Charlee Lambert oral history interview, 2013-01-20

A/V TECH: Okay. First of all, each of you -- let me see if -- yeah, I think this is working. Say hello.

LORRAINE LOMBARDI: Hello, this is Lorraine Lombardi speaking.

CHARLEE LAMBERT: You're going to have to talk loud enough for me to hear.

LOMBARDI: I will.

A/V TECH: It's working. It's good.

LOMBARDI: We ready?

A/V TECH: On your go.

LOMBARDI: Okay. This is Sunday, January 20, 2013. My name is Lorraine Lombardi and I am here at the Atlanta home of Charlee Lambert. This is our second interview together, and this afternoon, we will be discussing your involvement with the Georgia Council on Elder Abuse and Neglect, and the AARP Reminisces. But first, Charlee since our last interview, you had a big birthday blowout.

LAMBERT: Right.

LOMBARDI: You turned 90 in November. Maybe 90 on the outside, but certainly not 90 on the inside.

LAMBERT: [laughs]

LOMBARDI: Did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy that big party?

LAMBERT: Yes, I did. My hundred closest friends.

LOMBARDI: It was wonderful.

LAMBERT: Yes, it was. It was - and I knew the name of everybody except one and I couldn't remember their names. And I still can't remember it.

LOMBARDI: It'll come to you.

LAMBERT: Yeah. I remember Juanita, but I can't remember the husband's name.

LOMBARDI: Well, that's pretty good.

LAMBERT: Yeah. I -- they were -- I was surprised they were here.

LOMBARDI: Oh, okay. Well, they were here to celebrate your birthday.

LAMBERT: Yes.

LOMBARDI: We all were. It was wonderful, by the way.

LAMBERT: It was a great party.

LOMBARDI: All right.

LAMBERT: I enjoyed it thoroughly.

LOMBARDI: Good. [laughs] All right. Let's begin then. The Atlanta Regional 00:02:00Commission, which is an organization that receives federal money and distributes that money to public and private organizations, established a task force to address the elderly.

LAMBERT: Yes.

LOMBARDI: Visiting nurses, Legal Aid, Adult Protective Services, plus fringe groups were on this task force and this task force turned into the Georgia Council on Elder Abuse and Neglect. The year was 1986 and you became the executive director with your office in Decatur's Legal Aid.

LAMBERT: Yes.

LOMBARDI: I want you to tell me a bit about this task force and what led them to forming the council.

LAMBERT: It's hard to remember. I know how I got involved with it and that's basically the story of the council and that is: I got a call one day 00:03:00from someone at Atlanta Regional Commission: Camille Jeffers. Camille said, "I want to do something on elder abuse." You know, it's "I haven't got any money right now for it, but keep my telephone number on your bulletin board so you can find me." She would call me about every three or four months and then one day she called and said, "I've gotten some money. I want to do a program and I want you to come down to ARC" -- which is what we call it -- "and talk about it." And I contracted with them to do a program in 21 senior centers on elder abuse and we did role-playing. Camille and this woman, 00:04:00Marilyn Seely and I took on the job of putting on this program. We went to all the senior centers in the Atlanta area and did role-play with the people. We went in, we'd meet with them a few minutes and talk about elder abuse and the ways it could happen and then we did -- they did the role-playing and I did a discussion. Out of these role-playings, I wrote the first play on elder abuse, The Last Candle. I do not know how the second program was financed. I assume it was federal money. I had to be inspected for handicapped-accessible house to have rehearsals. Anyway, I passed [laughs] and we went to all the senior 00:05:00centers. And I wrote the play, The Last Candle. The Last Candle also went to all the senior centers and a lot of churches and a lot of different places. We did a lot of performances. It was funded by federal money. Came down from Washington that elderly abuse was caused by dementias and various forms of the failings of the older people and so we did a play on Alzheimer's and that was funded by BellSouth and I did all the facilities of BellSouth in the area. Some of those places are enormous! The one out on Jimmy Carter and -- you need a 00:06:00bicycle to get around [laughs] the building. But I walked in that building and there's a television for the workers and there's my picture waiting for me. Anyway, the last performance I did for AT&T or BellSouth was at the one on Fourth Street, down near the Marta station -- is it Fourth or Tenth? Tenth, I believe -- and out of that came a man that called me and said he wanted to be an actor. So I -- he was an older man and I was always needing older actors. So I took him on and he came out here -- I accepted him as an actor; he could act -- 00:07:00and he dropped dead in my basement. [laughs] I mean, if you want to see a comedy scene, that was it. Four actors and this dead man in the floor. [laughs] But anyway, that's a side story. But anyway, we found somebody else and carried on. It was hard to find older people that would act for me. Anyway, he -- that was about the time -- the third play was also funded federally. Federal money.

LOMBARDI: What was the name of that one?

LAMBERT: And that was Up a Winding Stair. And we did a lot of all these performances. It was, you know, that was when Bob was in the -- the man that dropped dead. But it was a comedy scene. We were -- all had our little chores to do, one man drops dead. [laughs]

LOMBARDI: So these plays were wrote -- were written under the umbrella of Educational Playmakers, that we were talking about, yes?

LAMBERT: Yes, yes.

LOMBARDI: Okay, so --

LAMBERT: They were all --

LOMBARDI: So, your Educational Playmakers.

LAMBERT: It had come into being. I got it incorporated.

LOMBARDI: Right and it's --

LAMBERT: It's a nonprofit organization.

LOMBARDI: It's running, and these organizations ask you and your Educational Playmakers, which is -- to write these plays for their facilities?

LAMBERT: Yeah. Yeah. I became a playwright for hire.

LOMBARDI: Okay. But then, how did you become the executive director? Did you become --

LAMBERT: Of the Council on Elder Abuse?

LOMBARDI: Yes. Was that because of your plays?

LAMBERT: Yes, yes. But, I do a lot of research when I write a play. I do. You know I do a lot of primary research going into places and talking to people and finding out what's going on. So, you know, I was pretty knowledgeable by that 00:09:00time, of where it was happening and how it was happening and when I did that first role-playing program, out of every, say, 30 people, there would be four incidences of elder abuse, either financial, physical, emotional, whatever. And so, I realized that it really was fairly common. Still think it's fairly common, and they're reviving the idea that it's brand new, which is very common for our communities to do. Three women came to me -- no, four -- and I said, "You all don't want me; I'm too old."

