Nothing can stop me from reaching my goals.” Her late parents also felt that the experience strengthened the family’s resilience. Margaret said, “I think from then on we were very strong. I don’t think anything could get us down.”
Forty-four years after the Takahashis left their safe haven in Nebraska, Marilyn returned to Boys Town in 1991. During the visit, she made her donation to the place that gave her family a temporary home and renewed faith in mankind. Visit csujad.com for more information about the California State University Japanese-American History Digitization Project. Visit boystown.org for more information about Boys Town.
Dear Father Flanagan,
Just before the evacuation, I was gardener at St. Mary’s Academy in Los Angeles. I re-landscaped the grounds and put in several lawns. I am 30 years old of Japanese ancestry but was born and educated in this country. I was converted to the Catholic faith by my wife, who is half Irish and half Japanese. I studied soil, plants, insect control, and landscape architecture at Los Angeles City College, and am confident that I would be able to handle any gardening problem. I would be so grateful if you would consider me for this position. Very sincerely, James Takahashi
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 • 60PLUS
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HEALTH // STORY BY SANDRA MARTIN // ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
VACCINES ARE NOT only for children.
That’s one of many confusions about vaccinations, says Dr. Mark Rupp, a professor and chief of the Infectious Diseases Division at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “Certain vaccinations are very important for adults as they age in order to maintain their health,” he explains, “and especially important for those with chronic health conditions.” Rupp says the most essential vaccines for seniors are for shingles, influenza, pneumococcal disease, and tetanus/Tdap. Other common misconceptions concern the vaccines themselves. “People believe that if they get the influenza vaccine, for example, it will give them the flu,” he says. “But since it is made from a killed virus, not a live virus, there’s no way it can transfer the infection to you.” Meanwhile, misinformation has circulated in recent years about vaccinations causing certain illnesses or conditions, especially in children. “We may not fully understand what causes those conditions, but we do know there
Beware of Anti-Science Conspiracy Theories is absolutely no link between them and vaccines,” he says. A fraudulent study by British doctor Andrew Wakefield inaccurately linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to childhood autism in a now-retracted and discredited 1998 scientific paper. Unfortunately, the damage lingers still among conspiracy theorists. A movement of antiscience skeptics known as anti-vaxxers has led to increasing outbreaks of measles. “Vaccines aren’t perfect,” Rupp admits. “But they are our best weapon to protect us from horrible diseases.” As an example, he cites how vaccines for smallpox and polio have basically turned these devastating, lifethreatening diseases into “medical curiosities” that are rarely seen today. “Viruses still remain in the world,” he adds, “and if we let our guard down, our children will experience these diseases just like our grandparents did.”
Rupp believes we all need to be vaccinated because, “It’s the right thing to do...It’s called herd immunity,” he says, “where we form a protective bubble around those individuals who are immune-suppressed, for example, and cannot be given live-virus vaccines.” “All vaccines recommended for adults are carefully evaluated, and the benefit of getting them clearly outweighs the small risk of side effects or toxicity,” he says. The website of the Center for Disease Control also states that the current U.S. vaccine supply is the safest in history. For those with chronic health conditions or high-risk factors, Rupp recommends talking with a doctor about additional or earlier vaccinations, and also to investigate which vaccines are covered by Medicare or other insurance providers.
Shingles
Influenza
Tetanus/Tdap
• Recommended age: 50
• Recommended age: 6 months through adulthood, repeated yearly to keep up with changes in virus.
• Recommended age: childhood through adulthood, with boosters every 10 years.
• Approved last year, the new vaccine Shingrix is a two-part injection given one to six months apart.
• New feature: no longer made from hen eggs, the vaccine is safe for individuals with egg allergies.
• One of those tetanus boosters should be the Tdap vaccine, which also protects against diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough).
More effective in preventing shingles and complications from shingles (90-95 percent success rate compared with 50-60 percent); longer lasting immunity (four to five years); and doesn’t contain a live virus, so can be given to immune-suppressed patients.
• Possible side effects include soreness at injection site, aches/ pains, and low-grade fever.
• The Tdap booster shot is especially important for grandparents, as whooping cough is very contagious and can be deadly for infants.
• Possible side effects include pain at injection site and low-grade fever.
• Recommended age: 65 for healthy adults, younger for adults with diabetes, heart disease, asthma, or other chronic illness.
• Benefits over previous shingles vaccine:
Pneumococcal
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 • 60PLUS
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Worried About Mom or Dad?
Integrity, Honesty, and Safe Care.
Come for a visit and see all that Elk Ridge Village has to offer! Beautiful Lakefront Location Exciting Activities & Events Nurse Staffing 24/7/365 Locally Owned & Operated 135+ Years Industry Experience by Management Team!
CALL KRISTINA TODAY FOR YOUR PERSONAL TOUR!
402.312.1198
ELKRIDGESENIORLIVING.COM
Chore Services Companionship Services Transportation Services Incontinence Care Bathing/Grooming Services Dementia Care Hospice Care Transferring Nutrition Cleaning Hygiene Errands
1001 Farnam St Suite #3 Omaha, NE 68102
19303 SEWARD PLAZA (JUST NORTH OF 192 ND & DODGE)
INDEPENDENT LIVING | ASSISTED LIVING | ALZHEIMER’S CARE
402-347-0007 www.bellacare.us
Remodeling•Updates Mobility Needs 40 Years of Professional & Trusted Service
A Division of 2018 WINNER
12739 Q Street • 402.408.1990 www.KohllsModSquad.com
Dr. Roger Mc Gargill It Doesn’t Cost Any More to Have a Doctor You Can Trust
402.558.0440 www.proaudiology.com 4509 Leavenworth
OMAHA’S PREMIER Proud members of Vetter Senior Living
ELKHORN 600 Brookestone Meadows Plz. brookestonemeadows.com (402) 327-6300
BUSINESS to BUSINESS Magazine
OMAHAMAGAZINE.COM /SUBSCRIBE
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60PLUS • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018