1: “What is your greatest fear?”
Rosa read the question before looking across the kitchen table at her husband, Henry.
“Now in their 70s, Rosa and Henry had lived in this house and sat at this same table together on most mornings for more than fifty years,” Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz write in The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
A pot of tea, a pack of Oreos, and an audio recorder sat on the table. Charlotte, a young researcher, sat in the corner next to a video camera, taking notes.
Henry was one of the original participants in the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life ever done.
He “was only 14 years old and living in Boston’s West End, in a tenement with no running water,” the authors write, “when researchers from the Study first knocked on his family’s door and asked his perplexed parents if they could make a record of his life.”
The Harvard Study had been tracking Henry year after year since 1941.
It “was in full swing when he married Rosa in August of 1954—the records show that when she said yes to his proposal, Henry couldn’t believe his luck—and now here they were in October of 2004, two months after their fiftieth wedding anniversary,” Bob and Marc observe.
“Rosa had been asked to participate more directly in the Study in 2002,” they note. “It’s about time, she said.
Henry was a private man, generally keeping things to himself. So Rosa thought it “odd” that he continued to be involved.
“But Henry said he felt a sense of duty to participate and had also developed an appreciation for the process because it gave him perspective on things,” Bob and Marc note. “So, for sixty-three years he had opened his life to the research team. . . Whenever they asked a question he did his best to tell them the truth.”
Charlotte had traveled to their home in Michigan for a two-day visit to interview Henry and Rosa on video and oversee a lengthy survey about their health, their individual lives, and their life together.
“Back in Boston the videotapes and interview transcripts would be studied so that the way Henry and Rosa talked about each other, their nonverbal cues, and many other bits of information could be coded into data on the nature of their bond,” Bob and Marc write, “data that would become part of their files and one small but important piece of a giant dataset on what a lived life is actually like.”
Not only do the Harvard Study’s subjects agree to be interviewed, but they also allow the researchers “to look at their well-being through many different lenses, including everything from brain scans to blood tests,” Bob and Marc write.
“We take samples of their hair to measure stress hormones, we ask them to describe their biggest worries and their critical goals in life, and we measure how quickly their heart rates calm down after we challenge them with brain teasers.”
2: “My greatest fear?” Henry said to Charlotte. “Or our greatest fear?”
“I like the hard questions in a certain way,” Rosa said.
“Well good,” Henry said. “You go first.”
Rosa sat still for a moment. She then told Henry that her greatest fear was that he might develop a serious health condition, or that she would have another stroke. Henry nodded his head and agreed that those were frightening possibilities.
“But, he said, they were getting to a point now where something like that was probably inevitable,” the authors write. “They spoke at length about how a serious illness might affect their adult children’s lives, and each other. Eventually Rosa admitted that there was only so much a person could anticipate, and there was no use in getting upset before it happened.”
“Is there another question?” Henry asked Charlotte.
“What’s your greatest fear, Hank?” Rosa said.
“I was hoping you would forget to ask me,” Henry said, and they both laughed. He poured more tea for Rosa, took a bite of another Oreo, and sat quietly.
“It’s not a hard one to answer,” he said. “It’s just not something I like to think about, to be honest.”
“Well they sent this poor girl all the way from Boston, so you better answer.”
“It’s ugly, I guess,” he said, his voice wavering.
“Go ahead.”
“That I won’t die first is my fear. That I’ll be left here without you.”
3: In Cambridge, Massachusetts, inside the offices of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, there is a file drawer labeled “KA–KE,” which is where the files for Henry and Rosa are stored.
“Inside we find the yellowed pages, crumbling at the edges, of Henry’s 1941 intake interview. It is written in longhand, in the interviewer’s flowing, practiced cursive,” they write. “We see that his family was among the poorest in Boston, that at age 14 Henry was seen as a ‘stable, well-controlled’ adolescent, with ‘a logical regard for his future.’
“We can see that as a young adult he was very close to his mother, but resented his father, whose alcoholism forced Henry to be the primary breadwinner. In one particularly damaging incident when Henry was in his 20s, his father told Henry’s new fiancee that her $300 engagement ring had deprived the family of needed money. Fearing she would never escape his family, his fiancee called off the engagement.
“In 1953 Henry broke free of his father when he got a job with General Motors and moved to Willow Run, Michigan,” Bob and Marc write. “There he met Rosa, a Danish immigrant and one of nine children. One year later they were married and would go on to have five children of their own. ‘Plenty, but not enough,’ in Rosa’s opinion.
“Over the next decade Henry and Rosa would experience some difficult times. In 1959 their five-year-old son, Robert, contracted polio, a challenge that tested their marriage and caused a great deal of pain and worry in the family. Henry began at GM on the factory floor as an assembler, but after missing work due to Robert’s illness he was demoted, then laid off, and at one point found himself unemployed with three children to care for.
“To make ends meet,” the authors note, “Rosa began working for the city of Willow Run, in the payroll department. While the job was initially a stopgap for the family, Rosa became much loved by her coworkers, and she worked full-time there for the next thirty years, developing relationships with people she came to think of as her second family.
“After being laid off Henry changed careers three times, finally returning to GM in 1963, and working his way up to floor supervisor. Shortly after, he reconnected with his father (who had managed to overcome his addiction to alcohol) and forgave him.”
At age 50, in 1977, Henry scored his life this way:
Enjoyment of marriage: EXCELLENT
Mood over the past year: EXCELLENT
Physical health over the past 2 years: EXCELLENT
Henry was shy, but he was dedicated to his closest relationships, especially his marriage and his children.
“These connections provided him with a deep sense of security,” Bob and Marc write. “Building on this combination of emotional security and effective coping, Henry could report over and over again that he was ‘happy’ or ‘very happy,’ even during his hardest times, and his health and longevity reflect that.”
Five years after Charlotte, the Harvard researcher, visited Henry and Rosa’s home, and seventy-one years after his initial interview with the Study, Rosa died. Henry’s greatest fear came true. Just six weeks later, Henry followed.
“But the family legacy continues in their daughter, Peggy,” the authors write. “Just recently, she sat down for an interview at our offices in Boston. Since the age of 29 Peggy has been in a happy relationship with her partner, Susan, and now, at age 57, reports no loneliness and good health. She is a respected grade school teacher and an active member of her community.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: What might I learn from Henry’s life?
Action: Discuss with a friend or family member.