Still Taking On the Challenges
By Mike Costanza
Even after almost 33 years on the job, Mary Rose McBride still enjoys coming to work at Lifespan of Greater Rochester.
“Every day, there is some sort of a new challenge that pops up,” the 66-year-old said. “I like to keep my brain active.”
As Lifespan’s vice president for marketing and communications, McBride has a lot to keep her brain active. Through its many programs, the regional nonprofit offers a host of services for older adults, their families and their caregivers in Monroe County and around the Finger Lakes region. McBride’s duties range from public relations work to helping to manage Lifespan’s annual main fundraiser, the gala Celebration of Aging luncheon.
McBride, who turns 67 at the end of March, has long cherished challenges. In her 20s, the lifelong Democrat worked on the late Democratic State Senator Ralph Quattrociocchi’s successful 1985 reelection campaign, then spent two years working for him as a public relations aide. In 1987, she put her political skills to use again for her father, the late Robert J. “Bob” Stevenson, when she ran his first campaign to represent the Northwest District on Rochester City Council.
At that time, the Northwest District was the only part of the city that contained a majority of registered Republicans, so Stevenson had an uphill battle. Despite that he won and was reelected four times. McBride managed every one of those campaigns but the one that took place while she was living with her then-husband in Syracuse and working for the Salvation Army.
After three years in Syracuse, McBride answered an ad from the Regional Council on Aging, a Rochester nonprofit that was looking for someone to run its Retired & Senior Volunteer Program. The federal program helps those who are 55 years old and older find fulfilling roles as volunteers.
Though she knew nothing about aging — her bachelor’s degree is in mass communications — McBride wanted to return to her hometown. The Regional Council on Aging hired her and she and her husband returned to Rochester.
At that time, the nonprofit had only about 20 employees and an annual budget of about $1.5 million. It had just bought a seven-story building on Rochester’s North Clinton Avenue, but had failed to raise the money needed to cover that purchase.
“The organization was on the brink of closing,” McBride said.
Despite that, she stayed on the job and even took on the task of modernizing the nonprofit’s communication systems.
“One of the first things I did when I was hired was to buy a new phone system for the agency,” McBride said. “We were still taking messages on pink pads.”
In 1994, the agency brought Fran Weisberg on to turn things around. The new president and CEO knew McBride through her political activity and put her in charge of marketing and public relations. Then the two began working on some of the nonprofit’s problems. The first one they tackled was the need to change its name.
“We weren’t regional, it wasn’t a council and we didn’t like the word ‘aging’ in the name,” McBride said.
Weisberg and McBride worked with a local ad agency to rename and rebrand their nonprofit and Lifespan was born. The name change signified a break with the organization’s past and with previous views of aging.
“I think 60 used to be ‘old,’” McBride said. “Today, in their 60s, 70s, 80s and sometimes even their 90s, [older adults] want to take on the opportunities of our longer lives.”
She and Weisberg also began reorganizing the agency.
“Every program kind of existed on its own. There was no overarching agency,” McBride said. “We really had to try to kind of bring it all together, so we were one place. It was a hard feat.”
McBride and Weisberg continued working together and eventually became close friends.
“Her vision and leadership brought the agency back from the brink and began a time of growth,” McBride said.
While working with her CEO on other issues, McBride also helped bring Lifespan into the information age.
She signed herself and other employees up for their first email accounts, arranged for the agency to have its own internal server installed and crawled under desks fixing the wiring that connected its computers. Very soon, she was the agency’s lone IT specialist.
Weisberg left Lifespan in 2004 when Ann Marie Cook became the agency’s new president and CEO. The nonprofit now has approximately 200 employees and an annual budget of about $20 million and operates at five locations. Its 30 programs provide a wide variety of services for older adults, their families and their caregivers.
Older adults can get help arranging their finances, selecting their health insurance plans and applying for Medicare. Those living in long-term care facilities can obtain assistance with resolving care issues and care givers can gain respite from their duties.
Lifespan also offers transportation to medical appointments, educational programs and other services of benefit to older adults.
“We’ve grown to meet the needs and wants of our growing population of older adults,” McBride said. “Most people don’t realize it, but in ” one in four people living in Monroe County is 60 or older.”
McBride no longer has to maintain Lifespan’s IT systems, but has remained busy marketing the agency, creating brochures, reports and other documents for its programs, applying for grants to finance them and presenting Lifespan and its programs on social media.
“I’m still a team of one, even though we’ve grown tremendously,’ McBride said.
She also tries to make the public more aware of ageism, a form of prejudice or discrimination that targets particular age groups, especially the elderly.
“Ageism is ubiquitous, isolating and limiting for older people; it can even lead to health, financial problems and even premature death,” McBride said. “It’s going to take quite some time before ageism is understood and taken seriously. That’s another challenge.”
McBride also helps manage Lifespan’s biggest annual fundraiser, the Celebration of Aging luncheon. The gala event has drawn as many as 1,800 people to Rochester to hear keynote speakers who, in addition to being able to relate entertaining and informative stories, are at least 60 years old and role models for older adults. Their speaking fees must be within the nonprofit’s budget.
“The affordable part is the biggest challenge lately,” McBride said.
Pro football hall of famer and former Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy, actor Henry Winkler and the late Julia Child have all entertained the event’s audiences. The late sex therapist and talk show host Dr. Ruth Westheimer was one of the gala’s more colorful speakers.
“Dr. Ruth was a hoot,” McBride said. “She talked Kegel exercises and other things having to do with sex.”
When properly done, Kegel exercises strengthen the muscles supporting the bladder and can help improve the sex life.
Even when a speaker meets all of Lifespan’s qualifications, there’s always the chance of a snag.
Actress Kate Mulgrew agreed to speak at the gala this year, but her contractual obligation to Apple TV forced her to cancel. After scrambling to find a replacement, McBride managed to sign up John Quinones, host of the ABC television show “What Would You Do?” to speak at the event.
In addition to helping Lifespan accomplish its mission, McBride volunteers as a tutor for Saint’s Place, a local nonprofit that offers free clothing, furniture, housewares and tutoring to refugees who settle in the Rochester area.
In 2016, she began tutoring a woman from Myanmar. Line Mana had come to this country with her husband and two little girls and needed to learn English. McBride grew close to the family and found herself assisting them with all sorts of tasks.
“I helped with opening bank accounts, with bills, with driving lessons, with the citizenship test, with cultural outings, with school placement, at teacher-parent conferences,” she said.
When the two girls did not appear to be getting the attention they needed in a local public school, McBride helped their parents transfer them to a private Catholic school. The family subsequently moved to Nashville, Tennessee, but McBride has stayed in touch with them over the internet.
McBride and her husband eventually divorced. Nowadays, she loves traveling with her long-term partner, Mike Martin. Last year, they spent time in Olympic National Park in the state of Washington and the Adirondacks and visited Spain and the US Virgin Islands. They also enjoy bicycling, exercising in the gym and running.
“I’m not an athlete by any means, but I took first place in my age group in the Lilac 5K last May,” McBride said. “The older you get, the easier it is to come in first.”
She also loves to spend time in the garden of her Rochester home. When asked what she plans to do in the next five years or so, McBride wasn’t sure what path she might take.
“In two years, it will be our 30th celebration and it will mark [my] 35 years at Lifespan,” she said. “I’ll be 69, so we’ll see, but I’m thinking it will be time to do something different.”
For more information on Lifespan, go to www.lifespan-roch.org.
The Gift of a Rose
Line Mana says Mary Rose McBride is “almost like a guardian angel” to her family.
“She truly helped us through many adversities,” Mana said.
Mana, her husband Kling Maung and their daughters Esther Ki and Elin Ski emigrated from Myanmar to Malaysia. In 2015, they traveled to the US and settled in Rochester. No one spoke English. In Myanmar, family members do not share a single last name.
“I had to juggle many paperworks, my children’s school enrollments, work and learning a new language,” Mana said, through her daughter Ski. “When I needed to take my children out of school for appointments, it was hard to communicate because I couldn’t speak much English.”
McBride, who is a volunteer tutor for the refugee aid agency Saint’s Place, began teaching the immigrants English in 2016. After a time, she began helping them with important paperwork, tutoring Mana for her citizenship test, assisting the girls with their schoolwork and taking them out to local festivals. When Esther and Elin weren’t getting the attention they needed in a local public school, McBride helped them enroll in the Nativity Preparatory Academy, a small local Catholic school.
“She always looks out for us, and gives my family confidence through any struggle we go through,” Mana said. “I truly appreciate her, and believe we met because of God.”
In the family’s culture, those who are educated are often called “Teacher.” Though Mana and her family all address McBride in this way, they also think of her in more affectionate terms.
“Elin and Esther like to think of her as their godmother, like the fairy godmother in Cinderella,” Mana said. “That really goes to show the amount of love we have for her and the impacts she had on us.”
Elin demonstrated her regard for McBride about two years ago, when she graduated from the Nativity Preparatory Academy. Each of the graduates was given a rose, which they could present to someone who had made an impact on their lives. Elin gave it to McBride.
Without Her, the Journey Would Not Have Happened
Fran Weisberg remembers when she and Mary Rose McBride worked together to change what was originally called the Regional Council on Aging into Lifespan.
“This journey that we went on, without her it would not have happened,” said Lifespan’s former president and CEO, who considers McBride a good friend.
Weisberg also spoke of the skill that McBride demonstrated as Lifespan’s vice president of marketing and communications.
“Today, and this is something that Mary Rose created, when the community thinks “Lifespan,” it thinks ‘aging,’” she said.
Ann Marie Cook, Lifespan’s current president and CEO, has worked with McBride for nearly 29 years.
“Mary Rose is extraordinary,” Cook said. “She has a particular flair about things which makes her
very special.”
Cook praised McBride for helping to change the way aging is viewed in the community.
“She is the one who came up with kind of a stylistic guide when talking about older adults, and kind of leads our efforts on having people recognize ageism, and of course making sure that people don’t continue to perpetuate ageist conversations, words, thoughts,” Cook said.