LOMBARDI: And what was too old for you?

LAMBERT: I was about 63, taking my first job. That was pretty ridiculous in some ways.

LOMBARDI: But you said yes.

LAMBERT: [laughs] Huh?

LOMBARDI: You said yes.

LAMBERT: They had to argue with me. Yeah. "We are the -- you are the one," and I became part of Legal Aid, in a way. I was still a separate organization, but they were like my umbrella organization.

LOMBARDI: Now they -- who was "they"? Your umbrella, Legal Aid?

LAMBERT: Legal Aid.

LOMBARDI: Okay, Legal Aid was your umbrella, okay.

LAMBERT: And that was quite an experience over there, because there was a lot of help. You know, when it was a housing fraud, I had a housing specialist that -- we had a lawyer for the elder people and it was a good place to be, and I was very well accepted. As a matter of fact, the receptionist, every time she heard a croaky voice, she sent them to me, [laughs] just right upstairs to me. 00:11:00[laughs] But it was a wonderful experience, and I was there about nine years.

LOMBARDI: Now, what was your average day like? You told me that you sometimes averaged 500 calls a year. What was a call like? What was an average call like?

LAMBERT: They were various and sundry. Some people that considered themselves elder, I would have never thought of them as elder. I had a 42-year-old man that called and was being abused, and he didn't know anybody else to go to, and he was being abused. He'd been abused his whole marriage by his wife, and you know, I just -- but I did accept them. If they said they were an older person, I accepted them.

LOMBARDI: And what do you mean by accepted? What would you do?

LAMBERT: Listen to their story. There was just a lot of stuff, you know. It 00:12:00was a lot of financial fraud. I learned to work with the banks, and they were anxious to help me. As a matter of fact, Wachovia Bank became quite a sponsor of Elder Abuse Task Force, the council. As a matter of fact, one of my big ideas was to have a group of public people on a committee to -- that we could depend on for help. Had the police department, the -- you know, everybody that -- the banks, the social workers, the -- just a bunch of people. The first -- I decided to take on Fulton County, because I figured that would be the hardest, and I did, and Wachovia Bank decided they would be the host of a breakfast. 00:13:00Woke up on that morning and it was pouring rain. An ugly, ugly day and it Atlanta -- I thought nobody is going to show up. Everybody showed up. We had 27 -- or 29 people at that meeting and they became people that I could go to. Like the police department had me -- if my number came in, it immediately went to a certain person. So that was working, so I decided to do one in DeKalb County and did and the same thing happened. It was very successful. The third one was Gwinnett County and it also was the DA, the police depart-- I mean, when I went out there, it was like they were all there. I didn't actually start 00:14:00any of the others, but I talked about what we were doing throughout the state. Years later, I attended an aging conference. There was one on elder abuse, so I walked in late and they're talking about me. [laughs] There were two or three groups within the state that lasted much longer than the ones here in the city did. The city ones all needed a leader and they didn't last very long after I was not there anymore. But they were a wonderful experience and to get all those people together and work on something was really marvelous and I felt like it was important. They called me and I called them.

LOMBARDI: So you had a lineup of people, like you had prosecution attorneys, you 00:15:00had banks, you had police, you had protective services, everybody to help you solve your issue?

LAMBERT: Yes. And that was a wonderful experience, to know that that was as successful as it was. But it didn't live after I was not there to lead it anymore, except in these outlying areas. Carroll County -- it was a county down in south Georgia, that was still going the last I heard.

LOMBARDI: If somebody needed you, if somebody needed your service, how did they find out about the council? How did you get the word out that you were there? Or was it just a haphazard...?

LAMBERT: I don't know. It was just like, "you need to call Charlee."

LOMBARDI: Okay.

LAMBERT: But during that period of the elder abuse work at Legal Aid, I did take 00:16:00on a lot of serious issues. Some not so serious but were serious to the people that were involved with them, such as the woman who needed cataract surgery and her son told her she was too old, and that she couldn't do it. And she believed she had to listen to what her son said and I finally convinced her, I says, "You don't have to do what other people say. If you want cataract surgery so you can read, get it." And she did, but she said she cried all the way down there because she was disobeying her son. And that -- I don't want to have to obey my children. That just doesn't sound like the right thing to do. [laughs] The children! And -- but anyway, I did -- she did go. She got the cataract surgery and was happy that she did. But that -- I can see her in 00:17:00the van -- they picked them up -- and her crying the whole way. We had more serious ones. I had a murder case. I had a man who had had a girlfriend, older man, and she -- the woman -- they had houses across the street from each other. I thought that was a wonder -- so when they got mad with each other, they could go home. Sometimes they stayed in one house and sometimes the other. But anyway, he -- she had a stroke and her children, who disapproved of their mother having this affair, hid her from him. They put her in a outlying nursing home. And she wasn't happy and he wasn't happy and he came to me and we got a 00:18:00habeas corpus where we could get her out of the nursing home, and he brought her home, and they were very satisfied. Her children probably weren't, but he was. He -- she -- but he had trouble taking care of her, so he had to put her in a nursing home and put her in one here in Decatur. And he got cancer and was dying, and she got out of the nursing home and came home and took care of him. They were quite heroic, but they were the mill crowd -- what do you want to call them? The mill workers. No education, really did care for each other, but never married. And -- which is okay with me, you know. What difference -- she's not going to get pregnant. [laughs] She's -- you know, they're in 00:19:00their 70s. He didn't have a tooth left in his head, that he could chew a steak up. [laughs] He was quite a character, and everybody kept -- in Legal Aid -- kept saying, "Why do you fool with that man?" I said, "Because he deserves 10 minutes of my time."

LOMBARDI: Where did you get your money? Where did you get --

LAMBERT: Where did I get the money?

LOMBARDI: Yeah, where did you get the funding?

LAMBERT: Well, I had ARC funding until we discovered they were getting ready to cut us off. There were five organizations they were going to cut. I had spies. [laughs]

LOMBARDI: Okay.

