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  Isabella Publishing is pleased to present:  
  
"Life in the Last Lane"
 
  The new novel by
Barbara L. Mahoney
 
 
A Note


One day I was told by a young woman that she could not see anything good about aging.
She was about thirty-five years old. She told me she had recently received a book from a friend entitled “What’s Good About Aging”. When she opened the book, all the pages were blank.
The price of the book was $5.00.
For some reason I felt I had been physically assaulted.
I asked if there were any books about the alternative. She didn’t get it.
I think she has a lot to learn about life and living.

First lesson: Be grateful for each day.
Second lesson: Choose to be happy.


 
   
 

About the Author

Barbara Louise Mahoney was born into poverty in 1924. Her father was a violent alcoholic. Her mother did her best but the Great Depression and her husband’s alcoholism made all things worse for the family. They lived in Salem, Mass.

Barbara’s ill-advised early marriage (to get out of the house) proved to be emotionally and physically disastrous and ended in divorce after sixteen years. Her ex-husband died a few years after the divorce.

Over the years she had worked as a spinner in a cotton mill, a tube tester in various electronics plants, a janitor, a religious book store manager, a public school teacher aide and a geriatric project aide, all to support herself and the children.

A second marriage, years later was difficult at times and life for her and the children was hard. Her husband was a bit of a perfectionist. He died of kidney failure.

Alone again, her children with lives of their own, she decided to upgrade her education and fulfill a lifelong dream of going to college.

After completing an Associate Degree at North Shore Community College, she enrolled at University of Mass, Boston, earning a bachelor degree, with a concentration in Gerontology. She was then sixty-eight years old and had been working as Executive Director of the Stoneham Council on Aging. Barbara had finally found the better life she’d dreamed of —working with elders; work she truly loved.

She serves on the Mystic Valley Elder Services Board of Directors and is Secretary of the Council on Aging Board and does volunteer work at her beloved senior center.

Mrs. Mahoney is happily married to Jack Mahoney, a Laboratory Contractor and they live in Stoneham, MA. She’s the mother of six children, eight grandchildren and seven great–grand children, three step–children and six step–grandchildren.

Mrs. Mahoney is a former member of the Mass Poetry Society and the North Shore Poets’ Forum and for five years she wrote a popular weekly column on aging issues and reminiscence themes for the Stoneham Sun, a community newspaper.

 




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