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player ready...From the very young to the very old, Barbara Gilbert spent a lifetime helping others.
She began volunteering in the early 1950s with a position at the Chicago Club for Crippled Children. About four decades later, she became the first female board chair of what is now CJE SeniorLife, a nonprofit, Chicago-based agency that serves the needs of older adults
In between, she served as co-director for a girls camp, researched questions for WIND-AM 560’s “Call for Action” hotline and worked in Chicago’s Medicare office, where she became the director of beneficiary education.
“Barbara could relate to people of all ages, young and old alike,” said former colleague Mark Weiner, president and CEO at CJE SeniorLife. “She was direct, honest and smart, while exuding a wonderfully kind and caring spirit that made her very approachable.”
Gilbert, 85, died of heart failure Dec. 9 at the Midwest Palliative & Hospice CareCenter in Glenview. She was a resident of Highland Park after many years in Glencoe.
“In my business and throughout life, I’ve met a lot of older and younger people,” Weiner said. “Some older people act young, and some young people act old. Barbara was always young in spirit and action. She was very elegant, engaged, interested, present and fun to be around. She was a very special woman.”
Born Barbara Rosenstone in Chicago, Gilbert graduated from Evanston High School and then from Northwestern University with a bachelor’s degree in education.
In the early 1950s, she was a substitute teacher in the Chicago area and began volunteering at the Chicago Club for Crippled Children. In 1952, she married Howard Gilbert. Over the next seven years, while still teaching, she became his co-director at Camp Agawak, an eight-week summer camp for girls in Minocqua, Wis.
“She loved working with the girls and did everything she could to make their camp experience a positive and memorable one,” said her husband. “She was like a second mom to many of them.”
During the 1960s and into the 1970s, Gilbert worked for WIND as a researcher for the Call for Action hotline that helped listeners with an array of problems, from landlord issues to where to find a store selling Santa Claus costumes.
“You wouldn’t believe the kinds of problems she tackled, but she approached each one as a challenge and worked hard finding solutions,” said her daughter Peggy Gilbert Kubert.
In the late 1970s, Gilbert began working in Chicago’s Medicare office. As director of beneficiary education, she traveled around the state working to help people file for their benefits.
Through her role there she became familiar with and began volunteering at the Council for Jewish Elderly, founded in 1971 and now known as CJE SeniorLife. After serving on its board of directors, she became the agency’s first female board chair, holding that position from 1991 to 1993.
In a recent newsletter, Gilbert indicated that one of her greatest contributions to the agency was her guidance on how to run a good, tight meeting with action items and deliverables. “Get people in … and get ’em out,” she was quoted as saying. “Everyone has important work to do.”
During her tenure, Gilbert also helped lay the groundwork for Weinberg Community for Senior Living, a residential facility for the elderly in Deerfield, and was present at its groundbreaking in 1995.
“Barbara was a leader with foresight and vision,” Weiner said. “About two decades ago, Weinberg Community was acclaimed as the first licensed assisted living facility in Illinois, and we owe much of its existence to the efforts of people like Barbara, who saw the urgent and important need for innovative housing for older adults.”
In addition to her husband and daughter, Gilbert is survived by two sons, James and Andy, and nine grandchildren.
Services were held.
Giangrasse Kates is a freelance reporter.
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