LAMBERT: Anyway, I got word on a Friday afternoon that they were going to cut Alzheimer's Association, Jewish Family Services, there was one -- I can't 00:20:00remember the names of the other two --and Council on Elder Abuse. And I called all those people together and we -- in my dining room -- we sat down at the table and discussed what we were going to do. And had a letter on their desk Monday morning and saved all the organizations, but me. They cut Elder Abuse. But anyway, that was the year that AT&T decided -- I guess it was about the time that I was doing the play on Alzheimer's -- they came up with $40,000. And so it was -- we were -- somebody didn't like that. They were -- you know, there's robbery in the nonprofit organizations, as well as anything else and 00:21:00that money was -- I lost it after that year. I lost my job. That was -- I hated to give it up. I really felt like we were doing some good things.

LOMBARDI: Can you talk a little bit more about the politics, in the --?

LAMBERT: The politics of it? Well, you know, there's a lot of robbery for the money, regardless of what it is, and it was the Rape Crisis Center that wanted the money that I got. And few months after she got rid of me, they got rid of her at Grady Hospital. So she -- I don't know what's happened to her. She tried to make friends with me again, but I was really pretty angry with her. Because she killed the organization, and it was all over the fact that I'd gotten that money from...

LOMBARDI: So the politics is the money?

LAMBERT: Yeah. It's there. It's there.

LOMBARDI: That's part, that's it. Politics is money; money is politics.

LAMBERT: Right. It's everywhere. And so, we lost the money at ARC, we lost the money at BellSouth, we -- you know, AT&T -- and so we were basically out of money. But I would have worked for free. I -- you know, it was -- I don't work for the remuneration as much as I work for what's I think is right. And these people need help. I had a Delta Airline pilot who basically kidnapped his mother and hid her from the rest of the family and the granddaughter reported it and we found the man and he said to me at one point in the conversa-- "Well, 00:23:00you wouldn't be able to find me if" -- [laughs] you know, that I -- I said, "I found you." And the police department in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, kept saying, "Tell us what to do." [laughs] And I didn't really know -- we did get her where she could see the other family. We got some -- we helped them.

LOMBARDI: So you had these -- you had the police, and you had banks, and you had lawyers asking you what to do?

LAMBERT: Yeah. They don't want older people in jail, period.

LOMBARDI: Tell me about that. Tell me --

LAMBERT: Well, one of the -- I had a drug case down in south Atlanta. The 95-year-old woman and the 89-year-old husband, and he was a drug dealer and had 00:24:00been a drug dealer all his life, and he abused his wife. And that was a hard one, but we did get them a divorce. [laughs] That was our solution. He wanted to get away from her and he went to court. I took a reporter with me, and I said, "You can't print this story, but I'm going to take you with me." And we went to court and that man -- they got the divorce -- he said, "Who" -- they asked him who he wanted to be his guardian and he chose a cousin, because she would allow him to drink. And they walked out and he never looked back. They'd been married 60-something years. You know, it -- apparently not 00:25:00very happily, but married a long time. Then I had my murder case. I had a real varie-- I was most -- I felt mostly successful, because people -- a lot of it was people not realizing they had rights to do things. You know, you don't have to obey your children. You don't have to obey a husband, even. You may have to communicate with him, but you don't have to deal with what you don't want to. But the murder case was probably my most serious case, and I still have the files on all that.

LOMBARDI: Now is this Richard?

LAMBERT: This is Richard.

LOMBARDI: Can we -- let's talk about Richard's case, because it's a --

LAMBERT: I'm trying to think how he came to me.

LOMBARDI: It's an interesting timeline.

LAMBERT: It was the daughter. A daughter in Chicago called me about her father in Forsyth County, that he was being held -- he thought -- she thought he was being poisoned that he'd been to Emory Hospital, been examined, and it came back that there was...

LOMBARDI: Arsenic?

LAMBERT: Arsenic in his food -- that she'd given him arsenic. And then Emory came back and said no, that it was indecisive. So they did not stand behind -- the doctor did not stand behind the fact that there was arsenic in his blood. He went home. This daughter called me from Chicago and told me this story about the hospital and the arsenic and so I agreed to talk -- I talked to her. There 00:27:00was a son -- the story was very complicated. At one point, we got a habeas corpus for him and got him out of her house, put him in a nursing home where we could see him and hear his side of the story. He became much better. His health improved considerably --

LOMBARDI: And the family --

LAMBERT: -- while he was in the nursing home.

LOMBARDI: And the family could see him.

LAMBERT: And he -- we vis-- I visited him. I visited with his wife. She went to court to get him back home, be his guardian. While he was in the nursing 00:28:00home -- he had a bunch of brothers and sisters, some of them with lots of money and they all came while he was in the nursing home and they had a real reunion, and I attended as requested by the family, and I thought, this is a nice family. But Claire, his wife, was having real trouble with them all being there. He had a sister, also, that lived in the neighborhood with her. She would not allow her in the house, either. She did not want him to be around family.

LOMBARDI: The wife did not want Richard --

LAMBERT: The wife did not want him to be around the family, his children --

LOMBARDI: Nobody.

LAMBERT: She got -- took him to cour-- took to court. I had to testify, and she 00:29:00made me out a liar, and I didn't know how to handle that. She lied, so she assumes everybody else does, too. Won the case, got guardianship of him and took him home. Built a 10-foot chain-link fence around the house, padlocked it, did not allow anybody in. His daughter got permission from the court to see her father. She came down from Chicago. Had to leave -- she couldn't take anything in the house, in a pocket, in a pocketbook, anything. She had to leave it all in the car. She went into a room where they brought her father in a wheelchair and there was nothing in the room, but the wheelchair and her chair to sit in. The woman did not allow the sister to come in -- no one. He was 00:30:00basically a prisoner. And by the time the daughter got here, he was in pretty bad shape. He died and she had him cremated immediately, and left town and nobody's heard from her since. There was a real suspicion that they'd murdered his first wife. She died of something in the coffee. They blamed it on suicide.

LOMBARDI: I'm con-- I'm just a bit confused. Say that again fo-- Say that again for me.

LAMBERT: They bel-- the family -- people believed that he murdered -- she -- the two of them, had murdered his first wife.

LOMBARDI: Oh, oh, oh. That Richard and his wife --

LAMBERT: Yeah, this -- when she was -- had children, the wife, she -- her 00:31:00children were taken away from her. She had a long history, but we could not use any of that in the court case.

LOMBARDI: So, you suspect that Richard and his second wife, Claire, married -- killed his first wife.

LAMBERT: Yes.

