Reed Strong, Northwest Prime Time’s summer intern, is a senior in Western Washington University’s journalism program. He speaks to Northwest area seniors and baby boomers for the series LIFE LESSONS. Each is asked the same four questions: thoughts on growing older; advice for the younger generation; what are they most nostalgic about; and how the world has changed for the better.
Diana Hardwick, a life-long Seattle native, was born in 1948. Hardwick and her husband currently have nine children, two from birth and the remaining seven were adopted as foster children. Hardwick worked in customer service before she retired. She also worked for a law firm where she became acquainted with foster care. Hardwick and her husband currently have one additional foster child, whom they hope to adopt by the end of the year.
What have you found are the best aspects of growing older?
“I haven’t grown older yet! I have all these young children, my oldest is 46 and my youngest is 9. Age is just a number. My children have kept me young because we have so many of different ages. My children were born in five different decades. We had a baby not too long ago in foster care, and I realized then we had children born in six different decades.”
What’s the best advice you could give to a younger person?
“I’d say never stop learning, be a life-long learner. There’s something new I learn every single day. Whether it’s about children, something in the news, or something I read or hear. Just never stop learning.”
What thing from your childhood are you nostalgic about?
“I miss the slower pace. Everything now is rapid pace and we’re always on the go. I miss neighborhood schools, walking distance to school, and a lot of children in the neighborhood. I miss that. On our block, my children don’t have anyone their age to play with. Fortunately two of them can walk to school, but all my other boys have had to take buses. When we wanted to play baseball, we had to drive a ways to do it. It wasn’t just in the neighborhood, not like it was when I was growing up.”
What changes in the world do you think are for the better?
“The speed of information. If we want to look something up, it’s just a click away on the computer or on our phones, where we can just quickly access something. I remember looking things up in encyclopedias, going to the library to find the information to do my homework. [If I had] a question I had to go to the library and look it up. Now I just walk in, sit down at the computer, and tap tap, it’s there. I also remember looking things up in phonebooks! I had two of the big private phonebooks delivered last week, and I just put them back in the recycling, because we don’t need them.”
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