One who sees all

By Jeff Long

An old man, posture hunched by osteoporosis, makes his way down a corridor. The nurses don't know much about him, except he's a bit eccentric. They don't know what he did for a living. They don't know his accomplishments. They don't know the risks he took.

The preceding paragraph could be written about virtually any elderly gentleman. Or lady, for that matter. Most of the time, we only know what we see. We are governed too often by our assumptions about age. But there is far more in an elderly person than what our eyes tell us. That is, if we bothered to look. That is, if we weren't looking down all the time. That is, if we didn't assume what's on our cell phone screens is far more interesting than the living history right in front of us.

I used to work in a retirement community. I didn't love the job; it was impossible to make a success of it. But I did love the people. Seniors are the most interesting people on the planet. They've seen and done everything -- and most are too modest to boast. When I'm with seniors -- and I am rapidly approaching that designation myself -- I feel comforted. Where they are is where I'm going. If they can live with grace, with dignity, yes, even with happiness -- as the vast majority do -- then maybe I can relax a bit. It's all going to be OK.

The other day, a 90-year old civil engineer passed away in Romania. In the years before his death, he needed assistance with what nursing homes refer to as "activities of daily living." Bathing, eating, you can figure out the rest. Those who attended to Eugeniu Iordachescu in his physical decline did not know that as a younger man, he saved historic churches from communism's wrecking ball.

For many years, Bucharest's historic center was known as "the Paris of the East," with captivating centuries-old buildings. In the late 1970s, after visiting North Korea, then-Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu decided on a radical redevelopment for the national capital. He wanted Bucharest to resemble Pyongyang, the seat of North Korea's government. Ceausescu had a scorched earth plan -- wanting to tear down the beauty of Bucharest and replace it with drab, windowless, utility-friendly buildings.

Iordachescu was brought in on the project. But he couldn't allow history to be entirely destroyed. He devised a plan to take a small Orthodox church, built in 1725, and place it on what he called a concrete "tray," and move it to another location. His scheme was approved. In 1982, the over 8,000-ton church was lifted, placed on rails, and rolled out of the menacing path of Ceausescu.

According to The Week magazine, which did a small sidebar story on Iordachescu's life, the engineer and his team ended up saving nearly 30 Bucharest buildings from the dictator's wrecking ball. When Ceausescu was overthrown in 1989, Iordachescu had just completed a final project, rolling away and preserving another church, this one 200 years old, to its new home. Under the nose of a dictator who couldn't care less what happened to those churches, an engineer quietly preserved places of worship for generations still unborn to enjoy.

Nobody who saw Iordachescu in his final years knew any of that background, I reckon. All the nurses witnessed was an old man who was unable to stand up straight. But there is someone who sees all that we do and who doesn't forget. If you didn't realize that, you've just been reminded. Rest well in the knowledge, readers.