A ‘super ager’ shares how she thrives at 90: Trapeze school and house parties

Ednajane “E.J.” Truax in her DC home. Photo / Maggie Penman, The Washington Post

Ednajane Truax often wears a shirt that says: “You don’t stop lifting when you get old - you get old when you stop lifting.”

There are a lot of busy people with packed calendars in DC. Not many of them are 90.

On a Tuesday I texted retired nurse and nonagenarian Ednajane Truax to see when she might be free to talk. She responded: “Friday after two is ok.”

Truax, who is known to friends and neighbours as “E.J.,” can often be found on her hands and knees in the dirt, working in the garden at the Sherwood Recreation Centre in Northeast Washington. She also has an impressive garden of her own and helps out with other neighbours’ gardens. She works out several times a week, sometimes while wearing a shirt that says “You don’t stop lifting when you get old – you get old when you stop lifting.” She can bench press 55 pounds and leg press 250.

Truax has never married – “just lucky, I guess,” she jokes when I ask her about that – but she has remained social her entire life. She volunteers, goes to the gym, throws parties, knows her neighbours and their kids by name. Truax says her secret to thriving as she ages is simple: “Be active.”

It turns out that research backs her up.

What ‘super agers’ have in common

Cardiologist Eric Topol has spent nearly two decades trying to understand why some people continue to thrive into their 80s and 90s while others start to see their health decline. Topol is an expert on healthy ageing and the author of the book Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity.

Topol suspected the difference between those he calls the “Wellderly” and everybody else would come down to genetics. He identified 1400 patients who fit the profile he was looking for: over 85 and free of age-related diseases. Topol and his team at the Scripps Research Institute did whole-genome sequencing for this group of “super agers” to try to figure out whether there was a gene that kept them thriving.

Truax tends to the garden at Sherwood Recreation Centre in Northeast Washington. Photo / Maggie Penman, The Washington Post

“Interestingly, their genes didn’t reveal much,” Topol said. “The vast majority of the time, it has nothing to do with their DNA,” he said. This was reassuring to Topol himself, who said he has a “terrible family history” of disease.

“It was liberating to find out that maybe I won’t follow in my parents’ and my aunt and uncles’ footsteps,” he said.

What the super-agers had in common was their lifestyle choices. They work out, specifically, engaging in strength training – proving there may be some wisdom to the phrase on Truax’s T-shirt. They eat well, they sleep enough. And they’re optimistic people. They have active and meaningful social lives and what Topol calls a “sunny disposition”.

“They’re so busy you have to make an appointment to find them,” Topol said. When he needed to reach out with follow-up questions for his research subjects, they would be dancing, volunteering or meeting up with social groups.

Trapeze at 80

Truax grew up one of six children outside of Pittsburgh. Her optimism and strong work ethic became a means of survival.

“I was born into abject poverty. We lived in a little frame house with no central heat and no air conditioning,” Truax said. “My father went into the mines after he lost his business during the Depression, and with six children, he never got out.”

She wanted to go to college and knew her family couldn’t afford to send her, so she put herself through university and then studied to get a scholarship to go to nursing school.

As a child, birthdays weren’t much of a celebration. But now for her milestones, Truax likes to do something big. For her 80th birthday, she went to trapeze school.

She brought her friend Rosemary with her – “I literally had to drag her with me,” Truax said. “She’s 10 years younger than I am.” Her friend worked up the courage to jump first.

Truax often tends to the garden. Photo / Maggie Penman, The Washington Post

Truax said she knew immediately that it wouldn’t be something that came easily to her, but she loved the sensation of falling, knowing that she wasn’t going to get hurt. She took lessons for a couple of months and was glad she did.

For her 90th birthday, Truax threw a party, her house full of people of all ages, shoulder-to-shoulder mingling and meeting each other. She doesn’t have any big plans yet for her 91st in October, though she has tossed around the idea of taking flying lessons or learning to ride horses someday.

Sapna Budev, who used to live next door, called Truax “the mayor” of the street. She remembered how Truax welcomed her when she was new to the block and has tried to embody that spirit.

“It’s really made a difference in how I live my life,” Budev said. “I’m an introvert, but I open my doors to people now, because I’m like, ‘This is important.’ You have to build that community in order to stay connected.”

Despite Truax’s good health and good humour, she said that “growing old isn’t for sissies,” paraphrasing a quote often attributed to the actress Bette Davis. She has lost many of her close friends and all of her five siblings.

“That’s hard about growing old,” Truax said. “Close friends are virtually impossible. Not that I don’t have people I know well, but I’m 30 or 40 years older than them.”

Truax said she doesn’t get lonely, but sometimes she is alone – “and then I have to do something”.

When asked whether there was anything on her bucket list, Truax paused before saying “not really”.

Then she added: “Just to take good care of my gardens and be nice to people.”