Mabel Monks was born and grew up in Worcester, MA. She lived and raised her five children in the home in which she was born on the top of Heard Street Hill just up from Hadwen Park. She was a late bloomer. In her sixties, she got her driving license. That was quite a milestone. And after seeing that senior citizens could attend Clark University for free, at age sixty-eight, she enrolled in classes; after several years as a co-ed, she graduated summa cum laude in humanities when she was seventy-two years old. At age seventy-eight, Mabel became a widow and lived for the next ten years independently, serving as a docent for the Worcester Antiquarian Society, giving lectures on the architecture of Worcester to middle-school children, being active in her church, and traveling with Elder Hostel (now Road Scholar). When she was eighty-eight, she sold the home she had lived in since birth, bought an apartment in a retirement home in York, Maine, and has lived independently, meaningfully, and actively in her apartment since that time. Mabel is ninety-nine years old. Contact Mabel through www.marilynmonkspage.com