The Senior Class

Around the café tables, heads are bobbing in rhythm tonight.

A duo of UMBC jazz students—Henry Smith ’24, on alto saxophone, and Leo Hickman ’27, on electric mandolin—are deep into their own takes on jazz standards. “Caravan,” “Misty,” and “There is No Greater Love” pour jauntily from their instruments.
 
The seniors here at Charlestown Senior Living know those tunes. Every song the UMBC jazz duo played was composed long before the student musicians were born, but just in the sweet spot for the audience. In the café where many have just eaten their crab soup and burgers for dinner, more than 100 Charlestown residents, including at least six who have tight connections to UMBC, clapped for the efforts of the young jazz players. 

After the two finished playing “All of Me,” the crowd erupted in applause. 

“That was ‘All of Me,’” Smith said into the microphone. “I feel like lots of you know that one. We’re having a great time playing for you. This is super fun!”

By 8 p.m. the crowd was stuffing dollar bills and fivers into the musicians’ tip jar by the mic and in paper bags held by volunteers at each exit. Then the seniors headed back to their apartments at the end of long corridors and in different buildings, very much like college dorms for older folks. 

A dedicated group of nearly 60 retired and current faculty and staff, alumni, or relatives have formed to promote connections between UMBC and Charlestown, a sprawling senior community with 2,000 residents. Thanks to their efforts, UMBC professors are teaching classes at the senior living community, Charlestown residents are traveling to UMBC for events, and  helping the senior community’s restaurant staff with scholarship applications, funded by Charlestown residents, to UMBC and other Maryland colleges. 

“That’s what I’m trying to do here, make connections,” said Art Johnson, provost emeritus who retired in 2019 from his position as political science professor and director of the Sondheim Scholars program. He moved to Charlestown in 2022 and since then, like a first-year student in search of college social groups, he has been indefatigably recruiting residents to join the Friends of UMBC at Charlestown.

“It helps maintain my connection to UMBC and lets me brag a little bit about UMBC,” Johnson said, laughing. “I meet people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. As provost, I used to promote UMBC all over. This is just an extension of that.”

Johnson met Lucy McKean on the bocce court, learned one of her kids went to UMBC, and reeled her into the group. 

“Any connection will do,” Johnson said. “That’s how you build a long mailing list.”

Of the many courses offered at Charlestown’s ELLIC program, nine are taught by UMBC faculty. That’s not a coincidence. Though the connections between Charlestown and UMBC have been sporadic, the institutions do have history. 

John Erickson, who founded Erickson Living, which owns Charlestown, has long worked with UMBC to promote the study of getting older. Through joint efforts of Erickson and then-president Freeman Hrabowski, in 2004 the state funded the Erickson School of Aging Studies at UMBC, and Erickson Living donated $5 million for the school’s development.

Jeff Watson, who is on the faculty for the Erickson School of Aging Studies and serves as Erickson’s director of operations, also researches geriatric cognition.

“The literature and growing academic consensus is that whatever is good for the heart is good for the lungs is good for the brain,” Watson said. “Thus a healthy lifestyle, reducing inflammation and injury, while increasing physical and cognitive strength, and engaging in life, builds better brain health.”

UMBC’s Wisdom Institute is trying to accomplish the same community-building as the UMBC group at the senior village. But now, they’re working together.

Johnson, who serves on the Wisdom Institute’s board, is the hub, said Diane Lee, director of the UMBC organization for retirees. 

“He brilliantly brought people together,” Lee said. “What a wonderful way to reconnect with these folks.” 

The Wisdom Institute is printing extra copies of its newsletters for distribution at Charlestown, and for a recent event, the institute rented out the Charlestown bus to bring UMBC-curious residents to a lunch and keynote by WJZ-TV anchor Denise Koch. The institute plans to invite Charlestown residents to other events, including observatory tours in UMBC’s Physics Building, monthly lunches, discussions, and concerts. 

“We really want to forge this tie,” Lee said. “We like the idea of reciprocity.”

Kate Drabinski, principal lecturer in gender and women’s and sexuality studies, has visited Charlestown eight times to teach over three years. She jokes that if she teaches two more classes, she’ll earn a punch card for a free meal at Charlestown’s restaurant.

“It’s been some of the most valuable teaching I’ve done,” Drabinski said of the senior students learning through the ELLIC program, Enjoy Lifelong Learning in Charlestown. “They are rapt, they take notes, they ask questions. It’s a dream setup.”

On a spring Tuesday, Drabinski brought UMBC students who identify as gay, transgender, and nonbinary to the senior living community to tell their coming out stories, along with their struggles and joys around gender and sexuality. 

“It’s been really moving for us, and also for the residents, to make these connections,” Drabinski said.

One student, who performs in drag shows, grew up on the same block as one of the residents, Drabinski said. The resident stood up and said she was proud of the student, Drabinski said, “for being brave and sharing her story.”

Now that he’s retired, Johnson has time to fulfill the goal of bringing UMBC and Charlestown closer. 

One evening before the jazz concert, Johnson pulled together members of his group of UMBC folks to chat in the atrium of one of Charlestown’s buildings. 

Pat Bettridge, who came to UMBC in 1966 and did graduate work in English, was married to English professor William Bettridge, and remembers UMBC in the 1960s as “a hole in the ground.” Bettridge, who has lived at Charlestown for 11 years, helped bring UMBC artists, dancers and theater productions to the senior living community over the years. 

“It’s a good idea to get us together, to continue what we started 10 years ago,” Bettridge said.

Sebastian Petix, organizer of Charlestown’s jazz club and a friend of the Friends of UMBC, has worked with Matt Belzer, senior lecturer in jazz studies at UMBC, to bring the jazz groups to Charlestown. Petix, who played piano and trumpet and organized concert series before retirement, formed the Charlestown Jazz Club, and quickly signed onto the idea of bringing Retriever musicians onto Charlestown’s campus.