April 2026 - Center for Modern Aging Princeton

William “Bill” Saunders on Art, Injustice, and the Power of Being Seen

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Erin Burke

“I believe the people have a right to know and art can’t be denied if there’s credibility behind it, can’t be denied of its truth.”

William “Bill” Saunders is an artist and Princetonian whose portfolio, spanning disciplines and decades, embodies his dedication to creativity and truth.

From his early days in Princeton — in one of the first integrated art classes in the town — to years spent creating art while incarcerated in New York, and now back in Princeton, where he transformed his studio apartment into a kind of living gallery, Bill carried his creative voice through every chapter of his life.

He describes his work as journalistic — whether through photography, painting, or sculpture — capturing realities that are often overlooked, but deeply felt.

How did you become an artist?

My mother was a domestic worker for the Goheens. Robert Goheen was the sixteenth president of Princeton University and his wife, Margaret Skelly, was throwing away boxes of art books and jazz albums. Mother brought some home and [when] I opened those books, a whole new world opened up to me.

I would mainly copy or do sketches from the works of Edgar Degas and later Rex Goreleigh, who came to Princeton around 1947.

[Rex Goreleigh started an integrated arts school called “Princeton Group Arts” one year before the Princeton Plan integrated Princeton Public Schools. Saunders was among the first students at Princeton Group Arts.]

Now, Rex and my mother, they decided that I should be part of that class. Fifteen white and fifteen Black students on Spring Street with Rex in Princeton, and we would attend regular art classes there. That was my first formal introduction to art.

When you opened those art books, what was the first artist or piece that had a real impact on you?

Joseph Malloy William Turner, the famous artist who did renditions of sun’s light. I saw one of these examples was called “The Slave Ship,” in which African slaves were thrown overboard from a ship that was about to sink, and the sea was very turbulent.

This had an effect on my emotion. But it was the way he depicted the sun’s light that impressed me. That’s sort of got me started, at least with painting, but it morphed into photography.

What was it like meeting Gordon Parks and what impact did his influence have on you?

Well, I had read a lot about Gordon, especially about his social work, the social condition, and civil rights. I was just enthralled by what he had done as a first African American along those lines.

When he expressed that he wanted to use his camera as a weapon or tool against injustice and for equal civil rights, I was just thrown overboard. I went running to Rex to tell him I wanted to go in the direction of journalism.

I told Rex and I saw tears coming down from his eyes. I didn’t understand it at the time. I thought maybe he was disappointed, you know, in me or something like that. But he just said, “Let’s go to New York.”

He didn’t tell me exactly what it was for. I thought it was to buy art supplies or something. Instead, he took me to meet Gordon.

From then on, Gordon took an interest in my direction of photography. And through Gordon, I met several peoples in the arts, in journalism. It worked out for me, I think.

How did you take inspiration from your mentors?

I decided to sort of emulate [Gordon’s social purpose] and to be a photographer displaying what it is to be impoverished. A lot of my art concentrates on poverty and the people that are dislocated: families and so forth.

It doesn’t mean that I want to be the savior, but it’s in the tradition of Gordon Parks, and Rex did the same thing with his paintings. I wanted to work in that area, and my guidance was right there.

What would you like viewers to take away from your art about poverty and separation, and these journalistic paintings?

Well, that’s a tough question. I feel, inside, compelled to take pictures and to have my art going that direction.

I think every real artist owes a commitment to society to demonstrate things that we should be conscious of in our lives, about others who are not doing so well.

I think a lot of artists do things for self-gratification, popularity or populism or trendiness, but then later they may come back around and find a need to do philanthropy through earnings or self-gratification and so on.

Well, artists like Rex and Gordon, they feel a greater need to risk their lives in that effort. So, I wish I were educated enough to explain it in more analytical terms, but this is what I do.

Do you feel that your time in prison strengthened that need to reflect the injustices? Or did you already have that part in you? And then it came out in these paintings?

I believe that most who work in this area want to do something. They want to change the system or fix the system, and they talk in terms of wrongful imprisonment and so on, which I feel that I’ve been a victim of. But there’s more to it than just that.

There is the underlying judicial system of injustice. And I believe, because of cost and expediency, that this judicial system itself is morally corrupt.

