Looking forward through the eyes of the past

What will 2020 and the new decade bring to the world? Some of the oldest residents in southeast Iowa chimed in on what they thought the future will look like, while also looking back on the many changes that have occurred in their lifetimes.

100-year-old Letha Statler, who is the oldest independent resident at Washington's Halcyon House, said the world has evolved in ways she could never imagine. From television to the moon landing to the development of self-driving cars, Statler often feels like she can't keep up.

'There's no comparison,” Statler said of the world she grew up in and the world today.

'Back in my day, we didn't even have a modern house … it was altogether different back in those days … If people had told us we'd be able to see the person we were speaking to over the phone, we just wouldn't believe a thing they said. It couldn't happen, it wasn't possible. It's unbelievable,” she added about phones and the many technological advances that have come about.

'I just wish some of my family lived to see what I've seen,” Statler added.

'I never learned about the computer because I thought, ‘well, the age I am, I don't need to pay too much attention to that because I won't be here,' but here I am and I'm a dummy” she remarked jokingly.

'This computer age is unreal, couldn't get along without that now,” she acknowledged.

Statler, who grew up and lived in Washington County for most of her life, said one of her favorite pastimes in her youth was watching movies, a very different experience then than it is now.

'We went to the movies and we would sit outside on a seat and would watch on the side of a building. Silent movies, oh, that was a thrill to get to do that,” she described.

Everything was different. Things that children of today's world take as a given were huge milestones in Statler's time. The 100-year-old remembered her family getting their first television.

'It wasn't in color. Arthur Godfrey was the first program we saw. We thought, ‘oh, how wonderful that was.' … you used to have to get up and change the station, you didn't have a remote,” she added.

When asked about the future, the longtime Washington resident didn't dare to make any predictions. She repeated again and again that she had no idea what was to come, especially since the world has already changed in ways she never imagined were possible.

'I really wonder what the future will look like. You think it can't progress anymore but look what we have,” Statler said.

'I often wonder - I have six great-grandchildren - what it's going to be like when they get grown up … we have to hope for the better,” she concluded.

80-year-old Clyde Pearce echoed that it's difficult to predict what's to come, describing it as 'risky business.”

Looking back to his youth, Pearce explained that his imagination of the future was often fueled by science fiction.

'There was a popular comic strip called 'Dick Tracy” who wore a wristwatch that was like a TV. That put the idea in some people's mind that some day that would actually be possible … and now we have Apple Watches,” he said.

In terms of unexpected developments, Pearce noted that he never imagined that cellphones would 'be as ubiquitous as they are.”

'They're everywhere in the world … when I was growing up, you had to dial up on a telephone to an operator and it took a while to connect,” he added.

Pearce also remembered simple household and office items that were created in his lifetime, including fax machines, GPS, washing machines and microwaves.

'When I think of microwaves, we never had anything like that. It would have been late 70s, around when I met my wife. She didn't have one, didn't trust them and I convinced her to get one,” Pearce recalled.

Pearce's predictions of the future are based in current-day events and range from increasing displacement of workers by automation, continued aggression from China in the South China Sea and even the possible election of the first female president.

Though he foresees many challenges ahead and concedes his predictions may be way off, he also added that he felt 'the world's problems need a wide variety of perspectives to solve them,” and hoped that, despite the divisiveness the country is currently facing, would be able to come together to face those challenges together.

For Becky Patterson, a 73-year-old resident of the Halcyon House who worked as a registered nurse for over 5 decades, many of the most memorable changes she has witnessed have occurred within the medical field. She noted that certain developments she witnessed have completely changed the whole landscape of doctors' abilities to save lives.

'When I first began nursing, the patients we saw, we would never see today. The patients we have on the floor today, we would have seen in intensive care. And the patients that are in intensive care today, probably wouldn't have made it,” Patterson explained.

From safety standards to new medicines and treatment to artificial limbs, Patterson was amazed to see the developments that allow people to live so much longer than when she first graduated from nursing school in the 1960s.

'You have oncology now. They have those machines that can detect cancers easier, they can do surgery, chemotherapy, radiation … back then, they did what they could. However, back then there was nothing like we have today,” the retired nurse said of cancer treatments that have radically changed people's chances of survival.

Looking forward, Patterson hopes to continue to see cures for ailments that would have meant certain death when she was growing up, including cancer and multiple sclerosis - something she suffers from herself.

'People are living longer, living better and healthier lives and research is just amazing nowadays,” Patterson said hopefully.