N.J.'s oldest nurse, 97, rewrites the rules on aging

As the digital numbers flashed on the blood pressure monitor, Emerson’s public health nurse got right to the point with her 82-year-old patient.

“When did you have your last physical? Do you go for a physical every year?” Kathryn Hodges asked.

"Not really,” Kenneth Dunne said.

“Well, you should,” the nurse said, jotting on a form. “We always say if that number is over 90, you should get it checked out. Are you on blood pressure medication? Did you get a flu shot?"

When “Kay” Hodges advises and cajoles, her words are bolstered by experience – three quarters of a century’s worth.

At 97, she is both New Jersey’s oldest licensed registered nurse and a poster girl for people who stay active and productive at such an advanced age.

Final tally for health-care signups rises slightly in N.J.

N.J.'s voices of Obamacare: Hope, dread, uncertainty

More health news from NorthJersey.com

Those over 90 are the fastest-growing segment of the population. By 2050, 10 percent of all senior citizens will be either a nonagenarian or a centenarian, the Census Bureau forecasts.

Of course, physical or cognitive impairments, or both, enfeeble many in this age group. The most fortunate are like the fiercely independent Hodges, whose biggest complaint is a bothersome knee.

Look around and you’ll find people in their 90s living in their own homes, driving, volunteering, serving their communities and churches – even continuing in their professions. Hodges, who walks unaided and tools around in a 25-year-old Buick Roadmaster wagon with oxidized paint and a GRAMPIE vanity plate, does all of those things.

What she has no plans to do is stop.

“I want to leave this Earth with my boots on,” Hodges said. “I want to keep working. It’s the love of my life, other than my husband, who was a great guy.”

The former Kathryn Appley grew up in Emerson and graduated from Westwood High School in 1937. She had to wait till the following year, after her 18th birthday, to begin the nursing program at Hackensack Hospital.

“Crazy, isn’t it?” she said, laughing. “I always wanted to be a nurse, and I’ve always been one!”

She finished nursing school in 1941, months before Pearl Harbor. The following year, she married her high school sweetheart, Donald Hodges. The couple settled in Westwood.

On her first job, Hodges performed physicals on employees of a medical laboratory. After taking a few years off when her two sons were little, she became the public health nurse for the borough of Westwood. She also started as a Westwood poll worker. Last Nov. 8, her 55th general election, she rose before sunrise and put in a 15-hour day as the judge at her district’s polling place.

Hodges has been Emerson’s public health nurse – a part-time post that involves health screenings, education and prevention – since 1967. Her cheerful office is located in the senior center. Most who come to see her, for a blood pressure check or for the advice of a seasoned and accessible nurse, are elderly.

“They talk about this little pain, that little pain. Maybe I can be of some help to them,” Hodges said. “You have to have a love of people and a real desire to keep them well, so they be active citizens and do their own thing.”

How unusual is Kay Hodges?

Anek Belbase, a research fellow at Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, studies the cognitive and physical abilities of older people with respect to work. He hasn’t focused on people in their 90s because the sample size is too small, but said that as long as one’s body and health hold up, continuing to work regularly “fires that connection” in the brain that helps preserve the ability to do the job.

But why would a person of 90, or 93, or 97, choose to work?

“I’ll go out on a limb and say the reason, and the only reason, is that it gives their life a purpose,” Belbase said. “They’re probably not doing it for the money at that age, but work gives their life meaning, makes them get up and go, and keeps them socially connected.”

That rings true for Hodges.

Indeed, the job keeps her rooted in community. Besides seeing patients during her Thursday office hours, she has monthly obligations: attending the Emerson Board of Health meeting, where she gives a patient report, and taking continuing education classes in Hackensack through the Bergen County Department of Health Services.

To many nurses, Hodges is something a rock star. “We’ve been in meetings together, we’ve been in classes together, and I can say she’s amazing, just amazing,” said Edith Collazzi, a nursing in-service instructor for the county. “She knows everybody and makes it a point to speak with everybody. She sends cards, she sends stuffed animals to people when they’re sick. She’s such a positive force.”

Three years after losing her husband, who was a career Navy man, Hodges carries on with the help of a loving support network. Her sons, both named James, live close by.

“We try to let her do her thing and check on her every day,” said Helen Hodges, the wife of the older son. “She’s good at setting limits for herself, and we just see that she makes good decisions and stays safe. But she’s a strong-willed lady and pretty much runs her own life and calls her own shots.”

Helen Hodges understands her mother-in-law’s commitment to continue caring for others. She’s a nurse, too, having worked at a Manhattan hospital and for many years as a school nurse in River Edge.

At 64, Helen Hodges told Kay Hodges that she was going to retire.

“She said to me, ‘You can’t retire!' ” Helen said. “And she was adamant.”

Helen did retire, but returned to the workforce as a part-time public health nurse for Bergen County. That gladdened her mother-in-law.

“She feels that being active and working and all that is a healthy thing, and I agree,” Helen said. “That’s who she’s been her whole life.”

Kay Hodges, who has been honored for her decades of service to Emerson and Westwood, shies from talk of the R word.

Asked what she would do if she concluded she could no longer carry out her nursing duties, she said without hesitation: “I would hope the good Lord would take me. I would want him to say, ‘That’s it.’ ”