Alice Gerber at 90 is still firing on all cylinders

No one wants to be defined by age. Or race, or weight, or religion. It’s insulting. There are so many other important things. It begs the question: what am I, chopped liver? Still, that’s what comes to mind when I see Alice Gerber at the weekly Tybee Island Farmers Market. It’s late afternoon, the sun is hanging low in the western sky. The heat is brutal. I don’t want to complain, but I don’t want to be there. And there’s Alice, ensconced in a beach chair under a black hat, in front of two fans, behind her art work, cheerful, lighthearted, high spirited, signing every piece she sells. Every dollar she takes in goes to helping people with Parkinson’s.

In two months, she’ll be 91.

“Where’s your hat?” she said to me. “You need a hat.”

The paintings are beach-centric, they’re reasonable, they garner repeat customers.

“I remember you,” she said to a couple browsing for another painting.

“We’re from Indiana. We come every year.”

Last year she raised $10,000 for Michael Cohen’s Get Excited and Move program (bit.ly/SavGEM).

Alice helped start a precursor program when her husband Marx was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He died 26 years ago.

Related:Local exercise program allows patients to fight back against Parkinson’s

But first, at age 73, she went back to school at Georgia Southern University to get her facts straight, to do her research. In the process she got a doctorate in leadership and administration.

“Studying was a cinch,” said Alice, who was the valedictorian from Senn High School in Chicago. “I enjoyed what I was doing. I was no dummy.”

She’s been painting since she was 10.  But it was not her mother’s first choice. Don’t you want to be a dancer and join the June Taylor dancers who performed on the “Jackie Gleason Show”? She didn’t. “I wouldn’t lift my leg. It wasn’t for me.”

What about acting? For that her mother sent her to the Goodman Theatre. “I wouldn’t speak,” Alice said.

Painting won out. Her mother sent her to the Art Institute of Chicago.

“I have one of your paintings,” a new customer said, waiting until she had Alice’s attention.

“I know,” Alice said. “I remember. The lighthouse, right?”

“Right!”

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Alice was raised in Chicago — “3550 Lake Shore Drive” — but she had family in Savannah, among them “the Paderewskis and the Portmans,” so she and her parents visited often.

Her grandfather Alex Paderewski, “was the first tailor in Savannah. His shop was on West Broad Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard), next to the old train station.” He made suits for the conductors.

“That one’s from 15th street,” she said to another interested customer. “That’s in the Back River.”

Every time she visited Savannah someone would try to fix her up, Alice said.

Eventually her aunt’s dad’s sister introduced her to Marx Gerber. He would go on to have two dry good shops in downtown Savannah, Moxy and Be Foxy with Moxy.

“Yoo-hoo,” Alice said, waving her hand to a woman passing by. “Are we going to have our book club or what? Everyone’s asking me.”

“There’s been a pandemic,” the woman answered. “Remember?”

COVID-19 didn’t bother Alice too much. Her son is an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She stayed home and read and painted and worked on her jewelry. She takes old coins and inserts them into old watches. They’re quite popular, she said.

Now her son is a potter. Her grandson is a painter. “He’s not asking for money so I figure he’s doing alright.”

Just then a friend from Atlanta came up. “I taught her at Virginia Heard Elementary. She has two sisters,” Alice said.

“How can you remember all that?” someone asked.

“When you’re nearly 91 you have a lot of memories,” Alice said, without addressing how she could remember all these people. “Were you in Miss Mosley’s class? I used to hear about these people. Now I’m afraid they’re gone. Be well, babe, come see me again. It’s so strange to see kids from second and third grade.”

No stranger to technology, Alice, who was wearing frayed jeans she bought at Good Will for $5 (“They’re a Good Will special”), set up a Square type of transaction. “They buy more when they swipe,” she said, a wry smile spreading across her face.

“It’s tax deductible,” she reminded one reluctant customer.

“As long as they’re helping out Michael (Cohen), I’m happy,” she said.

Contact Jane Fishman at gofish5@earthlink.net or call 912-484-3045. See more columns by Jane at SavannahNow.com/lifestyle/.        

If you go

Michael Cohen’s Get Excited and Move program: bit.ly/SavGEM