Wanda Makes the Front Page

That’s Wanda, modeling her 1960 Easter bonnet for her home health care worker a few weeks ago.

If you’ve followed this Safe & Sound blog for a while, you know who Wanda Bridgeforth is: she’s witty, she’s talented, she’s 98 years old, she’s been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for over a decade now, and guess what? She’s in the news again. This time, it’s the front page!

Early this week, Wanda was profiled in a column in the Chicago Tribune written by Heidi Stevens. Here’s a snippet:

Bridgeforth lives alone in a Hyde Park condo, not far from Lake Michigan. “I am the vice president in charge of looking out the window,” she said. “My job is practicing the lively art of doing nothing. And that takes some doing!
It might be a form of meditation, I don’t know.”

Heidi’s work is syndicated all over the country — my sister Bev called to let me know the column about Wanda was in her local newspaper in Grand Haven, Michigan, and when I talked to Wanda over the phone Wednesday she said her phone hadn’t stopped ringing. “A cousin from Baltimore called,” she marveled. “She saw it out there!”

For me, the excitement started last week when a simple message from Heidi called out to me from my talking iPhone:

“Hi Beth. It’s Heidi. How are you feeling? I have a favor to ask. Do you think Wanda would be willing to talk with me for a column? I’m trying to find someone who’s lived through a lot to offer some perspective on this time in history. She popped in my mind because of some of what you told me about her life and her willingness to record it in memoir form.”

Wanda gushed when I called her to see if she was willing. “You know me!” she laughed. A slew of phone calls and text messages and questions about arrangements followed, and this long message Heidi left on her Balancing Act Facebook page afterwards tells the rest of the story:

Wanda Bridgeforth made it to the front page of the Chicago Tribune today, which made me so happy. I’ve been getting the loveliest emails from readers who are touched by her story. (And one from a man who says he used to be Ms. Bridgeforth’s doctor. “I think I got more out of her visits than she did,” he wrote.)

I want to share a tiny bit more background. First, we couldn’t send a photographer to shoot Ms. Bridgeforth’s portrait, since it didn’t feel safe, coronavirus-wise, to have someone new enter her condo, and she wasn’t able to walk outside or down to her lobby where we could shoot a photo of her through the glass, which Tribune photographers are doing a lot of these days. So her home healthcare worker used her own phone to shoot photos of photos that Wanda had in her condo and then texted them to me. How’s that for an essential worker going above and beyond? So wonderful.

Second, when Wanda let me know what times would be best for me to call and interview her, she offered a window from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. When I called her (at 3:30 p.m., while she’s usually watching “Jeopardy,” but she taped it that day to watch later) I said, “So I could’ve called you at 1 in the morning and you would’ve answered?” And she said, “Oh, yes. I never get to bed before 2.”

I just adore her.

And me? I just adore both of them: Wanda Bridgeforth and Heidi Stevens. If you missed seeing the story on page one of the Chicago Tribune, don’t despair: you can read it online here.