LOMBARDI: And then the suspicion then led --

LAMBERT: At one point, he told his daughter, "You just don't want to know what happened." It was -- these were upper-middle-class people. He had been a business owner. Smart man. I enjoyed knowing him. She was scary. And at that point, I changed my telephone number. I did not want anybo-- I had it unlisted, my home phone. I just didn't want -- she was -- of all the people I worked with, she was one of the scariest.

LOMBARDI: And this is your everyday job? This is what you faced everyday?

LAMBERT: Yeah, yeah. It was -- that was a scary one. And the police department called him the -- her the murderer. They -- everybody knew she was murdering him. And nobody could do anything. She had guardianship. People can get in messes and it seems like, as you get older, messes come quicker. We're more vulnerable. And I -- speaking of vulnerability, I got scammed last week.

LOMBARDI: Last week?

LAMBERT: Last week. From my grandson. You know, not from a grandson, but somebody pretending to be my grandson. And apparently, it's the newest scam on the block. And I fell for it. If you've got a few grandsons that are troublemakers anyway, you figure this [laughs] -- it can happen. Fortunately, 00:33:00Western Union caught it within minutes, didn't give them, the people, the money. But I thought, here I am you know, I know about these things, but I'm easily convinced by the answers to the questions and I know more now. But it's -- there was one on television, the same story, recently. And so they're really hitting people and I don't know how they get names and telephone numbers and all that... But we are a vulnerable group. And a lot of older people have lots of money. That's another danger. Or they have a little bit of money and everybody else wants it. And that can happen in 00:34:00families. I had a family that came to me that -- the first one that called was the son wanting the mother's money turned over to him, so he could use it for drugs, [laughs] basically. And that one, I didn't -- I felt -- I didn't fall for that one then, at that time. But another child called me. They had about eight children and so they all sat at my table in the library at Legal Aid, and we decided who needed to be gua-- the mother needed a guardian. She was the most delightful dementia patient I've ever known. She was -- [laughs] she was really fun. Took her to court -- they went to court. They were so bad, that they threw them out of court. [laughs] And so the next time, I went with them to hold the mother in place and the judge was really curious about who I 00:35:00was, holding the mother under control, and after that he worked very well with me. But they finally decided on the -- one of the daughters that held a responsible job to be the guardian. But that didn't last long. She ended up a guardian of the state. You know, they just couldn't -- they couldn't agree on anything. The mother died. The retarded daughter died two weeks later. You know, it ended okay because she was taken care of. But she was such a delightful person. You know, she made all kind of remarks in the courtroom, and I wanted to say, "Shh, shh!" [laughs] But anyway, we got through that 00:36:00court without getting thrown out. [laughs] But I spent a lot of time in the courtroom. I had another experience in the courtroom that I still laugh about. That was the case of a man that took over an older woman's house. He talked her into giving him the house and he would take care of her and as soon as he got the house in his name, he wanted to put her in a nursing home. And she was like 95, but still had her wits about her and so it went to court, and she got her house back. But I'm on the witness stand as the expert witness and I get -- the judge says -- I start talking about older people and the different parts of what it amounted to be and how they were vulnerable and all that. I just went on and on and on. I thought, why doesn't somebody shut me up? It was 00:37:00like somebody had pushed a button and I was off. I mean, here's 20 young black men with -- you know, that are waiting to be -- their cases to be heard -- it was criminal court -- and I'm just rattling on about aging. [laughs] And get back to the attorney and I said, "Why didn't you shut me up?" He said, "You had that courtroom in the palm of your hand. The judge is not going to stop you. He wants to know!" [laughs] And I -- but that was so funny. I just felt like I was a machine talking, you know. It was where -- what I knew about. But you know, those boys, I rem-- they were all between 18 and 22. They were so silent. You could hear a pin drop and they -- you know it 00:38:00was like people -- I was the entertainer. I just really gave it to them. [laughs] I gave an education on aging in the courtroom.

LOMBARDI: I want you to talk about the homeless crowd that you also... Especially, especially I want you to talk about the lady in Kroger's.

LAMBERT: Huh?

LOMBARDI: I want you to talk about the lady in Kroger's.

LAMBERT: Oh, oh, yeah. She's -- when she -- she solicited men at bars. She was a very attractive, middle-aged woman and was probably schizophrenic. Anyway, she said when she couldn't get a man to give her a room, to sleep with her, that she slept in Kroger's. And I've always had an imagination of, where do you sleep in Kroger in the middle of the night?

LOMBARDI: That's when Kroger's was closed.

LAMBERT: In the flowers? [laughs]

LOMBARDI: How did you come across her? Why did she need you? How did you --?

LAMBERT: I think she came to Legal Aid because -- what was her reason? She was not well and she did not want to go to Grady. She wanted to go to another hospital and wanted somebody to help her. Well, she got in the cab. She showed up at my office in a taxi. Apparently, these taxi drivers do a lot of things for these -- the homeless crowd. And she had shown up in a taxi and I said, "I really can't help you get" -- I said, "Why don't you go to Grady?" She says, "I don't go to Grady." But anyway, she got in the cab and she called me up and told me I was the meanest person she'd ever 00:40:00known. And I thought, okay. I called her mother. Her mother would not -- said, "No, I'm not letting her back in my house." There were mothers -- I had -- one time, I had four mothers whose children had tried to kill them. And they did volunteer work for me and they talked to each other, and it was kind of a wonderful experience because they were dealing -- one of them slept up here at Toco. One of her sons slept up at Toco Hills, back of the store and he died, but she would get up in the middle of the night and take him a blanket when it was cold. They were still mothers. You know, they still cared about them, but they couldn't allow them to know where they lived. And that's a sad -- you know, those are the stories we don't know about. These -- this is our hidden 00:41:00population. And I -- as time has gone on, we've become more stratified. We do not see the very poor. And I think it's become worse as time goes on. I think it's getting worse all the time. I think we see it in our government. I think we see it everywhere. And there are no services for people. Services have dwindled to nothing. But they -- when you think about four that found me, how many more are there that can't allow their children to know where they live? They allowed them to know the telephone number, but that would be it. As we become more knowledgeable about everything -- I mean, you can go onto the Internet and find out who I am. You also -- it's easier to -- for them to 00:42:00find somebody. And the guns are more -- you know, there's just a lot of issues at stake here. And there's no services for me -- when they deinstitutionalized the mentally ill, they left them no place to go. Shady Rest Hotel on Highland Avenue had 129 mentally ill people living there and they had a saint running it. [laughs] That's all I can say of that woman, was that she was a saint.

