ITN Blog

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From Tom Porter, Executive Director, ITNOrlando
Thursday, February 14, 2008


Ann Nicolson

Ann Nicolson was the first ITNOrlando volunteer to drive for us, even if it was just "pretend." One of the local news shows did a story about us and Ann drove for the television camera weeks before we gave our first "real" ride. Over one hundred times since then, Ann got into her car, picked up a customer and drove them to their destination. Ann, like all of our volunteers, was a very generous person.

One of Ann's first riders was Eleanor Irvine. They discovered they had a lot in common and quickly became good friends. Ann would drive them to lunch, to look at the newest stores and restaurants that had recently opened and to evening social outings. On the news clip, Ann said that she liked to drive and mentioned that she wanted to ensure she had a place in someone's car when she could no longer drive. That place was in my car on January 11, 2008, sooner than any of us expected and it was from a hospital to Ann's temporary home in a Winter Park rehabilitation center. Ann passed away on Thursday, January 31, 2008.

The following Monday, I picked up Eleanor Irvine and we drove to the memorial service. I was not surprised when several of Ann's lifelong friends and family members noted her many interests, her sense of humor and her zest for living. I was not surprised when they recounted the many ways that she helped others and generously gave of herself. And I was not surprised when Ann's daughter Lucy told me she learned generosity from her mom and directed that the mileage credits Ann earned go to Eleanor and that Ann's car go to ITN.

It's sad knowing that I will no longer talk to Ann or see her smiling face at our volunteer celebrations. I'm sure that those of you who knew her will miss her, too. I hope that Ann's family (and I believe Ann) will take comfort in knowing that she is still giving generously to our customers and still providing rides to Eleanor Irvine.

From: Ruth Lando, Communications Director
The Community Foundation of Sarasota County
Friday, January 25, 2008 1:06 PM

Katherine,

I just left the meeting you conducted for us here at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. I want to tell you that you are completely inspiring and devastatingly powerful in your low-key, understated way.

Thank you for a marvelous presentation! I can't wait for us to dot all the I's and cross all the T's and make our ITN happen in Sarasota!

I have two remarkably resilient and independent elderly parents (88 and 95 years old) who still live on their own and manage to get everywhere they want to go with our public transportation system! They either take 2 busses (having to make a transfer at the downtown transfer station for almost every destination)…or they pay $1.50 apiece and secure a reserved ride with "SCAT PLUS"- a public transit van that accepts reservations for rides from seniors 24 hours in advance. (Amazingly, they are driven door to door!)

My parents use SCAT PLUS for doctors' appointments, but also to go to the mall to shop or do errands or their banking. Unfortunately, the van is often late or through some screw up in dispatch doesn't come at all. They've been left "stranded" at home or at an appointment on numerous occasions. They also can't alter the time for pick up, so if an appointment finishes early they still have to wait for their requested time for the driver to return. This has resulted in all-day-long outings that could easily have been just a couple of hours in duration. And they have to be ready and waiting for the van driver ONE HOUR prior to pickup time, which is often quite inconvenient. (Especially if there is no where they can sit and wait out of the sun or rain.) However, SCAT PLUS has proven to be a lifesaver for them (and for me!)

My parents live in the Jefferson Center, a HUD owned building populated by lower income people 55 and over, many of whom would be perfect candidates for ITN rides or even to be drivers! I understand some of the tenants already use their personal cars as ersatz taxis now to make money on the side.

I hope my parents will both be alive long enough to make use of an ITN service. My only fear is that they'll be too frugal to pay more than $1.50 per person…so I'll have to do my part to get them supplied with a whole bunch of ride credits!

Anyhow, thank you for your enlightening information and for sharing your passion. Hope to have an opportunity to spend time with you again in the future,

Ruth

From: Katherine Fruend
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
My Friend, Max

Born January 18, 1919 Died February 7, 2007

My friend, Max Israelite, died this week, at 88. He taught me about friendship, decency and the kind of generosity that comes with caring deeply for others. Max was one of the founding Board members of the Independent Transportation Network. I will never forget him.

I met Max in 1994, when he was published in Newsweek Magazine's "My Turn" section. He wrote an essay about giving up driving when he turned 75. He said he was going to tear up his license and never get behind the wheel of a car again. He didn't trust his state, Pennsylvania, to monitor his skills properly, and he was worried about the consequences. He concluded by saying that he realized he might be stopping too soon, but that he would rather stop five years too soon than "one millisecond too late."

The millisecond I read his essay, I knew I had to call him, because a few years before, an 84 year old man did stop driving too late, and he ran over my 3 year son. I had to say thank you.

Max was living in Levittown, Pennsylvania, at the time. I remember calling information to get the phone number, and the man with the faltering voice (Max managed a stutter all his life) who answered my call and spent as much time talking with me as I needed. He told me that people were calling him from all over the country, people who had lost family members—children, parents, spouses—and people who had been run over themselves and survived.

