By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS
Contemplating moving from her Cow Hollow home, Jeanne Lacy checked out retirement communities of all sorts — from medium range to posh — but couldn’t find a fit. Some apartments seemed great, but she was unsure about group dining, or turned off by long narrow hallways, or vexed by one thing or another that didn’t seem to work.
“I kept hoping I’d see one place that felt just right,” she says, “and it didn’t happen.” Then a friend brought Mary Moore Gaines, rector emeritus of St. James Episcopal Church and an activist in a variety of community causes, to a meeting of a small group to which Lacy belonged. Gaines talked about San Francisco Village, a community-based membership organization being developed as an alternative to retirement community living.
“I said, ‘That’s for me,’” Lacy recalls.
That was several years ago, when Gaines and a small group were launching plans for an aging-in-place organization patterned after the pioneering Beacon Hill Village in Boston. There was one other in California at the time, Avenidas in Palo Alto. If they could build such a support community in San Francisco, the group members reasoned, much of the city’s rapidly growing aging population could continue to live independently — exactly Jeanne Lacy’s goal.
San Francisco Village would offer services in health and wellness, daily living, social and volunteer activities. For Lacy, the arrangement beckoned.
“They were talking about a community,” she says. “When you reach the point where you can’t get around as easily, being part of a community — people you know and trust who will keep in touch, will be able to look in on you and make sure you’re okay — this will help those of us who want to stay in our own homes.”
“I’ve been a member of San Francisco Village since it started in January 2009,” she says. “The community hasn’t fully materialized, but we’re coming along.”
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Jeanne and her husband, Lyman, moved to San Francisco from Sacramento in 1980. They settled into an apartment in a four-unit building his family had built, then took it apart and rebuilt it. They’d lived in San Francisco for a year after they married, but raised their three daughters in Sacramento. Lacy says San Francisco felt like home. She has now lived in three of the four units in the building, and plans to stay put.
San Francisco Bay had been a weekend home away from home almost from the beginning of the Lacy family.
“Lyman had a friend who had a sailboat, and he got the bug, so we bought a boat,” she recalls. “But I was worried about three little girls and a golden retriever.”
Early on, her doubts faded. “The more I learned about sailing, the more I thought ‘This is pretty neat,’ ” Lacy says. “I joined a group of women who sailed, and my confidence built pretty quickly.”
The family spent every available weekend on the bay while the girls were growing up, and after the move to San Francisco, it became every available moment.
Lyman died in May 2001, following a succession of strokes that left him increasingly disabled and added “caregiver” to Jeanne’s list of roles. “I was glad that his brain was never affected,” she says. His mobility decidedly was, but she would tug him in and out of cars and wheelchairs and they kept on the go.
“People would say, ‘Oh, you’re so good to him,’ and I’d say, ‘Wrong! I’m doing this for me.’ I had to stay active,” Lacy says, adding that after her husband died, “It took me quite a while to become a whole and individual person.”
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Though she sees San Francisco Village as a work in progress, Lacy lists a variety of benefits it has already delivered: the “art of living” series hosted by Eva Auchincloss, a talk on brain fitness by SharpBrains CEO Alvaro Fernandez and a program on personal and community security hosted by Judy and Don Langley. Lacy hosted a series on finance, which was more sparsely attended than she had hoped, but part of the group’s learning curve.
“One of the things the Village is doing — which I’m helping with — is calling members once a month to find out what they are liking or not liking,” she says. The calls also serve as a way to check in on individual members. And that is what most appeals to Lacy. Her three daughters now live in Oregon, the California Sierra and Houston. She lives alone, and wants to keep living independently.
“When the time comes that I might need someone keeping check on me,” she says, “I think the Village will be able to fill that need.”
For more information about San Francisco Village, visit www.sfvillage.org.
A longtime member of the Seagals
Still an adventurous sailor at the age of 83, Jeanne Lacy is a longtime member of the Seagals, a group of about 20 women, some of whom learned to sail with their husbands, who now enjoy the camaraderie and relaxation of their weekly Wednesday sails together. “Men yell, which makes it hard to learn,” says Lacy. “But women are patient and are just as good at sea.”
Lacy and her love of sailing — and her involvement in San Francisco Village — are featured in a new book, Passages in Caregiving, by noted author Gail Sheehy. In her book, Sheehy profiles Lacy, including her bout with a rare streptococcus infection, which spurred her to join San Francisco Village as a way of maintaining a healthy and helpful connection to others in the community.
Sheehy writes:
“Sailing her 36-foot sloop on the bay was the one pleasure she allowed herself, weekly, during the 10-year stretch as the sole caregiver for her husband through a series of his strokes. Her beautiful face is crinkled like the water on a gusty day. ‘When my husband died, I just kept on sailing,’ she says, bringing her fist down on the steering wheel. ‘I won’t ever give it up.’
“Jeanne is tall and regal, with a slight bend. ‘I used to be very erect,’ she tells me. ‘I rode horses and played tennis for years, and those are hard on your spine. Mine has been compressing.’ The only other sign of aging she noticed in her seventies was a pleasant surprise. When her hair tuned white, her eyes turned bluer. They are riveting.”
OBITUARY: Jeanne Cannon Lacy (1927-2024)
Filed under: Body & Soul, Locals