LOMBARDI: What time --

LAMBERT: She managed the worst of the mentally ill.

LOMBARDI: What time period are we talking about for that?

LAMBERT: What time period? This was probably in the 1990s, 1980s and that -- but after they deinstitutionalized -- and it's gotten worse. It hasn't gotten better. I mean, when -- and it's so hard to do anything about it. There was a time when you had a place to put a person that couldn't take care of themselves. Now we don't. You talk about 129 mentally ill -- they had no place to wash clothes. They used to go across the street to the church, get clothes [inaudible] and throw the old ones away. They had no help, other than this saintly woman running the place, the manager. When the rooms got too dirty, she just moved them to another room and cleaned it up and put somebody else. But they were some of the better mentally ill cared for than the ones 00:44:00that lived on the street. The street-livers don't do well at all and don't live long. I don't know the answer, but you know deinstitutionalizing, they get rid of all the mentally ill services. Of course, that's very much in the news again. Some people need to be institutionalized. A man that murdered -- tries to murder his mother? She -- he needs to be somewhere. I could really get involved again, but I'm not going to. [laughs] I've got to let somebody else take care of it.

LOMBARDI: And, I wanted to read you a quote that you said in the Rome News Tribune newspaper. It was an article in April, 1994 and you were quoted as saying that "research revealed that only 10% percent of those 65 and older will become a crime victim."

LAMBERT: A what?

LOMBARDI: A crime victim. "Older adults have the lowest random crime risk, except for consumer fraud, then they rise to the top: over 90% percent of all crimes against the elderly are committed by family members or people they know. Older adults are more at risk in their own homes."

LAMBERT: Yes. I still say that. The families -- take for instance, the man 00:46:00that wouldn't let his mother get cataract surgery. That's abuse. One that wants to get hold of the mother's money, gets guardianship to get it, wants it for his own benefit, doesn't want it for her. The family's what's around and I would still say 90% percent of all elder abuse and neglect is family oriented. For instance, I had a neighbor who called me -- I mean, in this neighborhood -- and said her brother was starving her father to death and she didn't know how to stop it and I gave her all the numbers that she'd call 00:47:00and all that, because that was after I was working, and the father died from starvation. Eventually, this -- the son went to prison and should have. But I don't think it was for murdering his father. That's murder in my book, when you starve somebody to death. And I've ta-- you know, the woman's still a friend, and she said later, she said, "I didn't know what to do. It was Christmas Eve." I said, "Call me on Christmas Eve." [laughs] I was sort of the facilitator for the neighborhood. Everybody knew what I was into, and, you know, when there was a problem, somebody said, "You need to call 00:48:00Charlee." So I did a lot of work after I got out. And there's just as much in the middle-class, upper-middle-class as there is in the lower classes. The Buckhead crowd has a lot of it. If you've got a lot of money, somebody wants it. If you've got a little bit of money, somebody wants it. It doesn't matter.

LOMBARDI: I want to point out this little sidebar here, that at one time you used your mother in a print ad campaign about elder abuse. In fact, Charlee, I saw her up on a billboard, going down Ponce de Leon one day.

LAMBERT: Oh, that was a fun game. My mother loved all the jobs I got her.

LOMBARDI: I want you to tell me about her experience during that campaign and what did your family think?

LAMBERT: I think everybody was kind of proud of her. I mean, she did -- she was 00:49:0089 years old. She does a -- all day work thing with, I think -- what was the name of the organization? Table -- it was the food bank sort of thing. And they wanted to make a video and use some pictures and they knew that I had older people in my stable of actors. So I got a call and I sa-- you know, I asked my mother if she -- she was living here by that time. She lived with me, they were her last years and I asked her if she wanted to do it, and they came out and looked at her and decided she was perfect for the job. She did an -- at 89, she 00:50:00did an all-day shoot for this group on the day of her birthday, which was the 27th of December. Thirty-two billboards came up in Atlanta area of my mother as a homeless person. They put her down on Peachtree -- I can't remember where on Peachtree, but it was somewhere on Peachtree -- and took picture. Dressed her like a homeless person, put her out on the street and she had a ball. She really -- she told everybody I didn't get her enough jobs.

LOMBARDI: Didn't she get picked up by somebody? Who thought she was hom--

LAMBERT: Oh yeah, some woman came -- a black woman came by -- you know, my mother's old South -- and the woman asked her, said, "Would you go home with 00:51:00a black woman?" My mother said, "Yes." [laughs] I was so shocked at her response. But anyway, the woman gave her $5, and of course they were giving it back, the people that were working with her, but she liked getting that money, that somebody offered her money especially the black woman. My mother kept moving her values over, you know. She was [laughs] -- the longer she lived here, the more she moved her values over. She was against all black people, then she knew some, and said they were nice people and educated, and they were accepted. Gay people -- she knew Lorraine and Janet, so that was moved over. [laughs] She used to say, "We didn't have any of those in Madison County, Florida." And I said, ""Mother, there was three in my class [laughs] in high school." [laughs] And I named them for her, and she -- but she just kept 00:52:00moving her values over. The longer she lived here, the more she moved them over. But she was really -- I took her down on Piedmont, there was one little board at the corner of Piedmont and -- the Ansley Mall area. And so I got close enough so she could see -- she has macular degeneration, too -- and she looked at it, she says, "That sure is a wrinkled old woman." [laughs] She was quite a case. She also -- at one point, we played out a scene from The Last Candle, I mean, almost word for word, one of the scenes I had done and you know, I was just as guilty as she was, but we responded to each other just like I had in the play. And so, she was -- her picture came out in Atlanta Magazine, which, she 00:53:00was well-known and my son-in-law was riding down the road with one of his wor-- men he worked with, and he saw a billboard, and he says, "That's my grandmother-in-law!" And the man says, "No it's not; that's a homeless woman." [laughs] Never convinced the man that it was really his mother -- grandmother-in-law. And, living with her was an experience for me, too and I could see how -- the frustration of living with somebody that's older is not an easy thing to do. I do much better with these men than I would with my own children.

LOMBARDI: Your male boarders.

LAMBERT: Yeah, the male boarders. And, we're a good household.