Before the internet, Max became a kind of switch board operator connecting hurt people to each other. He especially wanted me to meet a young librarian from Kansas, Mike Sharp, who was run over while riding his bicycle, and Sheldon Suroff, a father who had recently lost a 21 year old son to a wrong way older driver in Missouri. Mike was searching every published document on older drivers in the Library of Congress, and Sheldon was trying to find better ways to screen impaired drivers, of any age. Sheldon went on to found CARD, Concerned Americans for Responsible Driving, and was responsible for the legislative change in Missouri that now requires impaired drivers to be reported.

Max and I soon discovered that he was visiting my home state, Maine, to see a friend sign for the hearing impaired at a community theatre production of Fiddler on the Roof. We agreed to meet for breakfast, and by the time the pancakes arrived, we decided to become friends. I told him about this idea I had to start a transportation service for people who needed an alternative to driving. I wanted to use cars, not vans or buses, and I wanted it to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, just like the private automobile. I wanted it to pick people up and take them where they wanted to go, so they would have the kind of mobility they really needed to live their lives with dignity and independence. I told my new friend, who was so good at listening, that I honestly believed it would help older people make good choices about driving. "There isn't a family in America," I told Max, "that is untouched by this problem." I asked Max if he would serve on the Board of Directors.

"Me?" he said. "I am just a chicken farmer. What do I know about being on a Board of Directors?"

It's true, Max was at one time a chicken farmer, and a postal worker, when farming didn't pay and he wanted to put his children through college. But he was also a thinker and a writer, with several hundred published essays to his credit, and he was one of the most ethical people I have ever known. Some people in the Washington research community were concerned that Max's Newsweek essay would stir up a lot of discrimination against older people. They asked me to write a letter to the editor, to counterbalance the anticipated effect of his essay.

"Is it so rare," I said, "to see someone put others before himself that you do not even know how to recognize ethical behavior when you see it?" The experts said that I didn't understand, but Max's essay was subsequently incorporated into a Canadian high school ethics text book.

Max did give up his license at age 75, and for six years he attended monthly Board of Directors meetings, schlepping to Maine on the bus from Acton, Massachusetts, where he had moved to be near his beloved family. Toward the end, it was just too much for him, so his son, Larry, also joined the Board, and took off work to come to Maine for the meetings. Max donated to every fundraising program and in his 80's, walked in the annual March of the Members to help raise precious funds to subsidize the rides of older people who use the Independent Transportation Network. Max shared my vision of a national solution that I now realize he understood he would never live to enjoy in his community. When he retired from the Board, we named an award for him—the Max Israelite Volunteer of the Year Award. It is a modified Tzedakah Box, a handmade pottery vase with a little village on the sides and a hole in the top to drop coins for righteous acts. The village represents all of the places in the community where volunteers drive older people.

All ITN affiliates are membership organizations, representing the people we serve. Our affiliation agreement for new communities wishing to start an ITN service requires that the Board of Directors include members drawn from the older people who use the service and the volunteers who make the transportation possible. In one community, the transportation experts rejected this policy with the comment that they "did not want their senior transit service run by a bunch of old people."

Fine by me. That leaves more of those old people for us. Goodbye, my dear friend, Max. I will never forget you.

From: Katherine Freund
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The Senate Gallery

I had never visited the Capital before. I had been to Washington, DC, many times, but I had never before seen the inside of the Capital building, where policy and history are made. On Thursday, February 16, 2006, I was there, in the Senate gallery, waiting for Senator Susan Collins of Maine to appear on the floor of the Senate. I had to pass many guards and security checkpoints, through long and beautiful corridors, to arrive in the gallery, high over the Senate floor. There I waited, surrounded by marble busts of past Vice Presidents, knowing I would see this room and this event in my memory for many years. Senator Collins was about to introduce the Older Americans Sustainable Mobility Act of 2006.

All things start somewhere, and even great things start small. From the moment I got the idea for the Independent Transportation Network® model for senior transportation, I knew I was a little person with a big idea. The previous year, an 84-year-old driver ran over my 3-year old son. My son survived and is today a wonderful young man, but I knew that many others were not so blessed, and I knew that the man who drove that car was as much a victim as my son.

My big idea was to create a national solution, a non-profit transportation network for America's aging population. I have now been working on this solution for 17 years. There will be many blog entries, many stories to tell, many struggles, failures and successes to relate. There will be the stories leading up to the Senator's bill, and the hopes and dreams, work and effort that will carry us forward into the future. I hope I tell them all well. I invite you to join me.

"Floor time," I now know, is scarce, and a Senator must request it. That Thursday, Senator Collins asked for 12 minutes of time. It was about 5:15 pm. This is what she said, and this is the bill she introduced. I am forever grateful to my Senator for listening to one small, determined voice.

Older Americans Sustainable Mobility Act of 2006