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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Helen Green Ansley 
May 10, 1985 
Cassette 3, Side 1 
 
 
 
Debra Ryan  00:05 
This is Debra Ryan, and I'm here interviewing Helen Ansley in her home in Issaquah, 
Washington, on May 10, 1985. This is our third interview, and this is the third tape, side 
one.Well, we had once talked about your mother's progressive work when you were a child and 
in high school, when you were in college, and I thought you might want to elaborate a little bit 
on some of the work that your mother did part of the time while you were in college. 
 
Helen Ansley  00:52 
Yes, I realize now how far ahead of her time she was, but when I was away at college, she 
brought Margaret Sanger to the Unitarian Church. And after that, helped in the organization of 
what they called a maternal health clinic in Cleveland, so that when I came-- was ready to be 
married, there was a maternal health clinic, and it was perfectly natural for me to go, and there 
was no-- I don't think it was as controversial then as it is now. It may have been, but it may be 
that just because I was surrounded by people who were always doing something about the 
problems, and I realize now, that's because my father said The purpose of life is to leave the 
world better for your being here, to make a contribution. So, whatever problem has come up in 
my life or in the world, really, it's not just my life. I've done what I could to help solve it, and 
usually, working with a pretty liberal group, although I didn't realize to what extent, really, until 
I got up to the state of Washington. Going from Cleveland, the Unitarian Church, to Berkeley. I 
was perfectly at home with the-- what I called it, advanced liberal progressive thinking of the 
Democrats. And then it was only after I moved up to Washington, that I discovered the 
difference in the [?cognitive?] thought. For a long time, I thought there was something wrong 
with me, but I've heard now, recently, more and more people, particularly of the east side, how 
hard it is to get acquainted, to get into the east side, and some of the-- they're concerned with-- in 
politics and religion. 
 
Debra Ryan  03:24 
[Inaudible.] [Bell rings.] 
 
Helen Ansley  03:29 
That is the mantel clock that was on my mantel for 52 years in my married life, that has now 
struck [laughs]. Yes, so it's lately that I realized that a lot of my recent loneliness is not just old 
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age, it is by philosophy. And that maybe I'm ahead of the times for up here, or something like 
that. In a way, it's made me feel better and yet, and sort of worse too. I'm reminded now, 
particularly, of the McCarthy period, because-- there, it was all out in the open, that McCarthy 
and the radical right were opposing all of the things. I went through that time of being called a 
communist, simply because I was trying to stay in the middle and look at both sides of the 
question. And that was the time where, if you weren't for us, you were against us, and you got 
attacked. My philosophy has always been, I guess always, I don't know when I began to think 
about it, that I work for something, not against, and so much of the conflict now is by people 
opposing something. I've worked for peace [inaudible] and for education, and not to keep certain 
things out of education, but for what should be. I read-- it scares me now, at some of the conflict 
that's arising about the right to abortion, and particularly in this morning's paper, when I read the 
morning's paper, when I read of the man who is convicted of murder, who killed-- who shot his 
wife who had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease. And he was-- still putting her out of her 
misery, and she wanting this, and I understand all the old people wanting help, and yet, anyone 
who lifts a finger against them-- it's called a crime. So, it takes me back to the McCarthy days. 
These things scare me. But fortunately, I was over in Montana, weekend of the Gerontology 
conference, where there were younger people working, seeing the problem of their own old age, 
and who welcomed my positive ideas of what old age--  [inaudible]. 
 
Helen Ansley  06:49 
Well, to go back to a minute-- for a minute to Cleveland. I may have mentioned already our two 
sons after their marriage, moved to the West Coast. Our older son in California, and younger son 
in Issaquah, and my husband was still in the-- was in the insurance business at that time, and he 
found-- he thought he would like to be in the San Francisco financial district, so we moved to 
Berkeley and took up a new life. It was hard leaving everything we'd known behind. But we did 
find World Federalists in Berkeley and a League of Women Voters in Berkeley, and then I had a 
job of working at the Florence Radiation Laboratory for about five years. That was fascinating, 
because I learned all the new language of computers. And at that time, I was with a magnet 
testing group. I was sort of a house mother looking after the young, about 10 young engineers, 
helping them write their reports and file their records. As the head of the department said, If you 
come and work for me, you'll be doing God's work. What do you mean? He said Bringing order 
out of chaos. He was one that could find everything in that office, but there was no system to it, 
and so I spent a lot of time organizing information there at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. 
And it did open my eyes in new ways.  
 
