This 101-year-old journalist lives alone and still won’t slow down

Eileen Lavine lives alone in her New York City apartment, cooks her own breakfast, and still works every week — at 101 and a half years old. She has been a senior editor at Moment, a publication about Jewish life partly founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, since 2008, logging into a virtual editorial meeting every Wednesday to copy edit its content for typos and errors.

Journalism has run through Lavine’s life since her teens. A native New Yorker, she left for the University of Wisconsin at 16, reported for the Daily Cardinal, and became the first woman to serve a full term as its editor. After earning a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism, she went on to report for papers in Massachusetts, work at The New York Times, write radio scripts, work in public relations, and edit for Better Times.

Her independent streak extends to her career choices too. In 1962, she and seven others each contributed $50 to launch Information Services, a company that supplied writing and editing help to nonprofits unable to afford full-time editorial staff, including pathology societies, the National Cancer Institute, and the Department of Education. The company has since closed, but Lavine’s own work never did.

Physically, Lavine uses a walker, does not swim, and rarely walks beyond the block. ‘I’m not an athlete,’ she told TODAY.com. ‘I’ve got it up here.’ She noted that at her assisted living complex, some residents ‘forget what they had for breakfast’ — a gap she avoids by reading The New York Times and The Washington Post daily, working through the New Yorker’s crossword, checking Substack newsletters, and following ProPublica, the Columbia Journalism Review and The Hill.

Her mother once told her to ‘look on the best side of things all the time and to really feel that you’re making a contribution,’ advice Lavine says shaped her outlook. She still plays bridge with neighbors, a tradition she kept up after her husband Richard’s death in 2014, plays poker every Thursday, and watches gameshows like ’25 Words or Less’ and ‘Jeopardy!’ most nights, staying in touch with others by email when they cannot visit in person.

In her 2022 memoir, ‘A Medley of Extemporanea,’ written when she was 97, Lavine reflected: ‘I keep reading stories about widows and loneliness. But I guess because I still enjoy a lot, I have enough to keep me busy. I’ve never really felt lonely!’

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Nenad Stojkovic (representative image)