"Twelve-year Old Junior High Student Wins Texas Future Problem Solving Competition"
In late April 1997, Mrs. Lee, the coordinator of the Gifted and Talented program for the Hamilton schools, was doing an Internet search for Lindsay’s international competition on the future of aging societies and found the Web site of the Huffington Center on Aging. This started a series of e-mail requests and replies between Mrs. Lee, Dr. Robert E. Roush, the HCOA webmaster, and Robert J. Luchi, M.D., the HCOA director. Each day, Dr. Luchi and I would look forward to seeing an e-mail from Mrs. Lee, styled "Note from Hamilton." Over the course of the next six weeks, we provided Lindsay’s coach with information that she shared with her pupil, and we learned a lot about life in rural towns like Hamilton, whose county has an older population approaching 33% with one small hospital and only a couple of doctors, one of whom is Mrs. Lee’s son who just finished his residency in family practice. As each week inched toward Lindsay’s and Mrs.
Lee’s departure for Ann Arbor, we became enthralled with the notion that a young
teenager from a small (pop. 2791) Texas town would be taking her first airplane trip to
meet with youth from around the world debating the future of aging societies. And then, it
became apparent why we were so interested in not only Lindsay, as a person involved in a
great adventure that would enhance her self-concept, but Lindsay as a prototype of the
future, period. One, who like her fellow global-village cohorts, would someday be
responsible for making policies and for caring for an older population, and who someday
would become an older person herself. Worldwide today, the planet has 1,000,000 new 60
year old persons each month. By the year 2020, that number will have grown to over one
billion. In the U.S., by the year 2030, one of every five |
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Why would the headlines of a local newspaper in the small,
rural central Texas town of Hamilton be of interest to a bunch of gerontologists at a
major medical school? Well, as it turns out, sixth-grader Lindsay Lee -- shown with the
plaque she won at the state competition in Austin -- was going to compete in the 23rd
Annual International Future Problem Solving Conference in Ann Arbor Michigan, and her
coach, Mrs. Linda Lee (no relationship), contacted us for assistance. 
persons will be 65+ years of
age, and in the year 2085, when Lindsay will have the opportunity to become a centenarian,
demographers are predicting that we may have over 4,000,000 Americans who’ve reached
the 100-year mark. Who knows how much more active life expectancy will be the norm
at that time. But, with the type of basic research on cell senescence conducted by people
like Drs. Jim and Olivia Smith at the HCOA, and the type of clinical knowledge produced by
geriatricians like Dr. Luchi and his colleagues around the world, Lindsay could go on for
another 20 or so years. And our goal is not so much that extra 20 years just for the sake
of being 120, but quality years when Lindsay could remember that trip to Ann Arbor and
look at the photo of her when she was 12 with her mentor (shown at her side below) and
remember those doctors at Baylor who were pulling for her, and even remember that she
didn’t place. Then she would tell her visitors about what she learned from the
process and what she did to help solve the problems of the future and what she thinks the
problems of the 22nd century will be that 12-year olds and their teachers need to be
thinking about. That’s why we’re interested in the Lindsay’s and
Linda’s from all the towns across America and the world, now and in the future, which
we think will be a bright one.