At 85, Ruth Abramowitz is still working hard and loving it

Like millions of Americans, Ruth Abramowitz gets up every Monday morning, gets dressed, grabs a quick breakfast and heads out the door to work.

By 9 a.m., she can be found at her desk at the New Jersey State Employment office in Neptune, with a big, bright smile, eager to start her workday.

"I love my job," says Abramowitz, who works as a data entry clerk. "And I am good at it."

Not too surprising there, unless you consider Abramowitz's age.

"I'm 85 and proud of it," the Asbury Park resident says with a laugh. "I'm an active, productive senior and I plan to be for many more years."

Abramowitz is the first to say she isn't afraid of a little hard work.

"Work's good for the mind, body and soul," she says. "Without work, you get old."

For the last five years, Abramowitz has been staying "young at heart" with help from the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. In New Jersey, Easter Seals New Jersey is the subgrantee for the program, which provides training and employment services to low-income senior citizens age 55 and older.

"If can do the work and you want to work, then you should work," Abramowitz says. "Age should never be a factor."

Abramowitz knows a thing or two about work.

"I've worked one way or another for as long as I can remember," she says.

Abramowitz's first job came as an unpaid baby sitter for her younger sister when she was growing up. She had some part-time jobs during high school, and upon graduation in 1938, went to work as a secretary for the Works Progress Administration, helping map out areas in the tri-state area.

When World War II broke out, Abramowitz moved to Port Newark, where she went to work for the Army in the clerical pool. She had secret clearance, she says, because she was entering data on shipping out troops, equipment and supplies.

Work kept her busy when her first husband, Jack Shapiro, was shipped out. It kept her going when he died about 16 months after the couple said their "I do's."

"I had to keep going," Abramowitz says. "It's what Jack would have wanted."

In 1948, Abramowitz married her childhood boyfriend, Seymour Abramowitz.

"Our mothers set us up," Abramowitz says, smiling. "He was driving a taxi and he took me out for a ride, and I knew he was the man I was going to marry."

Several years later, the Abramowitzes found themselves moving to Alaska for Seymour's work.

"Alaska wasn't even a state then," Abramowitz says. "There wasn't much there and it was cold, but love is love."

Abramowitz found a job on the Army base where the couple lived, working in the legal department.

"I liked to work . . . and there wasn't much else to do," she says. "For the first year, three families shared a barracks, and there was only one bathroom."

The couple returned to North Jersey at the end of 1954. Four years later, the couple adopted their son, Jerry.

"He's the love of my life," Abramowitz says. "We got him when he was 5 days old, and we've been there for each other ever since."

Abramowitz stayed at home with Jerry until he went to school. When her son was school-age, she worked a variety of jobs — selling Avon and Beeline Fashions, among others.

"But I always made it a point to be home when my son came home from school," she says.

Over the years, she also became involved with a variety of nonprofit organizations, including Deborah Heart and Lung Center, which still plays an integral role in her life decades later.

"It's my top priority," she says. "There have been heart problems in my family, and this is my way of trying to give back and help."

Abramowitz, who was living in Woodbridge with her family, moved to Lakewood in 1968 when her mother took ill.

"She needed someone to take care of her," Abramowitz says, matter-of-factly, "and that someone was me."

Abramowitz, who once dreamed of becoming a nurse, found herself taking a nurse's aide course to learn how to lift, bathe and take care of her mother.

"If I couldn't be a nurse, a nurse's aide it was going to be," she says.

After her mother died, Abramowitz continued working as a nurse's aideuntil she was about 60.

Her husband, Seymour, had retired from his job as a dispatch manager, and the couple decided to combine a couple of their favorite things: traveling and antiquing.

"We'd go to different places and buy and sell our things," Abramowitz says. "It was a lot of fun, and we got to go meet a variety of people along the way."

And even though she was "retired," Abramowitz admits to doing some freelance typing because "I didn't want my typing to get rusty. . . . To this day, I can still type 35 words a minute."

Eventually the couple moved to Asbury Park. In 1993, after 45 years of marriage, Seymour Abramowitz died.

"I knew I had to go on," Abramowitz says. "It wasn't my time to go. There was still so much for me to do."

She became more involved with Deborah and other community organizations.

And in 2000, she went back to work.

As Abramowitz tells the story, she was in Florida five years ago when a representative from the Monmouth County Office on Aging came to her apartment building to talk about a program for people 55 and older who needed to supplement their income. Building management people said they knew the perfect candidate — only she wasn't in town.

"I wasn't even back a day when the building people approached me and asked if I would be interested in returning to work," Abramowitz recalls. "I definitely missed working . . . and I'm not one to sit around, so I decided to go for an interview."

In less than two weeks, Abramowitz had found a home away from home — the Monmouth County Urban League office in Asbury Park, working as a clerk/typist.

"There I was, almost 80 years old, retired for more than 20 years, and I was back behind a desk," she says with a laugh. "And I loved it."

Abramowitz worked for the agency until it lost its funding in December 2001. She was then placed with the state employment office in Neptune, where she continues to work almost four years later.

"I learned a long time ago that inactivity makes you old," she says. "Your attitude is 90 percent of how you're going to feel that day."

As someone who has lived a long and fulfilling life, Abramowitz says she makes it a point to tell younger people about the importance of time.

"Time is something you can't change, can't get back," she says. "And once time is gone, it's something you can never get back. It's important that you take advantage of every second, every minute, of every day."

These days, Abramowitz heads to the office Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, working from 9 a.m. to noon on Mondays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The schedule gives her time to pursue her other two passions: Deborah and creative writing.

She serves as vice president of fund-raising and membership for the New Jersey Shore chapter of Deborah.

"It's important to give back," she says. "And while I may not have a lot of money, I have skills, talents and time . . . and I give freely of them all."

Her writing, she says, started when she was a young girl as a way to deal with the frustration of having to watch her younger sister. She continued to write over the years, but never took her work — or herself — seriously.

Three years ago, things changed when she became part of a weekly writers group that meets in Bradley Beach.

"I so enjoy writing because you can reach a lot of people with your words," Abramowitz says. "You can tell a story or give an opinion that perhaps will touch others' lives."

Harriet May Savitz, the writers group leader, calls Abramowitz her role model.

"She's my reason for wanting to get to 85," the Bradley Beach author says. "Ruth has lived her life to the fullest, and her stories are filled with so much life, laughter, love and wisdom. Her writing portrays all that she is."

And what she is these days is a working woman who loves her life.

"As seniors, we are the fastest-growing group in America today, and our numbers are increasing as the years go by," Abramowitz says. "We shouldn't be judged by a number (our age) but what we can do. We're hard-working, honest, dependable and willing . . . and we should not let ourselves be defined by others. Only we can define ourselves."