| The Providence Journal
The appointment was for 9:21 a.m. precisely, and Ethel Rubinstein, as is her custom, was right on time, and wearing pearls.
Ethel is 101 years old. On Wednesday, she went with her daughter Janet Shansky to Colt State Park in Bristol to get her first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
For a woman who always has something good to say about everything — who’s able to laugh at life’s little bumps — it’s hardly a surprise that she had something good to say about this.
The needle didn’t hurt at all. The whole process was quick and efficient. No side effects to speak of. Everyone there was just so nice. Plus, she’ll have protection against a virus that has preyed on older people. That will give her a chance in the not too distant future to meet her youngest great-grandson, a pandemic baby named Jordan who’s just 7 months old. She’s thankful for that. She’s thankful for a lot.
“It was very unexpected, this whole shot, and even the virus and everything. We all have to take care of ourselves,” Ethel said, adding for great-grandmotherly effect to a reporter on the telephone: “Even you.”
Ethel, nee Ethel Mack, was a pandemic baby, too. She was born in 1919, in the midst of the Spanish flu pandemic, in Portland, Maine. She was one of six kids. She worked as an office manager at WT Grants, a department store, and married Myer Rubinstein. They had two kids, who had four kids, who had six kids. Myer died in January 1996. The concentric circles of Rubinstein progeny are now spread out to Arizona, Texas and Boston. Even from so far away, they still center around their matriarch. She cracks them up.
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“I can’t even tell a mother-in-law joke,” said daughter-in-law Randy Rubinstein, “because she doesn’t do anything bad. She’s a forward-looking, optimistic person. She holds the family together — she’s our glue. She doesn’t look back at the past.”
Even spread out geographically, they’ve remained tight-knight. When they found out in late January that she was going to be able to get a COVID shot in Rhode Island — the state was later than most to make older people who live in the community more broadly eligible — the family text message threads started to blow up.
“I actually almost started to cry,” said granddaughter Becca Shansky, who lives in Boston. “And I didn’t expect that at all. Obviously she is precious cargo. After living over 100 years, we want to hold onto her for as many more as we can.”
She was aided in that effort in late January, when the state started releasing a small number of doses for people 75 and older to cities and towns. Those local governments went through their lists of people over 75 on their special needs registries, which are lists of people who might need extra help in an emergency. Her daughter had put Ethel on it.
She is one of a few thousand people to receive the vaccine in the early stages of the rollout for people over 75. And she’s the oldest vaccine recipient so far in Warren, and may actually be the town’s oldest resident, according to Chief James Sousa of Warren Fire and Rescue.
Sousa was the one who called Janet with the news that Ethel would be able to get a shot. Calling people to sign them up for their shots is a challenge, but a rewarding one.
“It’s good, it’s fulfilling,” Sousa said. “I just wish I could have the answers for all of them, to be able to call everyone.”
He remembers reassuring Janet that they’d have a wheelchair for her mom at the regional vaccination site in Bristol.
Just a walker would probably be fine, Sousa recalls Janet saying.
“That’s remarkable in itself,” Sousa said.
Janet Shansky is 72, so she’s just on the cusp of being eligible. But they told her she would not be able to get a shot there. Ethel left the site with a follow-up appointment for her second shot in early March. Both authorized vaccine doses require two shots, spaced out a few weeks apart. (She had the Moderna shot.) She’s looking forward to that one, too.
Granddaughter Lani Harrison has seen some people suggest that people 90 and above shouldn’t be first in line for vaccines, that they’d be better used on people somewhat younger. Whenever she sees that, she thinks of her 101-year-old grandmother.
“My grandmother, she enjoys every single day,” Lani said. “If we can give her more days to enjoy, then that’s wonderful. Every day of life is worth it. And she demonstrates that.”
