As coronavirus creeps in, let us lean on the wisdom of a 94-year-old Dallas retiree and our other elders

Social distancing and 94-year-old John Gould do not go together.

Despite the coronavirus creeping all around us, the World War II Marine-turned-piano-tuner graciously invited me to visit with him Saturday morning inside his retirement-community apartment on the edge of White Rock Lake.

As much as I wanted to see his family photos and hear him play his trumpet, I knew it was safer to stick to a phone interview. Right now each of us has no greater obligation than to limit our exposure to others, most especially the longtimers among us.

Yet never was there more a time when North Texans needed the commonsense wisdom of Gould and the many others like him — those beloved elders who have had the privilege of living through decades of ups and downs and gaining the perspective of the long view.

Their words and experience are testament to the truth that, as dire as things might look today, we will be OK. Gould, who has seen the world turned over by both by the Nazis and 9/11, says, “When you live a long time, you learn to keep it simple.”

His advice for the rest of us: “Take it easy, pray for each other and look after your neighbors, even if you don’t know them that well — especially those who are lonely or really fragile.”

Gould is a glass-half-full kind of guy who likes to keep the mood light, but he understands that the coronavirus is no laughing matter. His comparison to the 1940s is stark: “We are at war right now with something that affects all of our lives.”

“The ones most affected in World War II were us guys who went overseas, although everyone here sacrificed and rationed,” he continued. “With the coronavirus we will see death here.”

Gould is determined for now to go about his life as best he can — with a few more prayers thrown in for good measure. He says he’s among the lucky, well-protected ones, thanks to the caring residents and staff at the CC Young retirement community. The complex, just northwest of White Rock Lake, is the home of about 400 residents.

Gould said the residents he’s talked with feel far from trapped — they are grateful. “If there’s a good place to be at a time like this, it’s here,” he said. CC Young is a place where residents pull together and care about each other — even if communication becomes limited to calls, email and Skype

Gould said the weekend conversations at his retirement campus sound a lot like those probably happening in homes throughout North Texas: Do we leave for already scheduled appointments in public places? Do we go to the dining hall?

As for those lines at the grocery store? Gould, who still drives the mile to Aldi’s once a week for milk and fresh fruit, shrugged off doing much about that: “I’ll either stand in line or go back later.”

Gould said he and his friends are most worried about local senior citizens who live without support networks and are now feeling fear and isolation. “If you are an older person living alone, where you have to worry with utilities or tripping over rugs, those are the vulnerable people.”

Living like that, he said, “would be the pits right now. You wouldn’t have the kind of relationship we have here.” At CC Young, “people share the good times and the bad times, so we’ll make it through this.”

Gould and his late wife, Jeanne, moved into the retirement community after living in Dallas for about 50 years. He worked for the American Heart Association; she was a dental hygienist who for more than two decades volunteered at CC Young’s hair salon.

When they decided the time had come to leave their longtime Lake Highlands home six years ago, moving to the White Rock retirement campus was the obvious next step.

Losing his wife of “68 great years” to a stroke and heart attack in September shook Gould, but not his faith. Their relationship, he said, was built on a sound footing of Christian faith, and the church was always the steadying force in their lives.

Even in the face of his wife’s sudden decline and death, Gould was constantly and consistently reminding others of the need to have faith in difficult times. “Every single time we talked, we always ended with a prayer,” recalled Andy Stoker, senior pastor of First United Methodist Church. “And when I said ‘amen,’ he would say, ‘Now, I’m going to pray for you.’”

Stoker, who has known Gould for about a decade, said that each time he serves the 94-year-old communion, especially since he walks to the front of the church alone since Jeanne’s death, they both cry. “I happen to have the sacraments, and he’s giving me back faith. We are both peering into what is possible with God.”

Then this laid-back jokester was back to lightening the conversation: “Here, we just see a lot of old people.”

With First United Methodist Church’s doors closed this weekend, Gould expects that he’ll make do with an archived online service. He also referenced his “refrigerator billboard” of photos of the Goulds’ two sons, four grandsons and three great-grandchildren. He looks at those photos every morning before he begins his breakfast and says a prayer for each of those family members.

“I put them into God’s hands,” he said. “That kinda keeps you going.”

Gould’s son Paul, senior pastor at Spring Valley First United Methodist Church, tries to make it by at lunchtime once a week “to share a bowl of soup.” The rest of the time, the older Gould doesn’t slow down long enough to let himself get blue.

His experience working for decades with the American Heart Association before becoming a piano tuner at age 65 has landed him a number of leadership roles at his church and the retirement community.

Macular degeneration, which has eaten away at Gould’s eyesight, finally put him out of the piano business three years ago — although he still passed his driver’s license test in October. And the eye disease hasn’t slowed his trumpet-playing, which he took up as a child and practices each day.

The former Marine is regularly asked to play taps at the gravesides of local military veterans and, most recently, was part of the service for a 101-year-old local pilot and running legend, Orville Rogers.

And if Gould knows it’s your birthday, he calls on your phone and plays “Happy Birthday To You” on his trumpet. His pastor, Stoker, laughed as he told me, “Who else in my life will play me ‘Happy Birthday’ on a trumpet? I’ve got several of those messages saved where John is really belting out a good one for me.”

A member of a variety of local church-based bands over the years, Gould performs these days as part of the Old Cowhands, who dress in Western getup and sing Willie Nelson songs, then, swapping out their costumes, put on dark glasses and plastic dollar store fedoras to perform as the Studio One jazz band.

He knows that the music gigs — like many of the group activities he enjoys — are on hold for now. He was quick to tell me, “We’ll still practice.” And he thanks God, literally, for the technology that can bridge people’s lives at a time when physical social distancing is demanded of us all. He and his fellow retirement community residents still feel extremely plugged in, he said, whether to their places of worship or to family members.

When we ended our call, Gould said he was headed to the wood shop. He’s one of CC Young’s “Woodies,” a handful of men and women who repair chairs, craft small items for the retirement center gift shop and put furniture together.

Among the Woodies’ current projects are creating the little crosses that Gould said ministers like to give out when they visit patients. “We’ve made hundreds of them.” Saturday afternoon they were making even more — albeit safely working six feet or so from one another. “We have good ventilation,” he chuckled.

Gould suggested the rest of us make ourselves useful during the health crisis: “If you are inside for a long time, there are probably things in your house that you haven’t taken time to do,” he said. “Go into a closet and throw out old clothes or bag them up; throw out old bills and letters. It will make you feel a lot better than just sitting.”

The simplicity of those words is illuminating as we clutch for certainty amid rising coronavirus numbers and overwhelming, sometimes contradictory, information. Even over the phone, I felt blessed by Gould’s virtual presence.

Life isn’t linear, much less perfect. Folks like John Gould, who have decades of acceptance at their backs, can show us how to persevere to create beauty out of that mess. May we lean into our elders’ learning during these challenging times as we work to keep one another safe and support each other from a safe distance.

When this is over, I plan to have a real visit with him.