Active for Life: Fun and Fitness are Music to Elizabeth Olson's Ears

The official mantra of the Northfield Senior Center is Active, Engaged, and Connected and Elizabeth  Olson is one member who was already humming that tune when she moved to Northfield and joined the NSC last year.

Now, the retired PhD music teacher is singing it out loud and has people within her sphere of influence singing new songs as well.

Olson moved from Farmington to Northfield in 2010, and immediately joined the NSC.

“I’m an energetic, youthful, 67-year-old woman,” says Olson, and after a year of fitness classes and learning opportunities at the NSC, including musical hiking trips, “I feel better than I’ve ever felt, and look better than I’ve ever looked.”

Staying fit

Olson credits the NSC’s fitness program for her energy makeover and attests that the opportunities for lifelong learning has made her retirement every bit as engaging as her renowned and innovative teaching career.

“I knew that when I retired, I wanted to really get serious about fitness, but my body was not as active as it once was, and I did not want pain,” says Olson, who was leery of impersonal workout mills, fearing the risk of injury.

“In classes at the NSC,” she says, “the instructors are very careful to explain everything to you, answering your questions, and helping you to find your edge without moving into pain. They get to know you, and always have your best interests at heart."

Olson is a daily devotee of early morning Aqua-cise — an aerobic and resistance- strengthening class held in the NSC’s heated pool. Twice a week she enjoys tai chi, a Chinese martial art that is more like a flowing dance that increases energy, balance and flexibility while being gentle on the joints.

Olson also appreciates her twice weekly Gentle Yoga classes. “I had tried regular yoga, and found it a bit much for me,” she says. “But the instructors are trained to modify the poses according to age or injury. They honor us, and teach us how to honor our bodies.”

Olson continued, “When I started, I could barely go up and down the stairs holding the railing, but now I can run up and down—no railing. There is no reason why an older person can’t be even more fit than they were in middle age, or even in youth."

Staying social

More important than personal fitness, says Olson, membership at the center has become a portal to other activities and engagements, both at the center and in the larger community.

Olson’s weekly whirl of events might seem dizzying to some but it keeps her intellect sharp, her interests alive and has spun a satisfying circle of friends.

Olson attends lectures and social events such as a recent Gay Nineties party, the weekly Movie Monday and a recent trip to the Science Museum of Minnesota to see the actual artifacts of King Tut’s tomb.

“I just love Elizabeth,” says Terry Tormoen, a newcomer to Northfield whom she met at the NSC.  “She is learned, interested in everything and something of a social spark plug.”

The power of music

Though retired, Olson still trains music teachers, and champions the edifying powers of music.  She is celebrated in her field for her research proving that singing, with movement and games, cross-trains children’s brains, helping them build both vocabulary and math skills.

It can make adults smarter and happier too. “Singing is a natural, primary source for learning which activates more areas of the brain than any other activity," Olson explains. “Singing folk songs is good for your mental, spiritual and social health.”

It was Olson's spirited singing of The Happy Wanderer and other campfire rounds and folk tunes that caught fire with other hikers on an NSC-sponsored nature walk and spurred Olson to conduct a course in reading music through the Cannon Valley Elder Collegium (CVEC).

“It was a good experience,” says Suzanne Riesman, an NSC member who hiked with Olson and took her course. “I love to sing, but had been afraid to sing with a choir because I couldn’t read music.”

Riesman and other enthusiasts are urging Olson to continue teaching, and to establish a glee club devoted to folk music.

Keeping mentally tough

Olson is also a passionate partisan of the NSC’s monthly book club, and keeps her computer skills current in its open practice lab. “There is so much about computers with which we older folk need help,” she says, including instructions in digital photography and how to manage a Facebook page. 

Olson is a choir member at the First United Church of Christ and just finished an eight-week course in folk dancing at the Northfield Arts Guild.

The NAG is across Division Street from the public library, where Olson researched horticulture in order to design the terraced landscaping around the home she bought in Northfield. She is also an avid member of the Northfield Garden Club.

No place like home

If you sing in a choir, take a course or dance the hora with Olson,  sooner or later you’ll be invited to that spacious and tastefully decorated home and treated to a spread that would make domestic diva Martha Stewart weep with envy.

“I just love to be spontaneous with entertaining, which I couldn’t do when I was teaching daily,” she says. “It’s nothing for me to throw a few things together,” she says of the locally-grown yet exotically sensual and artfully arranged repasts for which she has become famous.

“Now is my time to recapture a rewarding aspect of life that got eclipsed by necessity” during her full-time working days, she says.

Keeping strong the family bond

Though divorced for 28 years, Olson is seldom alone and never lonely. Three of her four children, a daughter and two sons, live in Wisconsin and Eagan while her fourth child, a son, lives in New York City.

While she loves being a grandmother of five, she says that “life does not revolve around one’s children or grandchildren after one has raised them to be strong, self-sufficient and independent.”

Like other winter-weary Minnesotans, Olson longs for spring.  She has stayed in shape shoveling snow (“I only used the snow-blower once”), but longs to stow both her shovel and her car in the garage and walk to the NSC everyday. 

“It’s only a mile and a half away, and now that I’m in shape, I’ll be walking,” she says.