Mona, the Wonder Woman

Now and again, I need to remind myself of the remarkable elders I’ve known. They’re out there, of course, but it’s so much easier to notice the obvious shortcomings of someone like my stepmother, to the point that when I reflect on old people I may not think of the best examples first.

One such person was my father’s late cousin Mona Freye (a fairly distant cousin—her grandmother and my father’s grandmother were sisters.) Mona was a bright star who inspired all who knew her and even those people who only heard about her story.  As this year marks the 100^th anniversary of her birth, Mona’s story deserves to be told again.

Mona on her 92nd birthday with her daughter Shell 

She dropped out of high school when her father died during the Great Depression; needing to support her family, she got a job, while still holding onto the dream of finishing school.  But life interrupted: she had to work; then she got married and raised a daughter in the Oakland area. My dad visited Mona a few times when he was a student at Cal, but after he graduated they lost touch.

Finally, in her 70s, she got her GED and decided to continue on to college—and it was only natural that she’d want to attend UC Berkeley, close to home. It wasn’t easy, but she did it, graduating from Cal in 1994 at the age of 82 with a degree in English. Newspapers everywhere carried the story and she even appeared on David Letterman, where she charmed him and everyone watching. (Interesting sidebar: Letterman and the papers all mentioned that Mona was 78—because she’d lied about her birth date on the entrance application, fearing age discrimination. Eventually she came clean about it with the school .)

Her message, that "It's never too late to come back to school," spread throughout the world and prompted a flood of calls to the campus and letters to Mona, many from older people who decided they could do it too. My father happened to see a news segment about her achievement and got back in touch with her, which is how she and I connected. (I remember my mother’s disdain when I told her the story: “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” she snorted. “What’s the point of getting a degree at her age?”) But my mother was always quick to dismiss anything even slightly unconventional.

Over the next decade, my partner and I became close with Mona and her family, visiting regularly. She never lost interest in the world or in other people, even as her own world became more challenging. I remember enjoying her 90th birthday party with family and friends at a local restaurant where another group was celebrating the birthday of a woman in her 20s. The two birthday girls chatted; the young woman couldn’t believe Mona’s age. “It’s just a number,” Mona told her, laughing.

That was part of Mona’s magic—she never accepted the role of an “old person” with all the limitations that term implies. Like anyone, she had problems and she dealt with them as well as she could. Her final problem, stage 4 lung cancer, she accepted resolutely. “I don’t want any treatment, I just want to die. I want to die.” And so she did, about two weeks after her diagnosis. 94 years is a good life by any measure—but Mona’s would have been a good one no matter what.