Debra Ryan  08:45 
[Inaudible]? 
 
Helen Ansley  08:47 
We moved to we moved to Berkeley in '59. I started working at the Radiation Laboratory in 
1960, and stayed there until I retired, when I was 65 in 1965. And it was in 1965, that we had 
that-- I was very active with the World Congress, or World Federalists, that were celebrating the-
- that was the 20th anniversary of the United Nations. We were working very hard then, 
[?think?], and there's a lot of studying being done on whether there should be amendments for 
the Constitution of the United Nations. So, I did meet very interesting people there. Then my 
husband had a slight stroke and had to-- they were part-- he recovered enough to work part-time. 
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He continues working part time. But in 1967, we moved into a retirement home called 
Strawberry Creek Lodge, and I continued doing volunteer work. I did some for the World 
Without War Council, and then I actually-- oh, I did a study. The exciting thing was that I did a 
study on the problems and resources for growing old in Berkeley. It was because-- we weren't on 
welfare and my-- I was working with a young friend in the league, whose mother was in a 
nursing home, and she wasn't on welfare. It was hard to find out what was available to help in 
old age. If you're on welfare, somebody takes you by the hand and leads you from one agency to 
another. When you're trying to find out what help is available for people that have strokes, what 
is known? What about the retirement homes, and all of that? And so, there were-- this friend and 
I organized a study of about-- there were about 30 older women, members of the league, who did 
the study of the problems of growing old in Berkeley.  
 
Debra Ryan  11:34 
So you've just kind of gotten a poster-- a chart, and tell me about this chart.  
 