There are issues where prosecution and defense, they may make deals and, in my case, it was the prosecutor who wanted a certain outcome and was by any means necessary, even punishment and torture, going to make that outcome come about.

One of the problems that bothers me is that we have my brethren, journalists, who wish to get involved tangentially or on the surface and then pull away. They just don’t seem to want to go deep enough to see that what’s going on in the inside. For instance, I have rarely, or if ever, heard of the media speaking about these deals that are made with judges and prosecutors that are under the table that are illicit, immoral, and malicious.

And this is why I profoundly say it’s not about the artists, it’s about the art. Everybody has what they would say is a practical idea of what’s going on inside these circles of prison imprisonment and judicial misconduct. But it’s nowhere near what the truth is. And I believe the people have a right to know and art can’t be denied if there’s credibility behind it, can’t be denied of its truth.

[You can come see Bill’s art at CMAP’s SpringFest on May 6 at Suzanne Patterson Building. Click here or go to https://engage.cmaprinceton.org/component/events/event/1759 to register.]

For Many Patients Leaving the ICU, the Struggle Has Only Just Begun

Posted on April 10, 2026May 12, 2026 by Paula Span

The accident happened in Pittsburgh on November 16. Joseph Masterson, a lawyer who was just days from retiring at age sixty-three, suffered cardiac arrest while driving, plowed into a guardrail, and lost consciousness.

Other drivers stopped, broke the car window, and pulled him to safety. A passing volunteer firefighter performed CPR until an ambulance arrived to take Masterson to UPMC Mercy hospital.

He spent eighteen days in the medical intensive care unit there, forteen of them on a ventilator. He developed delirium, a common ICU condition, and needed antipsychotic drugs. Despite a feeding tube, he lost weight. “We honestly weren’t confident that he would pull through,” said Ron Dedes, his brother-in-law.

But he did. Masterson was discharged February 1 and returned home with near-constant family support. Working diligently with several kinds of therapists, he has regained his ability to walk, despite lingering weakness, and to manage his personal care. His once-garbled speech has markedly improved. He can make himself a sandwich.

Now, “our biggest concern is his memory,” Dedes said. Masterson, who so recently handled complex legal matters, forgets conversations and events that happened a few hours earlier, said Patti Dedes, his sister. He can’t yet operate a microwave or place a phone call.

In an interview, he described himself, accurately, as “much, much better than I was” — but misstated his age. Screening tests after his discharge indicated cognitive impairment and depression.

Among critical-care doctors, prolonged symptoms like his are known as “post-intensive care syndrome,” or PICS. The fallout can be physical or psychological, as well as cognitive, and can persist for months or years.

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More than five million people annually are admitted to intensive care across about 5,000 American hospitals, and research shows that more than half experience such aftereffects. Older age increases the odds.

Patients and families are often startled by these continuing difficulties. “The belief is that they’ll be discharged from the hospital and in two or three weeks, they’ll be back to normal,” said Brad Butcher, who was Masterson’s doctor and wrote about PICS recently in the medical journal JAMA. “That doesn’t comport with reality.”

In fact, with greater ICU use and improved treatments — the Society of Critical Care Medicine estimates that 70% to 90% of adults now survive their stays — the population likely to encounter the syndrome is growing.

“Everyone is grateful that the patient has survived,” said Lauren Ferrante, a pulmonary critical-care doctor and researcher at the Yale School of Medicine. “But that’s just the start of a long road to recovery.” In a study of patients 70 and older that she co-authored, within six months after discharge only about half had returned to their pre-ICU functional ability.

Intensive care patients face a long list of challenges. PICS symptoms range from the physical — weakness, pain, neuropathy (tingling in arms and legs), and malnutrition — to mental health concerns, primarily anxiety and depression. Cognitive difficulties like Masterson’s are commonplace, including problems with memory, attention and concentration, and language.

“For many people, surviving a critical illness is a life-altering experience,” Butcher said. Patients in intensive care after emergency or elective surgery also have high rates of new physical, mental, and cognitive problems a year later.

