Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
The challenges started early: A fencing accident in girlhood left Marylen Mann with lifelong lymphedema. She’s since used all sorts of subterfuge to outwit gravity. Too much standing at a cocktail party? She’ll find a creative excuse to move around or prop up her foot on a chair. Only those close to her—such as her sweet-hearted second husband, Frank Jacobs, who tugs off her compression mold every night and has demanded a nurse’s cap—know why Mann, an art collector with exquisite fashion sense, avoids dresses. “I don’t want to be defined by my health problems,” she says firmly. “You have to treat it like a sitcom.”
Mann believes in humor. She’s needed to. Her first husband died when her boys were teens, and she spent 19 years widowed before meeting Jacobs. In 2011, her 45-year-old son and confidante, John, died of brain cancer. She poured out her feelings to her husband and good friends. “It’s the bottling up that’s destructive,” she says. Mann then threw her energy into projects that her son had cared about, such as Lift for Life Academy.
She had her own projects, too. Appalled that kindergarten crafts and bingo were the main options for older adults, Mann founded Oasis in 1982. The program spread across the nation, lighting up retirees’ brains with philosophy, arts, history, current events, new skills, and her own strong emphasis on health and volunteer tutoring.
Now, she wants to reach those who don’t show up. “Everywhere I go, people say, ‘My husband retired, and now he just sits,’ or ‘My mother’s not interested in anything anymore,’” Mann says. “Loss—of routine, of identity—brings isolation.” Everybody’s solution is different, she adds. “Take an inventory: What did you love doing but have to stop? What have you always wished you could try? What would be an adventure?”
A 2007 delegate to the United Nations Conference on Economics and Aging, Mann has received two doctorates of humane letters and this fall will accept the Missouri History Museum’s Thomas Jefferson Award. Meanwhile, she’s learning bridge and developing a new Oasis program on hospice and palliative care.
The other night, the idea of “a one-day university” woke her from a sound sleep. She grins, gives a little shrug. “I feel very strongly that we are here to make this a better place,” she says, “and if I’m figuring out how to do that, I’m not focusing on myself.”