Helen Ansley  11:42 
Well, this chart actually became the centerpiece in a, something like a 12 page report that our 
committee did for the League of Women Voters. But across the top, we have "Growing old in 
Berkeley", and the date is April, 1974. And-- we listed down the left-hand side, the problems and 
those-- we didn't, you see, we didn't start by going to the agencies to find out what was being 
done. We started from our group of 30 women, saying, What are the problems? And listed-- we 
listed them and they are "Death and dying, financial legal counseling, health, illness, income, 
independence, involvement, living arrangements, loneliness, mental health, recreation, safety and 
transportation". And making those headings down the side and then across the top for resources, 
we listed what is the federal-- columns of the "Federal government, legislation and funding, the 
state of California, Alameda County, Berkeley City Government, public agencies, private 
agencies, groups and organizations, churches, business, professions and trade unions". And then 
we had a column of "Do it yourself", what you've had to do yourself, nobody else was doing. 
And then, way to the right, we listed the suggested needs that perhaps the League of Women 
Voters of Berkeley could work on, so that it shows up, this cross hatch, right there is so much 
duplication, and on the other hand, where [?renewal?] is being done. One of the striking things to 
me that came out of that, was we discovered that the whole federal program, most of the program 
that's called the Health Program, is not-- it's illness. All of Medicare only pays for illness. And 
then we found that the doctors are not trained to keep you well. They're trained to find a disease 
and to look for a disease, and that's what's being taught in the medical schools. There was very 
little being taught about how to keep healthy. And this was a revelation to me. And another thing 
that was quite blank on this was the idea of independence, how you could retain your 
independence. It was taken for granted that, in your old age, you'd be dependent, you see. 
Remember, this was 1974 and we still-- people had the idea that you lived in the family, the 
family looked after you. The family thing was changing, but the idea that you could be able to 
live alone-- oh, would live long enough and want to, because not so many people had been living 
to old age. So it was becoming a great problem then. We, well, we divided into 13 little 
subcommittees of our-- over committee and took these different headings of the problems, and 
we kept running around the county, and the state, and the city to see who was offering what on 
these various subjects. So, to my mind, it was a very logical way of approaching, and I am-- 
afterwards, we'd get out a list of who was doing what in the various areas and their telephone 
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numbers, and we listed those under the problems. Here you'll find lots of agencies listed, but to 
find which ones are worth-- so many were working at a lot of the problems. So, we had this 
printed up in a report, 12 page report, with-- that we circulated them and we sent these to a 
commission on aging in California, and we made one copy available free to anyone. If they 
wanted them in quantity, they had to pay us for it. But it was all of the agencies that grabbed 
these up to find out what the other ones were doing, because each one only knew its own thing. 
And that is what I have found, is that in the great-- is a great difficulty in this whole problem of 
aging. It is so [inaudible]. When I came up, well-- I better stay back in Berkeley for a little while. 
In Berkeley, because of this league study, I was asked to be part of a research project that was 
being done on 12 older women. And I actually went out and got some of my friends from this 
league study to be guinea pigs with me. A woman named Gay Luce used us as her source 
material for her PhD. My friend who'd been working with me in the league, Eugene Gerard, was 
working on a master's. And so she was studying us. And then there was a young man named Ken 
Dychtwald, who-- he was working-- I don't know his PhD at that time, I guess it was, but these 
three young people were bringing their skills to us to see what it would do. What they actually 
were doing was introducing us to holistic health so that we learned-- first, we learned to relax 
with biofeedback. We learned that our minds could control the temperature of our hands, and the 
flow of our blood, and things like this. We learned yoga, and tai chi, and various forms of 
meditation. We were introduced to acupuncture, to things about nutrition. In fact, what this 
whole holistic health concept, and-- it was fascinating to us. I didn't realize at that time that it 
was so new everywhere. I thought I was just lucky. I hadn't known about it, and here I was, lucky 
to find out. And I didn't realize that these things had not been introduced to older people at all 
before, the things that these young students working with us found out, much to their surprise, 
we could learn so rapidly. In fact, we learned more rapidly than some of the classes that they 
knew of, because we had background, we had experience where this would fit in. And there was 
a man in the class with rheumatoid arthritis, very much sort of crippled up with it. But gradually 
with yoga and with gentle exercise, he learned to straighten up and to do things, and really got 
very active physically. There was another woman with very high blood pressure, and she was 
taking medication for that, but by the deep breathing, the stretching, relaxation, meditation, she 
learned to reduce her blood pressure, and it came down and down, so she didn't have to take 
medication. It was another woman had a-- she had a sort of a sore knee. Oh, ever since 
childhood, she had a-- or since her children were born, she'd had a bad knee. But gradually, as 
we went through these daily things of relaxation, a lot of deep breathing and stretching, that knee 
gradually would jerk and jerk and straighten itself out until she fully recovered the use of her 
knee. We were finding how to get healthy, that these weren't-- that wasn't illness, and it's made a 
lot of sense, but I certainly-- of course, I think my family brought me up pretty healthy. I was 
encouraged to do this, but certainly, this introduction to this SAGE idea has, I'm sure, accounted 
for my good health now. And the SAGE stands for Senior Actualization and Growth 