LOMBARDI: Yes, you are.

LAMBERT: It works well. And... But anyway, my mother was quite an experience, and she lived to be 95, and I only -- I put her in a nursing home the last eight months of her life because I couldn't take care of her anymore, physically. And -- but she had not been the best of mothers, but she was an interesting experience in aging. She was something else. [laughs] She was really quite a character. Didn't want a baby. Never had anymore.

LOMBARDI: Just had you.

LAMBERT: Had me. And she had a good reason. My father died when she was three months pregnant and she was alone and penniless, you know, in poverty. Didn't need a baby. Didn't want a baby.

LOMBARDI: Well, I'm glad she had you, though.

LAMBERT: She got me.

LOMBARDI: She got you.

LAMBERT: But she never neglected me, I will say. She always saw that somebody took care of me. But you've read the story I wrote on the runaway child. I was labeled a runaway child at two and I believed the story till last year.

LOMBARDI: And then you found out you never did run away.

LAMBERT: Yeah, they didn't get rid of that one.

LOMBARDI: Well, Charlee, the Council on Elder Abuse lasted nine years, yes?

LAMBERT: Nine years.

LOMBARDI: And --

LAMBERT: Well, the council lasted longer than that, because there were three or four years before that when I was doing the plays on elder abuse, when we didn't have the -- I wasn't working as a -- but there were three of us in that office. I had a Catholic -- a retired Catholic nun that worked as my assistant and then we got a woman who had never worked. She was older, and 00:56:00Mildred was funded by some federal government for people to get them off welfare, and she worked for me and after we had let her go, she got jobs. But we convinced her at some point -- she was very religious -- that it was okay to play Free Cell. It's not really cards; it's computer, you know? [laughs]

LOMBARDI: Oh, okay. Playing -- okay, play on the computer.

LAMBERT: She was a real re-- Free Cell. And I encouraged that in that office, because it wa-- a telephone call is so...

LOMBARDI: Intense.

LAMBERT: Intense, so you needed --

LOMBARDI: You needed a release.

LAMBERT: -- something to come down on. And...

LOMBARDI: But you worked what -- you said you worked about nine years, and then left in '95.

LAMBERT: Yeah. That was the only time I ever held a job nine to five. Then I started when I was about 63, after I got a divorce.

LOMBARDI: Well, I'd like to add to this interview that in 1993, you were awarded the John Tyler Mauldin Award and it's given by the Georgia Gerontology Society to an older individual in Georgia who exemplifies a positive role model and of outstanding achievement in the field of aging. So you were recognized by them and then in 2002, you were the recipient of the Rosalie Wolf Award, which is a national award given to an individual that demonstrated exceptional commitment to the prevention of elder abuse. And I understand you were the first recipient of that award, too.

LAMBERT: I was the first recipient. It was done in San Diego and the night they 00:58:00awarded the award, there was probably a thousand people there, which was a wonderful, wonderful experience. Once again, everybody listened and I took -- when turned on, nobody stops me when I [laughs] get turned -- I was an entertainer. Anyway, the man that introduced me was from Washington. He was head of the elder abuse program out of Washington, and said that I was 80 years old and that I was receiving the first award for -- and I had been nominated by two people here in Atlanta and they were -- there was some interesting things that happened through that. I -- several months before I knew about the award, I got invited to Ontario, to Mon-- Toronto to be part of a conference on elder abuse. Well, I thought, this is nice, but I don't know -- discovered I was 00:59:00really being hosted by Ontario, the province and they followed me around. I landed in Ontario Airport, I'm walking down the street to get a bus to the hotel, and surely I hear the word, "Charlee!" And I know it's my name [laughs] and it's a woman from Washington that used to live here. She's head of the Elder Abuse Ta-- Elder Abuse -- what is the -- what's the name of that? Elder -- Council on Elderly in Washington, and -- now, she's a lawyer. So we spent a couple of days together before the conference started. I'm in the hotel, go down -- she decides she's not going to eat; she's going to work on her presentation -- and I hear somebo-- I go up to this counter and somebody said, "Aren't you going to speak to me?" And it's this woman 01:00:00from Argentina. So I -- she says, "Come on, let's eat together." She was with the World Health Organization. That night, there were eight of us ended up having dinner together in this hotel, all from different countries. It was the most interesting meal I -- they were from Brazil, Kenya, Switzerland, Argentina, Canada, me, and there was one other -- there was a Chinese guy. And it was really a bonding of people from all over the world. It was very exciting. Well, I -- this -- being the guest of Ontario, the secretary follows me around 01:01:00taking down everything I say. It was re-- and I ke-- words kept coming back to me. They were all -- Internet, you know, they [laughs] -- they really soaked up. They were in -- French from Montreal; they were fro-- [laughs] It was kind of fascinating to see yourself being analyzed and listened to.

LOMBARDI: And valued.

LAMBERT: Yeah. But -- and then that, they had heard about that I was going to get the Rosalie Wolf Award. That's why they had invited me. They -- the university had told them about it. That -- they gave me money for food almost by the time I left and I looked at it and I've got all this Canadian money and it -- I brought it home, it was like $150 or so. And one day -- I have 01:02:00grandchildren in Canada and that go to Canada, and she was going to Atlanta -- Ca-- Saskatchewan, so I says, "Here, take this money." [laughs] So I gave her the $150 I came home with [laughs] in Canadian money. But the Rosalie Wolf Award, I told the st-- I got on the microphone, I'm dressed, you know, dressed up, long dress, you know, glamorous 80-year-old and I believe that so they believe it. [laughs] And I te-- I said I appreciated the award and responded to that, and then I said, "But you know, I'm a storyteller and I've got to tell a story." And I told the story of Camille Jeffers and how she was 01:03:00murdered. She was the one that started the elder abuse program in Atlanta and was murdered by her son. Well, I was bombarded when I got off that stage. By the time the program was over, I had people wanting to touch me. It was like, what have I done? I've con-- and some woman from St. Louis -- Louisville, or some place up in that part of the world -- on the way back, she said, "When I work, I'm going to be working for Camille." I must have been a good storyteller. But anyway, that was -- all the way back to my room, I was just followed.

LOMBARDI: How wonderful.

