Courses at OLLI-RU open new avenues of education

JACK ZARAYA

When I retired as a ceremonial resolution writer for the New Jersey Legislature in September 2007, a friend suggested I take a course at OLLIRU. Thus began a gratifying and fruitful experience that continues to this day.

The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute- Rutgers University is a continuing education program that offers noncredit courses to adults over the age of 50, and comprises some 120 programs at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Sponsored in New Jersey by Rutgers University, OLLI-RU offers classes at several locations, including the Brookdale Community College campus in Freehold Township.

The first class I enrolled in was called “Rational Controversy,” a current events discussion moderated by Harvey Singer (qualified instructors are chosen for their expertise in the subject matter and prior educational experience).

This was the period of the presidential primaries when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were vying for the Democratic Party nomination. I was one of only two men in the class, and nearly all of the women favored Mrs. Clinton.

In an after-class chat, I asked the instructor, who also conducted the course at the Highland Park location, what the difference was in the student body at the two sites, and he replied, “The students here are more conservative, those in Highland Park more liberal.” Interesting.

Most classes are 10 weeks, given in the fall and spring, with five-week mini-terms offered in January and June. One spellbinding mini-course I took was “The Manhattan Project,” taught by John Shafranski, a former high school physics teacher with a passion for history.

In addition to a discussion of the international politics involved in building the atom bomb, the course explained the science and technology that went into the bomb’s formulation.

“The Phenomenon of Resistance During World War II,” which chronicled the various covert movements attempting to subvert the Nazis, was engrossing.

Though his expertise was centered in the French Underground, the instructor, Paul Burdett, suggested that we select our own focus of study, and I chose the student movement in Germany called The White Rose, in addition to the failed plots to assassinate Hitler.

The high point for me at OLLI-RU came with Alyce Jenkins’s class on memoir writing in the spring of 2010. As a journalist, editor and writer during my 40-year career, I had also dabbled in creative writing as a hobby, having taken a series of advanced courses at the New School in Manhattan some 30 years ago. Since that time I had accumulated a trove of typewritten “work” that lay lamely in a large envelope kept in my garage.

Ms. Jenkins is a published writer and essayist whose class was entitled, “Writing From Life Experiences for Family, Friends and Fun.” After the initial weeks of writing exercises, we were instructed to start a longer project.

I began to write about my father, his arrival in this country as a boy, his family life on the Lower East Side, and how he was match-made with my mother. Then I wrote about her – her life in Paris as a young woman and her immigration to America after marrying my father.

I continued with a chronicle of their early marital life that led to my birth in 1946. After some 2,000 words, I thought, “That’s it.” How could I proceed? I certainly didn’t want the rest of the piece to be about me, an only child. Moreover, the OLLI-RU course had concluded, so I was now on my own.

Well, I sat down at the computer every day, wrote about Danny and Lily and, after 9,000 words, reached a satisfying ending.

Meanwhile, I had become so immersed in the subject matter that I could not help but pore over the hundreds of family photos my father had taken and I had saved. Then I decided: I was going to attempt to self-publish the material — both text and pictures — as a booklet.

Using my journalistic experience in page design on the computer, I formatted the relevant photos. Along with the text and photo pages, I created a cover page, title page and epilogue, put them on a flash drive and brought it to a printer.

In September 2010, “Danny and Lily” was published. I subsequently mailed out 90 of these memoirs to family and friends in the United States and abroad. Periodically, I have returned to the printer for additional copies.

The responses, especially from those who knew my parents, were gratifying, many expressing sentiments of both joy and sadness, the memoir serving as a fitting tribute to two wonderful people.

Thank you, OLLI-RU.

Jack Zaraya is a resident of Freehold Township.