Exploration, and we explored new ideas. We really did. It was so amusing to see the amazement 
of the young people at some of the things we could do without trouble and how healthy we were, 
and above all, our attitudes towards life. So that thing now-- now that was, you see, in 1974. I 
know now that that is the beginning of a different approach to aging. That Gay Luce and her 
book, Your Second Life, which she wrote up all that she did that was down there, and she had to 
go around and talk. In fact, she took me with her to New York, where she was doing a series of 
talks to introduce this idea. And here I was, Exhibit A. When I went with her, I think it was the 
spring of '75 and it was such fun. I could get up and talk about what we were doing. You know, 
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Montfiore Hospital, I talked there, and I talked to a board. Maybe it was their Board of Trustees 
too as well. It was to a class, and I was just virtually at home talking, because I'd been talking to 
the League of Women Voters, I'd been talking about mental health. I was just perfectly at ease 
talking. And when they found that somebody, 75, could be this healthy, and sort of still have her 
wits about her, but it was lots of fun, and it still is. This is the fun I get out of life. It's the look on 
people's faces when they find that I'm now 85 years old and doing things. It's really that. It's so 
amusing. Really, that's so amusing. I'll say, of course, their first reaction is, Oh, but you're so 
young. And that makes me mad because it shows the ageism that is around. And the other part 
that shows the ageism that makes me mad, is the older people expressing it themselves, who will 
not tell their age. There-- they think that it's bad. And of course, the young people, then, they 
don't know how old these healthy people are, so they imagine them younger, and are getting a 
very mixed up idea. I'm all for having everybody, every time they go to a conference, put their 
age on their name tag as well, but I find that it's the young people. I mean, what I call young, the 
people getting to be forced to think it's a problem. And it's those people, and their fear of what 
they're coming to, that this is almost producing it. I think we get what we expect, and they're 
expecting not to be useful and to be sick. Certainly, I've had to-- well, I better stop. Anyway, take 
a new slant. It got me into this holistic idea of realizing body, mind and spirit all interact. And 
yet, almost the entire thing about age is concentrated on body, our physical age of everything, 
and physical deterioration. Then they assumed there would be mental deterioration. But-- and the 
spiritual hasn't been given much thought, and I find, while I had done a good deal of spiritual 
thinking when I was teaching Sunday school, I've been wrapped up in mind lately. A lot of 
studying and reading and reading, and seeing so much conflict where the scientists don't agree, 
the medical doctors don't agree, and you constantly-- well, I felt pulled apart, because, as you get 
older, people try to give you advice of what you should do. In fact, you expect them to. And they 
all have different ideas. And at first, I just thought, well, it made me mad, sort of. Then I 
realized, finally, that everybody that was giving me advice had found something that helped 
them, and they really were just trying to help me. They weren't really trying to say, You don't 
know anything, but it certainly comes through, as I know, from them. Well, I know, I'm young, 
I've studied these things. I know all about it. You're old. You don't know. You have to listen to 
me. But they're all saying different things. Well, I don't take things lying down. And so I got 
more and more into this, and it made more sense. And then, after my husband's death in 1974, I 
waited another year, and I decided I didn't want to stay in that retirement home there in Berkeley. 
Everybody else there, there were about 150, they were--  I started expecting to stay there until 
you die. And in fact, that was what my husband and I had thought when we went in. Well, at 
least when one dies, the other one will be sort of at home. But I didn't want to stay there, because 
I want, I wanted to still go on. I was learning new things. And I wanted to get up to this part of 
the country, the state of Washington, where my younger son had settled not long after college, 
[?after his?] experiences in the war. And so I prepared to move, and then the night before I was 
to drive up to Seattle area with a friend, I fell down stairs and broke my hip. I broke my right hip, 
and as I was dashed off to the hospital, I thought, Why didn't I break my neck so I wouldn't have 
to move? Would be so simple. But then I got interested, because they gave me a hip replacement. 
Was amazing to see this thing that they put into my hip and, well, my goodness, in just a few 
days, I was up and around, and having physical therapy there at the hospital. I was in the hospital 
10 days. Then I went to a nursing home at Berkeley for 11 days. And then, I was able to come up 
on the plane alone. I admit that my son took me to the plane down there, and someone met me up 
here with a wheelchair, but I managed to walk with cane and really navigate. Then I went into 
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Issaquah Villa for three weeks, and at the end of six weeks, I was able to drive my car. And my 
daughter-in-law helped me find an apartment, so I was able to look after myself. And it was a 
revelation, not only to me, but to a lot of people. That at 75, you could break your hip, and then 
six weeks later, be able to live independently. And because of this, and because some of the 
people in the university had come across Gay Luce and the SAGE group, when they were in this 
[?Sunday?] school area, but particularly through the Western Geological Society, where they 
took us on exhibit. Because of that, there were people who were very much interested in this 
approach. And when I came up here, I was invited to talk to classes at the university and social 
work. And then, there was a council on aging formed at that time that took in, somehow, what 
was being done in the county, and the city, and also the university. And they had periodic 
meetings, I think, every quarter, sort of town and gown getting together. And I remember, soon 
after arriving here, I was asked to speak at one of those meetings. And so I was passed around 
from one place to another. I-- 