The same aggressive treatments that save lives contribute to the syndrome. Intensive care patients “have some sort of dramatic organ failure that requires immediate attention” and constant monitoring, explained Carla Sevin, a pulmonary critical-care doctor who directs the ICU Recovery Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

That could mean a breathing tube attached to a ventilator, which in turn often requires sedating drugs. Sedation “can precipitate delirium, and delirium is the key factor in cognitive symptoms,” Butcher said.

It doesn’t help that constant beeps and alarms from monitors and round-the-clock bright lighting disrupt sleep, and that restrictive family visiting hours deprive patients of reassuring faces and voices.

Gregory Matthews, a retired accountant in St. Petersburg, Florida, spent nearly a month in an ICU after a lung transplant in 2014. He still vividly remembers his hallucinations, including mice running across the wall and someone trying to frame him for drug running.

“One day, I thought a doctor was an assassin — I could see the rifle,” said Matthews, now eighty. “So I jumped out of bed,” he said, and yanked out his IVs. The staff put his arms in restraints for days.

But immobilization exacts its own toll as patients quickly lose muscle mass and strength. “Our bodies were not meant to lie in bed all day,” Ferrante said.

Psychologically, “PTSD is pretty common, similar to what’s seen in combat veterans or sexual assault survivors,” Sevin said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder. Families can suffer anxiety and depression along with the patients.

Alarmed by such discoveries, doctors and administrators at about thirty-five U.S. hospitals have established post-ICU clinics, where teams of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists (physical, occupational, cognitive, speech), and social workers screen for a host of conditions and help guide patients through them.

Vanderbilt’s clinic saw its first patient in 2012. The Critical Illness Recovery Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which Butcher founded in 2018, works with about one hundred patients a year, including Masterson. Yale opened its clinic in 2022.

They rely on six practices recommended by the Society of Critical Care Medicine that are shown to significantly reduce post-ICU symptoms. The measures call for changes such as using lighter sedation, getting patients up and moving earlier, testing their breathing daily to wean them from ventilators sooner, and removing restrictions on family visiting.

Clinics often offer support groups for patients and families. There’s evidence that keeping an ICU diary, in which patients and caregivers record their experiences, and engaging in exercise and physical rehabilitation improve mental health after discharge.

Also on the clinics’ agenda: discussions of what other options patients might prefer if they face another critical illness, as many do. Would they agree to undergo intensive care and risk its aftereffects again? Or choose palliative care, which emphasizes comfort rather than cure? Some post-ICU patients remain permanently impaired.

Butcher, although he said that the use of the new practices needed to expand dramatically, sounded optimistic about the future of critical care. “We’re going to find better diagnostic tools, better preventive strategies, and better therapies,” he said.

For now, though, the ICU experience remains disorienting and sometimes traumatic. When Butcher asked 117 patients in his post-ICU clinic those next-time questions, many wanted to place limits on further medical interventions.

About a third would want to lower the level of aggressive care. Of those, about a quarter would want “do not resuscitate” and “do not intubate” orders, and almost 7% said they never wanted to return to an ICU.

Masterson is working hard to further his recovery. “I haven’t been out and about much,” he said. “I’ve been kind of homebound.” He hopes to get strong enough to resume running — he used to log three to four miles several times a week.

The future for patients contending with post-ICU syndrome often depends on their physical, mental, and cognitive health before their admission. Masterson’s previous fitness and cognitively demanding work bode well for his further progress, Butcher said.

His family remains alternatively hopeful and worried. “Down the road, what’s it going to be like?” Dedes, his brother-in-law, wondered. “We just take it day by day.”

The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with The New York Times.

GrandPal Iona Harding

Posted on April 8, 2026April 20, 2026 by Ella Leving

Iona Harding’s Story:
At CP, I regularly have Jude and Ashley, two very sweet, kind and lovely children. Jude has this flock of blond hair that always looks like he just rolled out of bed! Like my own grandchildren at that age, Jude loves dinosaurs — and he is quite the expert. Last week, one of our books was about dinosaurs and surprising dinosaur facts, all of which Jude already knew and was quite enthusiastic to talk about. Fast forward to last Saturday morning when Maurice and I were sitting at the breakfast table doing “The New York Times” Saturday news quiz together. I was so excited that I knew the answer to one of the questions BECAUSE OF JUDE!. The previous Wednesday, when reading about the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Jude told Ashley and me that this giant of a dinosaur was related to our modern day chicken — a fact that was not in the book.

