Eisen
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He began as a copy boy at The Philadelphia Daily News and
worked for six years at the old Ft. Lauderdale News. Locally,
he worked as a writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer and
The Philadelphia Bulletin. In summing up his journalistic career,
he said, “I made a hell of a lot of people angry.”
When the Bulletin went out of business in the early ’80s, Eisen
found himself again at a career crossroads. It was at this point that
he got what he says was the worst advice of his life — from his
own father.

“It was the same thing he told me when I was 18,” Eisen recalls
of his father, who worked for a cleaning company. “He said,
‘Eddie, why don’t you go into the cleaning business? You’ll make a
The Good Life
Whether your interests include
rediscovering your passions,
exploring new horizons or devoting
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At Foulkeways there’s always
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I don’t want to mop floors.”
— Ed Eisen
Visit foulkeways.org or call 215-283-7010
1120 Meetinghouse Road, Gwynedd, PA 19436
16 DECEMBER 15, 2016
lot of money. You’ll have a life.’ I said the same thing to him at 18
and in 1982: ‘Pop, you don’t understand. I’m a writer. I’m a jour-
nalist. I don’t want to mop floors.’”
So the then-48-year-old took at job at The Atlantic City Press as
a copy editor. He hated being behind the scenes, but wasn’t plan-
ning to leave — until one Saturday night, three months after he
started, when his boss called him in for a talk.

“I’m sorry, Ed,” the boss told him. “You didn’t make it.’”
The reason for Eisen’s dismissal? His failure to master the new
computer system.

The boss did have kind parting words, though: “I’m sure you’ll
find something else in life that you’ll do well with.”
“Boy, was I down,” Eisen recalled. “The thing that defined me,
the thing I had been most passionate about — being a journalist
— it just ended. I was depressed.”
The depression lasted three days. Then he got up, pulled the dusty
Smith-Corona typewriter from under the bed, and got to work.

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“I had a wife and four kids and the roof was leaking.”
The PR firm Eisen then launched, Eisen & Associates, lasted 28
years, until he “retired” in 2010. Of course, he didn’t really retire.

Instead, he reinvented himself again — this time as something like
a spirit guide for people moving through post-retirement.

He started at nursing homes and retirement facilities, and then
broadened his reach to libraries, universities, synagogues and
churches. He has a whole slate of programs, many of which he
refers to as “this thing I do.”
“There’s this thing I do called ‘A Reporter’s Front-Row Seat to
History,’ where I talk about the people I’ve met, like Mother Teresa
and two popes, Joe Frazier, Jackie Gleason,” he said. “Then I’ve got
another talk called ‘New Year Equals New Job.’ I do a quiz show
called ‘Can You Top This?’ I do a thing called ‘I’m 80 — What Do
I Do Now?’ I do a thing called ‘Confessions of a Philadelphia Spin
Doctor,’ which is based on my book. I do ‘The Pope’s Jewish PR
Guy and Other Tales: How Ed Eisen Said No to the Mafia and
Lived.’ I do a thing called ‘From Caterpillar to Butterfly: How You,
Too, Can Change.’”
His most popular program these days is probably the one
about current events.

“Some of these people in these retirement homes are told, ‘You
don’t talk about politics. You don’t talk about religion. You don’t
talk about these controversial things.’”
That’s not Eisen’s style.

“I do a thing called ‘Sound Off,’ where we debate the big issues
in the news. For one hour we talk about Donald Trump and the
presidency and what it means for America. We talk about what it
means to be a Muslim. We talk about issues that are frowned upon
to talk about at the dinner table. It’s sort of like Anderson Cooper
and Bill O’Reilly combined. They just love it.”
Another much-loved program is the one he does for people
with Alzheimer’s and dementia, in which he plays music from the
’30s, ’40s and ’50s, and passes around an old Quaker oatmeal box
that’s filled with written prompts: “Can you remember the last
time you sat around a radio listening to it?” “Tell the story of how
you met your spouse.” “What was the happiest day of your life?”
“What would it take to make you very happy today?”
If workshop attendees can’t find an answer, Eisen — not
surprisingly — answers the questions himself.

All of Eisen’s activity these days is motivated by the same
desire: to enrich the lives of others.

“You’ve got to make yourself happy by making other people
happy,” he said. It’s an impulse he probably got from his mother.

“My mother was from Latvia. We were poor. But she would
have a stranger come into the house on the Sabbath every Friday
night. That was my mom’s way of giving back.”
He and his wife have passed the giving torch on to their kids:
Daughters Stacy and Gwen both work in the health care industry,
while son Seth recently wrote a play inspired by work he did as a
caretaker for an elderly man. (Eisen’s other son, Steve, died of
cancer at 33.)
“I’m having a ball, I really am,” Eisen says of his 18th — or is it
19th? — act. “People look at me, and they don’t believe that I’m 80.”
So is that the takeaway? Is that the point?
“The point,” said Eisen, “is that there’s always hope, and the sun
will come out tomorrow.” l
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