LAMBERT: It was quite a wonderful experience that I reached that many people. Some Indian man got to me first, and he said -- he must have run up to where I 01:04:00was. You don't work for awards, but they're nice when they come. It makes you realize you've done something. And, with elder abuse I do feel that, you know, they're do-- starting all over again, but that's the way our culture works. You have pushes and then it goes down. You have pushes and it goes down.

LOMBARDI: I want you to talk to me about guardianship. You served on the Georgia's -- on Georgia's House Senate Joint Guardianship Rewrite Study Committee, as an advocate for reforming the adult guardianship system, which you actually mentioned when we were talking about Richard. Can you explain the guardianship issue in reference to the elderly?

LAMBERT: Well, it was too easy to get guardianship. If a family member came and said, "I need guardianship of my mother or father," the court just automatically...

LOMBARDI: Gave it.

LAMBERT: Did it. So we were responsible for making some laws about it. One of the funny experiences of that was, I got a call from the Capitol wanting me to read an insurance law that would affect older people. And I said, "I've never read a law in my life." But they faxed it out to me, and I read it and I didn't see any protection in it for elders, at all. You know, they were supposedly writing a re-law -- rewriting the laws. And so they said, "Well, 01:06:00would you come down and testify for the committee?" And I said, "Yeah, I'll be glad to, but I really don't see what I can say, because I don't know enough about" -- I didn't know anything about reading a law that comes -- that they were writing, how to critique it, at all. I did learn. But anyway, they sent this insurance law out to me and I read it, and I went down to testify and for once, they did not think I was going to be a man. When I walked in that room, it was -- they knew who I was. And I thought, how do they know who I am? You know? But anyway, I'm one of the first people they called to testify and I got up there and I said, "You know, I don't know much about this, but I don't see any protection for older people in this insurance 01:07:00law." And [laughs] I went back and sat down. And the attorney next to me was rolling in the floor. He said, "Which side are you on?" [laughs] "I'm not on any side. I'm just telling you like I see it." But that was -- I did get to sit in on the elder abuse pr-- laws, and they were strengthened while I was there. And then they asked me to sit in on a guardianship law rewrite. They wanted to make it a little harder for family members to get hold of somebody just for the money, which was what a lot of people did, which has made me not want to share with my children not about my money. [laughs] But anyway, 01:08:00it wa-- I did help rewrite the guardianship law and I was the only non-attorney on the committee. There were judges [laughs] and me. [laughs] But you know, I had my input and they respected what I said. As a matter --

LOMBARDI: You dealt with the springing power of attorney, right? You talked about the springing power of attorney that you had?

LAMBERT: Yeah, the power of attorney, make it -- the power of the -- it doesn't go into effect until the people you designate are -- say you can't handle your money anymore. We strengthened that to make it harder to get 01:09:00financial power of attorney. I would say -- I don't know what percentage I would say. Probably 50% percent of all elder abuse is financial, maybe more. You don't hear about the physical as much as you do about the financial. People don't want their money messed with and it's so easy to do. And family members are usually the guilty one. "Mom can't manage her money anymore and so we need to get hold of it." There's temptation if you get in a tight spot to use it. A lot of it is temptation. You're in a hard spot and 01:10:00you need money and you borrow -- "Oh, I'll just borrow it from Mom's money and get myself out and then I'll pay her back." But they never pay back. I want enough money to last me till I'm dead that's all I ask. My mother did that. The money ran out the month she died and I think she may have known that. I was managing the money. I was -- she was in nursing home on private pay, which is 80% percent of all nursing home beds are Medicare or Medicaid. Medicaid, mostly. But she never went on Medicaid; she just died. And she was fighting with me. I went to the nursing home. She was upset with me about 01:11:00something. I had the feeling she was telling me she was dying -- she couldn't talk; she lost the ability to talk -- and that she was going to die and there wasn't anything I could do about it. Or that was my feeling that that was what she was saying. Christine was -- had -- was visiting here from Japan, and the next morning, we'd been -- it was Christmas Eve. We were -- I said, "Let's go see what Mom's -- what's going on with my mother." I didn't call her Mom, but she insisted on Mother. We went down there and she's still angry. She's sitting up in a chair and she's still mad with me. She knew who I was. I -- she was still arguing with me. She was not quite as strong with it as she had been the day before. And I didn't stay long 01:12:00because I had my turkey in the oven and ready for my Christmas Eve party and got home, and the telephone's ringing, and she's dead. And they said, "Does anybody want -- the family -- to come down and see her?" Nobody wanted to go see a dead person. They're not big on that in my family, looking at dead people. And then we had to decide what we we're going to do with turkey in the oven. So we decided to have the party anyway and we had the party and then we buried her on Monday -- didn't bury her; we had the memorial service. Didn't have any flowers because it was the day after Christmas, just the flowers from the church, which were beautiful, poinsettias, you know. And the pe-- only the people that heard about it knew that she had died and we had about 01:13:0050, 60 people there even so, and it was a wonderful service. I was very proud of what we'd -- then we took her to Florida and had another one.

LOMBARDI: Yeah, you did.

LAMBERT: [laughs]

LOMBARDI: I want to talk about AARP.

LAMBERT: AARP and Reminisces. If I could have made a living with that I would've because that to me was a wonderful program. It didn't last long because it was not -- even nonprofit organizations are con-- are concerned with the finan-- with the cost-effectiveness of a program.

LOMBARDI: Well let me give a little background to it here. In 1983, a staff member at the American Association of Retired Persons began the AARP Reminisces program. He was concerned that churches and synagogues were not responding to 01:14:00people in institutional settings, and he realized the value of reminisces and the need for attentive listeners. After considerable work, the AARP Reminisces program was born. A core group of appointed AARP Reminisces volunteers were trained to help local communities organize programs and give nine-hour training sessions to volunteers, who would make a commitment to visit an isolated older person once a week for six months. The training sessions were followed by monthly volunteer support meetings and AARP paid the cost of travel, food, lodging, and training material. In 1993, after 10 years of volunteer-supported 01:15:00involvement, AARP felt the Reminisces seed had been planted, and retired their involvement. The material is still available for use and Charlee you were part of this program. So, how did you discover it?