Well, that was one of the questions in the NYT quiz! The specific question was something along the lines of the leg structure of the beast being the same as a modern day animal — and, thanks to Jude, I knew the answer was the chicken! Seriously, neither Maurice nor I would have guessed that, of the list of five animals in the quiz, the answer was chicken. This morning, I was so happy to share this story with Jude. And he was delighted that I learned from him. He just gave me the most beautiful smile.

This reminds me of why I do GrandPals. I learn from them. I learn from these little people who are so smart, lovely and kind. And it reminds me to listen… listen to what they have to say because we can learn so much.

Immigrant Seniors Lose Medicare Coverage Despite Paying for It

Posted on April 6, 2026May 12, 2026 by Vanessa G. Sánchez

OAKLAND, Calif. — Rosa María Carranza leaned forward to hold a three-year-old’s back as the girl climbed a rock in the forested hills of northeast Oakland.

Dressed in hiking gear and beaded necklaces, Carranza, sixty-seven, maneuvered between trees and children on a sunny morning in December. “Hold on to that branch,” she said in Spanish. “You can do it, my love!”

Carranza, a child development professional who grew up swinging through trees and swimming in rivers in El Salvador, said she feels at home in the forest at the outdoor preschool she co-founded. She has worked with children and teens as a caregiver and educator for more than three decades, long enough to know when to lean in and when to step back to let her students find their own footing.

When she transitioned to working part-time last year, Carranza counted on getting Medicare and Social Security checks — benefits given to American workers and lawfully present immigrants when they retire, if they meet work history and age or disability requirements. She’s contributed tens of thousands of dollars into Medicare and Social Security over 24 years, according to her Social Security Administration earnings record, reviewed by El Tímpano and KFF Health News. But Carranza and an estimated 100,000 other lawfully present immigrants will soon be cut out of Medicare.

The GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed last July by President Donald Trump, barred certain categories of lawfully present immigrants — including temporary protected status holders, refugees, asylum-seekers, survivors of domestic violence, trafficking victims, and people with work visas — from Medicare.

Those already in the program, like Carranza, will be disenrolled by January 4 — a move by Republican lawmakers to rein in Medicare spending, as they and Trump have argued that taxpayer dollars should not be used to pay for the health care of immigrants in the U.S. without authorization.

“The Democrats want Illegal Aliens, many of them VIOLENT CRIMINALS, to receive FREE Healthcare,” Trump posted on Truth Social two months after he signed the bill into law. “We cannot let this happen!”

However, the categories of immigrants now losing coverage do have legal status. Neither the White House nor the Department of Health and Human Services responded to a question about whether it was fair to disenroll legal residents from Medicare.

Carranza holds hands and sings with toddlers while they walk along a trail in the forested hills of northeast Oakland on Deccember 5. Carranza co-founded Escuelita del Bosque, a Spanish immersion preschool at which children spend much of their day learning and exploring outside. (Hiram Alejandro Durán/El Tímpano)

Immigrants without legal status were already ineligible for Medicare or most other federally funded public benefits.

Carranza is worried that she could also lose legal permission to live in the United States if the Trump administration ends temporary protected status for Salvadorans, as it sought to do during his first term.

If that happened, Carranza would lose legal residency, risking time in an immigration detention center or deportation.

“This is like a horror movie, a complete nightmare,” Carranza said. “This is not how I imagined getting old.”

‘Under Constant Attack’

Carranza left El Salvador in 1991 during a brutal civil war, leaving behind three young children, to earn money to send home to her family. She overstayed her visa until 2001, when she qualified for temporary protected status, after two earthquakes struck El Salvador, killing more than 1,100 people and displacing 1.3 million.

Temporary protected status, or TPS, was passed by Congress and signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990.

It allows people such as Carranza, from select nations undergoing armed conflict, civil war, and climate disasters, to live and work in the United States if being in their home country poses a risk.

Carranza missed her youngest daughter’s graduation from kindergarten and first medal-winning performance in track. She worked overnight shifts babysitting newborns and later substitute-taught in public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area to pay for her children’s schooling in El Salvador, and for her own classes at City College of San Francisco, where she earned a degree in child development.

