Donna Cohen's study of the growing pains - and diseases - of getting older has become a popular USF class.
By DENISE WATSON BATTS
Published September 26, 2003
UNIVERSITY NORTH - Behind Donna Cohen's books on aging, her expert testimony on murder-suicides and her founding of several groups are her stories.
One began in December 1997, when Cohen appeared on national television discussing suicide. One viewer called. The woman was depressed and tired from caring for a dying husband and was ready to kill him and herself. Cohen got her help.
Six years later, the woman tracked down Cohen to give her some news. While her husband had died in 1998, she was in love again. She was happy.
She told Cohen: "Tell people God saves the best for last."
As Cohen relayed the story, her eyes glistened with tears - as they often do when she shares her tales. The stories are histories, legacies of love and life. They are why Cohen entered the field of aging three decades ago, and why she remains.
As one of the original founders of the National Alzheimer's Association, she is a pioneer in research on Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Her work as a scientist, educator and clinician in the field of aging, mental health, long-term care and violence is recognized internationally.
Cohen, who serves as editor in chief of the Journal of Mental Health and Aging, has published 10 books. She often testifies in court about murder-suicide cases and other issues.
Cohen is founding director of the University of South Florida's Institute on Aging and continues to participate in its programs. She lives on Harbour Island.
"I'm ready to be 99," the 56-year-old said recently. "Being in the field, you learn so many ways to survive. I've learned so much. Older people are survivors."
Cohen, of course, learned some of her most important lessons from her parents and grandparents. She was born and raised in Baltimore but spent chunks of time with her two sets of grandparents in Connecticut.
Her mother's parents drank coffee, and from the time she was a baby, she got a dropper's worth of coffee in her milk. Her father's father was a grocer, and she remembers him giving away ice cream and food to children and families in need. Her parents always pushed her to expand her horizons.
"It's the little things that make you who you are," Cohen said. "The unconditional love, the opportunity to test yourself, to be stretched in every way."
She attended Duke University in the 1960s and studied zoology. It was there that she met professors in the burgeoning field of aging.
"There was a vital passion in wanting to understand the aging process," Cohen said. "There was a humanity, people who loved what they did. I grew up with the field, but I grew up with people who were fanatical scientists. Fanatical in a good way."
Cohen completed her work at Duke and received her master's and doctorate degrees at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles. Cohen began her journey into research and teaching, working with veterans in Los Angeles and later serving as a professor in Washington state and New York City. She also directed geriatric centers in New York City and Chicago.
She moved to Tampa 11 years ago to lead USF's Department of Aging and Mental Health. The state, with its huge retiree population, was "a natural laboratory."
Stuart Silverman, dean of the honors college at USF, remembers someone suggesting that Cohen would make a perfect instructor in the advanced program.
"I thought, "Why would 20-, 21-year-olds be interested in aging and death?"' Silverman said. "Then I met her."
Cohen crafted classes with meaning. She asked students to write their own obituaries and living wills. She had them role play and react to, for example, if their grandparents divorced, and during a visit, their grandfather introduced them to his new boyfriend.
Word spread among students, and Cohen's classes became must-take courses. Cohen has mentored more honor students through their theses than any other faculty member in the university, Silverman said. It speaks to her commitment to teaching.
"She's a fantastic person," Silverman said. "She cares, she gets emotional about the stuff that she does."
And that emotion shows as she collects stories, relays them, and learns from them. She has learned the importance of friends. Her own statistics show that her chances of ending up in a nursing home are higher because she has no children and is not married.
"I've heard her talk enough about her students to know the kind of dedication she has for teaching," friend Barbara Fleischer said, adding that Cohen demonstrates the same dedication during court cases. "And I've heard her discuss the cases that she consults on enough to know that she is not a hired gun. She takes cases in which she believes she can be of some use or can serve some purpose."
The purpose is the people.
"We've met the aged," Cohen said. "And they is us."
