Miriam Reibold

Eighty-eight-year-old Miriam Reibold takes great shorthand. While it’s not necessarily her greatest talent, it sure gave her the boost into volunteerism she needed. “When I started at the Minnesota Senior Federation, they put me typing or something,” she says. “I told them I was too good for what I was doing, so they sent me off to some meetings on housing and old age. I was immediately very popular, because I could take shorthand minutes. Before long, I was taking minutes for every committee! Then, all of a sudden, I was the secretary of the state federation and the metro federation, and the next thing I knew, I was the president of the Minnesota Senior Federation. It was mainly my secretary skills—and that I like to run things.”

After Reibold’s husband died and her grown children moved from the small Iowa town where Reibold ran a school library, she decided she needed adventure. She’d previously seen an ad for the Minnesota Senior Federation in a newspaper, and had already joined when she decided to move to the Twin Cities. She was also ready with her platform: Old ladies are ignored, and that’s bad, and you can’t escape aging, and that’s not so bad.

“I tell everyone I think everyone should jump up and down with the first gray hair,” she says. “But when I say that, it’s always met with a deathly hush.”

After attending a course on occupational therapy at the College of St. Catherine, Reibold realized how misguided people’s perceptions of old age were. “I decided [young people] simply don’t know what we’re like, and that really gave me the impetus to see to it that the truth be told. Old age is just another stage, and you can appreciate it or not, but you’re better if you accept it and use it.”

Using this philosophy to steer her work, Reibold is a force filled with the pure desire to change people’s perceptions. She’s been a part of the West St. Paul Neighborhood Association, spoken about treatment of the elderly to police through the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, chaired the National Council on Aging (and is still on the board), and volunteered for hospice work, Store to Door, the Dakota County Partnership for Healthy Communities, East Metro SAIL, and much more—all in pursuit of advocating for a proper image of the elderly, the power they wield in their community, and the rights that need to be recognized and preserved.

She’s not going to take her old age sitting down—in a rocking chair. And she’s going to make sure you don’t either.