In Her 80s And Still Crusading, Cda Woman Finally Finds Peace
The magic hit Elaine Bradshaw sometime in her ninth decade.
Lifelong grudges lifted from her like so many exorcised demons. Her need for stuff disappeared. Awareness of her body increased.
“I know everything now,” she says, humor glinting in her eyes. “Aging is fun and enlightening. I feel freer now than at any other time in my life.”
She’s not falsely optimistic. Elaine, with her silver pageboy and tiny square shoulders, is a straight-shooter. At 82, she’s lost some of the fire that propelled her through life. But she’s gained some insight - and she’s delighted.
There’s absolutely no reason to slow down when life is just starting to make sense, she says.
“I’ve never worried about death. I don’t regret what I say now,” she says. “I can still make a difference.”
Most of her life, Elaine was angry. She says her stepfather molested her, but her mother stuck with him. Elaine burned with an acidic passion she tried to suppress.
She married, had two boys and kept relatively quiet until she found a job reporting for a small newspaper in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in the late 1950s. The editor was a kind man who overlooked her inexperience and praised her work.
“I got a little saucy then,” she says. “There’s something about working for the Fourth Estate that makes you cocky. It gave me confidence.”
It also sharpened her focus on life and unlocked her humanitarian leanings.
Elaine continued her self-discovery in the early 1960s at the Unitarian Universalist Church and at the famous human-potential retreat at Big Sur, Calif., the Esalen Institute. There, she traded yardwork for classes with Indian gurus, psychiatrists, philosophers and such notable authors as Aldous Huxley.
Fueled with passion and direction, Elaine went on to join anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., later in the 1960s.
In her 50s, Elaine put her long-simmering anger at her childhood to work. She wrote to legislators to push for protection for children against molesters.
After she and her husband moved to Coeur d’Alene in 1984, she continued her crusade.
She clipped newspaper stories about molestation and sent them to Idaho legislators. Last December, she mailed Attorney General Al Lance a box of stories about molestation to show her support for his proposal to publicize the names of sex offenders.
Elaine says she doesn’t know if her work or her age or both soothed her anger. She just knows that her 80s finally have brought peace to her soul without diluting her zeal.
“They’re worth the wait,” she says.
Sentimental journey
If you missed last year’s Elegant Sentimental Journey dance at Post Falls High School, don’t despair. Post Falls Band Boosters are throwing a second dance at 7:30 p.m. on March 14.
This event is worth attention. The Trojan jazz band dresses in tuxedoes and 1930s-style gowns and plays the best of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.
There’ll also be female singers, purring out tunes that sparked love between dancing couples 50 years ago.
The Hewlett-Packard On the Side Dixieland Band will spell the jazz band with its terrific tunes.
This year, the boosters have added a fancy awning and red carpet at the gym entrance, and red roses will decorate tables large enough for 10.
And get this - a mirrored ball will hang over the dance floor.
Students are learning the Charleston and the swing to perform that night. It all sounds too good to be true.
Tickets are $12 per couple or $8 per senior couple. Buy them from band students or at the door or call Dawna Shepard at 773-4854 to reserve tickets.
New folks
What’s been the best addition to your community in the last few years? A pool? An artist? A sledding hill? Crow about it to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; or send a fax to 765-7149, call 765-7128 or send e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo