Karen Heller: A century of life well-lived

Valla Amsterdam was a small woman, a sparrow, really, with large opinions. She was one of those elegant ladies you see walking through Rittenhouse Square, though she was always racing. Few people could keep up with her.

Valla went out most nights, to the theater, movies, dinner. For years, she was in a book group, a conversation group with guest speakers from opera singers to surgeons, a Bible study group. She enrolled in classes at Penn, and attended lectures everywhere, funding a series at the Free Library's Rittenhouse branch. Last year, Valla read Proust. Her mind was restless.

These days it's not politically correct to make a big deal about age - though Valla wasn't prone to political correctness - but in her case it's telling.

Valla was 100. She died Feb. 17, three weeks after breaking her hip.

Until the last months of her life, Valla was going full throttle. "She wrote me all the time these very long, loving letters," recalls Suzanne Roberts, though both lived on the square. "She never complimented herself. She would say, 'I've never done anything of any means.' She was always interested in others."

It's not the length of a life that matters as much as the quality, though Valla had an abundance of both. "She was well aware of her good fortune to live as long as she did," says her grandson Jonathan.

"At my age, I can say anything I want to say," Valla was fond of declaring. "I can do anything I want to do."

And so she did. The previous time she broke her hip, it was on a Mediterranean cruise hosted by Bill Moyers visiting Roman and Greek antiquities.

Other women of a certain age and income might collect art and clothes. Valla loved to be smartly turned out, keeping items forever. And her apartment was saturated with paintings, many done by friends or herself. But what Valla really collected were experiences and friends.

And you were thrilled to be her friend, delighted to be in the company of such a vital woman who showed that old age could be a celebration, and not the cessation of activity, engagement, and joy.

"Her intellectual curiosity was enormous," recalls art historian Cecilia Segawa Seigle Tannenbaum. "She liked interesting people."

Last summer, I went to a dinner at her home, where she sat between Comcast founder Ralph Roberts and retired federal judge Arlin Adams, thrilled for the conversation and attention.

Valla loved being Mrs. Gustave Amsterdam, her late husband, an eminent businessman, lawyer, and civic leader. Gus served as chairman and CEO of Bankers Securities Corp., and was a director or trustee of 19 major institutions, including the Redevelopment Authority, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

"Gus took care of all matters financial, executed the big decisions," their grandson says. "But any time he was not at work, he was on her clock. She told him what to wear, what to do."

He died in February 2001, after almost 70 years of marriage. They had met at Penn, and wed twice. First eloping to Atlantic City, then returning to their homes, never telling their parents. Then marrying again, a year later.

The city is sprinkled with awards in her husband's honor, many that Valla established. The couple had one son and four grandchildren. The Gustave G. and Valla Amsterdam Foundation makes annual donations to almost 20 organizations.

She loved to treat friends to meals, at which she required hot coffee, chastising waiters if it wasn't scalding. She invariably left with a doggy bag, never wanting to waste anything. When she went to Penn to hear a lecture, she insisted on riding the bus, paying full fare because she didn't want to admit her true age.

For almost 30 years, this tiny woman drove a 1968 Chevy Impala convertible, "a giant boat which she would wheel around town," her grandson says, "in the later years bumping into street furniture, bollards, sideswiping parked cars, and returning it to the garage dented and scratched, only to call the damage to the attention of the attendants when she would come back next to pick it up, insisting that the garage must have done the damage and asking them to fix it for her on their dime."

Valla could be at once thoroughly modern and stridently old-fashioned. I never met an elderly woman less prone to nostalgia. It took concerted effort to get her to speak of the old days. She didn't wear her past. Photos were stashed in drawers. As Jonathan Amsterdam says, "She was much more interested in living in the moment and tomorrow."

Even if she believed "I've never done anything of any means," the record shows otherwise. A century of life, Valla Amsterdam left an impression, a record of philanthropy, and a large chorus of adoring friends and fans.