LAMBERT: Camille Jeffers again, heard about the program, and said, "Charlee, this is for you. You really need to get" -- "I don't want to get involved in AARP. I don't want to" -- you know, I really rejected her idea and she finally, she convinced me. She became my mentor. She was o-- I had two mentors and she was one of them and so she talked me into going to this meeting about AARP. I didn't want to work for AARP. They didn't -- didn't mean a thing to me, you know, as an organization and I was really turned on by Reminisces 01:16:00program and did it for a long time. I don't know how many years I did it. I used it a lot in working in elder abuse, getting people to tell their stories, find out who they are so that -- and how they react to everything. It was a way of really getting people to tell their story and I had some wonderful experiences with it. And I saw the effectiveness of it. It just was so effective, and it's not used and people don't want to listen to older people and yet they've got great stories to tell. I -- and I'm a storyteller, and I think I've always been a storyteller and a story listener. I think I listen to stories as well as tell the stories. But anyway, I enjoyed hearing 01:17:00people's stories and there was a couple of real experiences with it. They sent me all over the country. They didn't just send me into Atlanta. I went to Springfield, Ohio; I went to -- what's that place on the -- where the -- it was... Paducah. Paducah, Kentucky. How many people have been to Paducah, Kentucky? One, okay. That was a wonderful experience. [laughs] I went to Annapolis. I went to Det-- they called me one day and they said, "We really need a volunteer to go to Michigan." And I said, "Fine, I can do it." [That day, they'd?] give me the dates, and I said, "I can do it." And they said -- I said, "What town?" and, "Well, it's a little town 01:18:00you've never heard of. It's near Detroit." And I kept pushing them to give me the name of the town, and they said Rochester. I said, "I lived there." In the '70s, I lived in Rochester, Michigan, and so I went to Rochester, and several of my friends showed up for the training and I got to visit with old friends, and it was really quite a wonderful experience. And the woman that wrote the book, the training manual, attended the training to see how it was done. That was the guinea pig for the training manual. And it's probably still a shelf -- what they call a shelf program that people can get and do on their own.

LOMBARDI: How long did you do it?

LAMBERT: I don't know.

LOMBARDI: What do you think? How many years?

LAMBERT: Eight or nine years, something like that. And they finally did away with the program because it wasn't cost-effective and we were stationed -- a lot of organizations that worked AARP -- you know, volunteer programs -- were housed here in Atlanta because we had a head-- southeastern headquarters here. But the one I was in, it was headquartered in Washington. It was -- the woman that headed it up and she was on-- so we got to go to Washington on a regular basis and meet with each other. But it -- the sou-- Atlanta had the biggest program of any place in the country and there were eight of us, I believe, in Georgia.

LOMBARDI: That were training for the --

LAMBERT: And one was 29 years old, from Athens, Georgia. But we became a group, 01:20:00also that was important.

LOMBARDI: So it's not actively -- there's not active training, but you can still find the material to use it...

LAMBERT: It was a training, for --

LOMBARDI: But right now, it's --

LAMBERT: No. It -- no. None exists anymore.

LOMBARDI: I looked up actually on Amazon, and there was one book and it's called The Art and Science of Reminiscing. And that's it. And it gives a history. That's where I got the history of it.

LAMBERT: Oh, well good.

LOMBARDI: So it's out there if someone wants to, but they have to know it's there.

LAMBERT: It was a minister, a retired minister, that started the program. But we -- I had some wonderful experiences. After I quit elder abu-- was it before or after? I can't remember. Anyway, the Lutheran church hired me. Paid me a whole $500 a month to do the program for their church. I was -- I became their 01:21:00aging program and I went all over the state of Georgia and did all the Lutheran churches in Georgia.

LOMBARDI: What would they do with -- what would they do with the information? What would they do with the stories? Are they written down? Are they stored some...?

LAMBERT: Where they could -- where they could do it with their own people. That -- and it would be somebody left there to head the program. I think it was in Augusta maybe, at a Lutheran church, that one -- I had two questions I usually started the program with. One was: What do you remember about your first kitchen that you can remember? The other one was: How do you play -- how did you play as a child? What kind of games or -- that sort of stuff. Well, the kitchen, when -- I alternated between the two, just to keep myself interested. I was at a -- this Lutheran church in Augusta, and I asked the kitchen question 01:22:00and it went -- started around the table and got to the new minister of this church and he said, "I don't remember anything pleasant about the kitchen. That's where my father beat my mother."

LOMBARDI: You can't escape it, huh? It just comes at you.

LAMBERT: At you. Anyway, you could feel this group of people just drawing close to this minister. The support he got from that remark was unbelievable and I'm sure he was very successful in that church that he was able to say, "It's where my father" -- he'd probably been holding it in for a hundred years. [laughs] And then another one that I remember distinctly was at a 01:23:00synagogue here in Atlanta and I was using the play, "How did you play as a child?" and it was going arou-- and it was a big group. It was not 10 or 15. It was probably 40, 50. Got to this one woman and she said, "I didn't play. I was in a concentration camp." And my response to that one was: "All children found a way to play. It's a way to learn how to grow up. They'll all find a way. You found a way in this concentration camp." Well and then I just left it at that. Got back, that woman came up to me after, she says, "Thank you so much. I remembered how I played." Well, they wanted to start a Holocaust group [laughs] and I said, "No, I can't deal with the 01:24:00Holocaust." [laughs] There were some wonderful experiences. The story -- there was a story: Warner Robins, when they first built that Army base there and the officers had to live in tents and this woman told about bringing her grand piano and putting it in a tent at Warner Robins. What a wonderful, visceral experience that is! I like the stories to listen, as well as tell.

LOMBARDI: I want to ask you a question, Charlee, that I've never asked you in all our times we've been together. But you have dealt with such heartbreaking stories and you were doing it daily. How did you [overlapping dialogue; inaudible] --

LAMBERT: How did I deal with that?

LOMBARDI: How did you take care of yourself?

LAMBERT: Somewhere along the line, and I think it was with the Reminisce program I did it, is to learn that it's your story, not mine. You don't empathize with it; you don't get involved with it emotionally; it's their story. It's your possession. And that was how I dealt with it. That, when I listen to a story that's heartbreaking, I know it's their story and not mine. My stories had its own hardships. And they belong to me. And if we can learn to do that, we -- it's not an easy job, but I think if you can do that you really do gain a lot. Don't take on other people's stories. They're not yours; 01:26:00they're a possession. My pain is my pain. I will not give it to you. Okay? Does that explain what --

LOMBARDI: Yes, ma'am.

[End DVD 1]

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