And she cared for dozens of three-, four-, and five-year-olds who gazed in awe as they uncovered little treasures buried in the redwood forest of the Oakland park where she co-founded Escuelita del Bosque, a Spanish immersion preschool that teaches children outdoors.

The trade-off was supposed to be a peaceful retirement. But Congress narrowed Medicare eligibility to citizens, lawful permanent residents, Cuban and Haitian nationals, and people covered under the Compacts of Free Association, agreements between the United States and Pacific island nations.

The move followed Trump’s efforts to bar some lawfully present immigrants from Medicaid, marketplace insurance subsidies, and social support services, such as food assistance, housing subsidies, and medical visits in federally funded health centers. Altogether, 1.4 million lawfully present immigrants were projected to lose health insurance, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

A spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson, Taylor Haulsee, did not respond to requests for comment.

Carranza attends a protest supporting the temporary protected status program outside the Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in San Francisco on Nov. 18. Carranza, a resident of neighboring Oakland, worries she could lose her TPS and risk indefinite detention or deportation. (Hiram Alejandro Durán/El Tímpano)

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said Republicans wanted to enact tax cuts and eliminate health insurance for immigrants because it wouldn’t upset their base.

“They don’t want to turn the United States into a welfare magnet,” he said. “And they resent the government for making them pay for a welfare state.”

While data on lawfully present immigrants is not available, immigrants without legal status paid $6.4 billion into Medicare and $25.7 billion into Social Security in 2022, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Medicare restrictions alone would reduce federal spending by $5.1 billion by 2034.

Health experts say eliminating coverage for immigrants with legal status is unprecedented.

“This is actually the first time that Congress has taken away Medicare from any group,” said Drishti Pillai, director of immigrant health policy at KFF. “This change is impacting immigrants who have lawful presence in the U.S., and many of whom have already worked and paid into the system for decades.”

As older adults like Carranza lose their Medicare coverage, clinicians anticipate that they will delay their care, leading to an increase in severely ill patients, especially in hospital emergency rooms.

Seniors can become sick suddenly and quickly, and they are more vulnerable to cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and high blood pressure, especially if they put off routine care, said Theresa Cheng, an emergency physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.

“It’s quite easy for them to fall off the cliff,” Cheng said.

Carranza hikes and considers herself healthy, but she acknowledges that she is aging and starting to struggle to keep up with the kids in the forest.

Late last year she was diagnosed with high blood pressure, and in January she woke up with a tight chest and went to urgent care because it had spiked to dangerous levels. A few weeks later, she tripped on a curb while walking and fell to the ground. She woke up the next day with a swollen foot. A doctor at the local hospital told her she had arthritis.

These were scary moments, she said, but she was grateful to have to pay only $10 for the urgent care visit and $5 to see her primary care doctor. However, that will change when she loses Medicare by early next year.

The stress of knowing she will lose health insurance coverage, and potentially her legal status, all while masked federal agents are detaining immigrants like her across the country, has taken a toll on her mental health, she said. She is searching for a therapist and acupuncture services to treat her insomnia and anxiety — and the feeling that she is “under constant attack.”

Carranza (right) and another preschool teacher from Escuelita del Bosque gather a small group of toddlers before a walk through redwoods in northeast Oakland on Deccember 5. (Hiram Alejandro Durán/El Tímpano)

Nowhere To Turn

In California, home to the largest number of immigrant seniors, Carranza could have enrolled in state-sponsored insurance, but this year the state froze enrollment for adults 19 and older who are a TPS holder, in the U.S. without authorization, or an asylum-seeker. Other states with Democratic governors such as Illinois and Minnesota have also scaled back their health programs for immigrants amid budget pressures.

In January, California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a state budget that would not backfill federal health care cuts to about 200,000 lawfully present immigrants, noting the $1.1 billion annual price tag and state budget shortfalls.

“Given these fiscal pressures, the administration cannot backfill for this change in federal policy,” California Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer said.

But some Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates say the state should step in. State Assembly member Mia Bonta, who chairs the Assembly’s health committee, said she is working on a legislative budget solution to bring immigrants who will lose health coverage, including older adults, into Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.

The East Bay Democrat is especially concerned for people like Carranza, “who have lived here for decades and contributed into this economy, who have given into our cultural fabric and into our communities and who built families and lives and who are now wanting to be able to retire with dignity and live with dignity and have the health care that they need.”

