Local seniors say it's never too late to try something new
WAKE COUNTY (WTVD) -- Loraine Coulter is a resident at a senior living facility in Cary. She wants others to know it's never too late to learn something new. The 84-year-old picked up painting as a hobby when she turned 70 and says it's been very therapeutic for her.
"After my husband died, I just decided I need to learn to paint. I need something to do," she said.
She makes the paintings for family and friends and draws most of her inspiration from the farm she used to live on in Kentucky. The wood frame for one came from decades-old lumber her husband stored on the farm now has new life.
"I love to see the farm and to do some of the scenes that are on the farm, and there's beautiful pastures," Coulter said.
"I had never been on a farm until I married," she added. "And in 1973, I started managing the farm and I managed it for 10 years before my husband retired."
Norman Wasserman is 95 and he also lives at Waltonwood Cary Parkway with Lorraine. He too has rolled what he's always loved into a now long-time hobby.
For decades, Norman was a design engineer at Bell Laboratories, and now he exercises that same love in design through his woodwork and he's kept to it for 45 years.
"Through all the years I've always said it's fun making sawdust," Wasserman said. "When I'm working on the machine, I really concentrate on what I'm doing. I just don't think of anything else."
Although he too, does not sell his work, he still has a lot to keep him busy.
"This is the third Noah's Ark I'm working on. The first one my oldest daughter saw it and she said 'Thank you daddy, I like this,' and she just took it, so my youngest son says 'If she can have one why can't I,' so I had to make another one. This third one that I'm working on is for me," Wasserman said with a laugh.
He said his woodwork is some of the best mental exercise you can find.
"By all means you have to do something to keep your brain going," he said. "So get a hobby people you'll live longer and you'll be happier."