Ethel had lived most of her life in Portland, but in her 90s moved to an assisted living facility in Barrington to be closer to family. Through the pandemic, the facility was under various stages of restrictions. Sometimes visits had to be through windows or only outside; they’d sometimes show her pictures of little Jordan, whose chubby cheeks took after the Mack side of his family, through the window. Ethel took it all in stride, and appreciated everything there. That pearl necklace she was wearing? She’d made that at the assisted-living facility. Her only mild complaint was that it could take awhile for the food to reach her room on the third floor.
“It wasn’t hot,” she’d report, “but I know they’re doing the best they can.”
Said Janet: “That’s why she’s 101. She’s very upbeat. She’s very forward-looking.”
In November, she went to live with Janet in Warren. A good thing: the facility eventually had a COVID outbreak soon after she left.
Even living at home these days comes with its own restrictions, though. She’s hopeful, after she’s fully vaccinated, to start doing the things she enjoys again.
She used to love eating at Applebee’s with her friends. She loves going to dollar stores, picking out a bunch of stuff to buy. She loves to play cards. She has always been fast to make friends, and long to keep them.
Even into her mid-90s, when she was still living in Maine, “she was still hanging out with friends from high school, playing mahjong,” said granddaughter Sara Kaye, who lives in Texas.
She also loves the Boston Red Sox. Which was a bit of an issue with granddaughter Becca, who lived in New York and had become a fan of… can you believe it? The Yankees.
Becca remembers being at Ethel’s 90th birthday party up in Portland. Ethel asked, When are you going switch to rooting for the Red Sox? Becca responded: Grandma, I’ll do it when you turn 100. The actuarial tables seemed to make this a safe bet. So 10 years later, when Ethel turned 100, Becca made good on the deal. Becca ceremonially took off a Bernie Williams jersey and put on a Red Sox shirt at Ethel’s 100th birthday party, in August 2019.
Ethel laughs at the memory. She laughs a lot.
“Boy did I fool her, that girl,” she recalled.
At her age, a lot of people ask her the secret to long life. She has a few different answers, and her family has their own theories, too. Laughing and listening. Thrice-weekly exercise. A positive outlook, never holding a grudge.
She once explained to grandson Dave Rubinstein, who lives in Newton, Massachusetts, that the key was pretty simple. Don’t gossip about other people. And don’t be a backseat driver.
“Which I was confused about for awhile, but she probably meant, don’t try to control other people,” Dave said. “Or I’m reading too much into it and she thinks not being a backseat driver is helpful.”
(She did drive well into her 90s, so this latter theory seems plausible.)
Dave is the new father of Jordan, 7 months old. One thing about Jordan is that he is a chubby baby. Dave is skinny now, his family reports, but he was a chubby baby, too. That led to loving nicknames from his grandmother growing up, such as Wide Clyde, and No Neck, and Pudgy.
Dave giggles at the memory of it, and giggles at the memory of Ethel giggling over it.
Ethel said recently she’s looking forward to finally getting to see Jordan in person.
“I hear about every pound he gains,” she said. “He’s quite chubby.”
Ethel spoke recently by telephone with a Providence Journal reporter, along with daughter Janet. Between fits of laughter — she really is very funny — this reporter could not resist the question that many people have asked her in the latter part of her 101 years: What is the secret to long life?
Ethel isn’t sure. But here she is. She still has a sister, Helen Hoffman, 97, down in Florida. She has a COVID vaccine in her arm and soon, once the weather gets a little warmer, she’ll meet her fellow pandemic baby Jordan, and see the other grandkids and great-grandkids, maybe even go shopping or to a restaurant again. Whatever the explanation, she’s looking forward to all of it.
Her daughter Janet chimed in with a theory.
“She always has a positive outlook on life,” Janet said. “And it’s hard, I see all of her peers are just about gone, and her siblings and their spouses except for her sister Helen. That’s been hard. But she just keeps persevering and having a good time.”
Ethel laughed.
“Thank you, kid,” she told her daughter. “Thank you. I just think you have to make your own good time.”
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