State and federal IDs belonging to Carranza, including driver’s license and work authorization cards, are displayed on a table at her home in Oakland on Feb. 23. Carranza, who has lived and worked in the United States for decades with temporary protected status, keeps the cards as a record of her legal authorization to work. (Hiram Alejandro Durán/El Tímpano)

A Sign of the Future

Last April, Carranza got a glimpse of what losing her health coverage and retirement benefits could look like, after the Social Security Administration sent her a letter informing her that she no longer qualified for retirement benefits because she was not lawfully present in the U.S. — even though she was. Then Medicare stopped payments to her health plan, which disenrolled her as a result.

As a TPS holder with a work permit, she knew a mistake had been made. Yet, without her check, Carranza didn’t have money to pay her rent for a month. She worked off her rent by babysitting her landlords’ children. Last May, the office of U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon, an Oakland Democrat, helped Carranza recover her retirement benefits, but it took months for her to get her health insurance back.

The experience left her reeling.

“It’s like getting slapped on the face after more than 30 years working for the system here,” Carranza said. “And in return, this is what we have now.”

She lies awake at night imagining the future: here, where she’s spent half her life, without health insurance and possibly Social Security benefits; or in El Salvador, where two of her three children remain. Her daughter, a green-card holder who lives in Texas, hopes to become a citizen so she can petition for permanent residency for Carranza, but the process can take years. Then there’s the possibility she fears most: indefinite detention or deportation.

On a recent morning in her basement studio in Oakland, Carranza pulled a box from the back of her closet. In it was a thick stack of identification cards that included old driver’s licenses, her Social Security card, and dozens of work IDs issued by the federal government.

“My life is in that box,” she said.

This article was produced in collaboration with El Tímpano, a civic media organization serving and covering the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrant communities.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

It’s worth it

Posted on April 6, 2026April 9, 2026 by Brent Walker

The best experience of volunteering at Cornerstone Community Kitchen (CCK) each Wednesday, is to watch the volunteers prepare and be excited about helping others in need. We have a wide group of highly professional people dedicated to making this operation successful. I have only been at it for two or three years, but most have been giving their time for countless years. Volunteers take their own vehicles to pick up food on more than one occasion per week. It’s a commitment that should be recognized. But the people at CCK giving back to the community, are the ones that make volunteering for this organization an enjoyable experience. CCK has people who care and are fun to be with.

CCK is a quiet jem for Princeton, New Jersey and the surrounding area. This is a quick testimonial to the Professional Staff of CCK. I hope more people join the effort. It’s worth it.

Respectfully,
Brent Walker

Connecting with History was Super Fulfilling

Posted on April 6, 2026April 9, 2026 by Lois Gerstein

When I retired in 2020, I started looking around for volunteer opportunities in and around West Windsor. I remembered that decades before, my former next-door neighbor was an active member of the Historical Society of West Windsor. As a person who has always had a deep appreciation for all things historical, my interest was piqued. So, I followed up and started attending meetings.

The Historical Society of West Windsor has a wide array of activities: everything from being a docent at the farmstead, archiving, representing the Historical Society at local events, mentoring and helping restore the old gravestones at the Schenck Covenhoven Cemetery, which is the oldest cemetery in West Windsor, dating back to the Revolutionary War.

The most wonderful thing about being involved in the Historical Society of West Windsor is the be part of something bigger than yourself: to preserve history for future generations and to engage the surrounding communities to work together for a common interest.

GrandPals is A Wonderful Program

Posted on April 6, 2026April 10, 2026 by Bob Swierczek

Bob Swierczek, a United States Navy veteran, resides in Princeton, where he selflessly dedicates his time to various volunteer roles. He serves as a crossing guard for the police department, assists as fire police for the fire department, reads to kindergarten classes, and organizes trips to Washington, D.C. for fellow veterans. “Every year that I read to the kindergarten classes it brings me joy listening to the comments from the kids on the books I read. Some of the rhyming books are fun to read and having the kids try and guess the last word that rhymes. It’s very rewarding to see the kids progress throughout the year and their interest increasing on reading. GrandPals is a wonderful program for both the adults and the children.”