95-year-old demographer, tutor still has plenty to say

A few weeks ago, George Immerwahr stood at the top of the hill, in the chill of the morning, leaning up against his walker, looking out across the land. His tutoring at Kenmore Elementary School was done for the day. So, he stood at the school's entrance, weighing his options for the more than half-mile walk home.

The route to the right had more chirping birds. And fewer cars. And an easier slope down. The route to the left was tougher, with a steep drop and a busy road. But it had one very nice quality.

"You can see the kids at play," Immerwahr said, then steered his walker to the left.

Until last week, when Immerwahr, 95, went into the hospital with terminal prostate cancer, this was his favorite routine. Four days a week he would walk to the school. And four days a week, he would walk back to the assisted-living facility for lunch.

Some men find old age discouraging. Immerwahr just finds it inconvenient. He had so much work to do, tutoring the children and tracking population trends. And so many letters to write to editors and politicians. It's how he could help the world, in these last years of his life.

It was only a matter of time, of course — that's what Immerwahr had to say, when he found himself in Evergreen Hospital last week. He calculated the odds, as any good mathematician would do, and came up with a fact: He has lived 48 years past his own life expectancy.

Even from his hospital bed, Immerwahr can still cite statistics on aging. He's made a career out of studying birth rates, death rates, all those trends in the field called demography. Until just a couple of weeks ago, he did all kinds of research on it, preparing a new paper for publication.

But he could feel the old age in those aches, those pains, that shortness of breath. The easy days of his middle age were gone, along with all that work around the world. He could never trek to that village in Colombia now. He could never navigate those roads in Nigeria at night.

Plenty of ideas

As the reader of six magazines and two professional journals, Immerwahr has plenty of points he would like to make.

On the conflict in the Middle East (no peace until Israel pulls out of the West Bank). On society's obsession with sex (the cause of so many broken homes). On partially privatizing Social Security (a roll-back of the retirement age would be wiser).

Until recently, he would send out his opinions to anyone with an e-mail address: authors, lawmakers, newspapers, nonprofit agencies. He put his most-important points in bold.

Most of the ideas go back a decade, when Immerwahr wrote his high-school textbook. The "worst-seller," he likes to call it: a slim, self-published volume on world population growth. Fewer than 300 people bought it.

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES George Immerwahr attends a lecture in February as part of his monthly visits to the University of Washington, where he once tutored graduate students.

Still, he wants so badly for people to read it. Maybe then they would understand the urgent matter at hand: The world is making too many children. He's seen them begging on street corners in India. He's seen them huddled in blankets in Bogotá, Colombia.

So Immerwahr's idea is this: Children should have a right not to be born. Not unless there is food, shelter, education and a job to be had at adulthood. He was preparing a paper on this subject a few weeks before he went into the hospital.

"I feel very emotional on this," he said, looking up from his book. "Let me read further."

"Mr. I"

They had a lovely way of hovering around him, those children at Kenmore Elementary.

He had a cold, they ran for Kleenex. His throat was dry, they ran for water.

The younger ones called him "Mr. I." The older ones called him George. Their hellos came in chorus.

"Hi folks!" he called out one morning, waving his hand in the air.

Immerwahr was sitting in his usual spot, in the hallway at Kenmore Elementary, with three sharpened pencils in his pocket. The children worked beside him, leaned over their fractions, trying to make sense of it all.

Immerwahr always kept his patience. He smiled. He pushed. He reasoned the problems through. Sometimes, he saw the boy light up with understanding.

"That, of course, is very pleasant," he said.

After six years of tutoring, Immerwahr became part of the family. Teachers took him out to dinner. Children made him Christmas cards. He got invited to school assemblies and sock hops and after-school games.

In the weeks after his wife died in 2003, the students came calling, a Valentine's gift in hand. It was a scrapbook, full of encouraging words, a homemade tribute to their tutor.

Job offer

The first hug was like heaven. That's how Immerwahr describes it in his memoir, "I Dream of Jeanie," named after his wife.

The marriage began in Maryland, with a suburban life that fit the 1940s. Immerwahr worked as an actuary at a life-insurance company. His wife stayed home with their four sons. Life moved along quite nicely.

Then in 1968, their youngest son, Richard, was diagnosed with cancer. Several months later, he died at age 19. At the time, Immerwahr was pursuing a master's degree in public health at Johns Hopkins. His wife was working as a teacher. The older boys were away in college, or in careers. The house suddenly went cold.

Then came an offer: Why not live in India and study reproductive health?

At an age when most people move toward retirement, Immerwahr and his wife considered it. In a matter of months, the couple moved to India, where George began his research for U.S. Agency for International Development. They spent the next decade exploring Southeast Asia together.

The couple finally came home at age 70, settling in Kenmore. Immerwahr tutored at Eckstein Middle School in Seattle and at the University of Washington. His wife threw herself into work at the Christian Science Church.

When his wife first showed signs of Alzheimer's a decade later, Immerwahr could not understand it. Surely she could try harder to remember things.

But as the illness got worse, he found his patience and kept it. He fed his wife. He dressed her. He read to her.

"In these latter years, though Jean has lost much of her memory and much of her eyesight, she has gained in affection and tenderness," he wrote in his memoir. "And I have become more in love with her than ever before."

Independent thinker

Immerwahr always was an independent thinker. That's the way his friend Charles Hirschman sees it anyway. Hirschman, a UW sociology professor, got to know him more than a decade ago, when Immerwahr was tutoring grad students. To Hirschman, the man stood out. Other intellectuals on campus got their knowledge of demography from advanced degrees. Immerwahr got his through experience — more than a decade in the field, researching reproductive health, first for the U.S. Census Bureau, later for the World Health Organization.

He interviewed women in Colombia on abortion. He talked to men in India about vasectomies. He advised the Sri Lankan government on how to reduce the birth rate.

Any opinion he had came straight from his experiences, in countries all over the world.

"It wasn't right, it wasn't wrong, it was just different," Hirschman said. "But that's George — he marches to his own drummer."

Even after he stopped tutoring, Immerwahr still made regular trips to the UW to hear a lecture or two. He headed to the campus his final time a few weeks ago, in the van for seniors and people with disabilities.

At the campus gates, he climbed out of the van and onto the sidewalk, a banana in the basket of his walker for lunch.

The day's lecture was on longevity. He had dressed for the occasion: gray slacks, crimson shirt, blue blazer with gold buttons at the sleeves.

Math tutor George Immerwahr, right, used to volunteer in Tim Atkinson's sixth-grade class at Kenmore Elementary School.

As college kids brushed past him, their sandals smacking the pavement, Immerwahr steered his walker over to Parrington Hall. He knew this professor's work. And the professor knew Immerwahr's work.

So as the lecture began, Immerwahr smiled at all the man's jokes. He nodded at some conclusions. He murmured at others. When graphs appeared on the screen, he leaned forward for a closer look.

The rest of the students sat silent. Immerwahr raised his hand.

"Yes, George," the professor said. "You have a question."

Stream of fans

In the past week, Immerwahr has seen a steady stream of fans from his hospital bed. Teachers and parents come to visit. The children at Kenmore sent a card. Family members have flown in from all corners of the country — a sure sign, he joked, that "this is it."

But through the haze of drugs, he still goes back sometimes to the joys of his old self. He goes over statistics theory with his grandson. He insists on eating without the help of a nurse.

On Monday morning, Immerwahr seemed tired and confused. But in the afternoon, he got a jolt. He discovered that his nurse could speak German and knew some of his favorite folk songs.

Immerwahr was losing his voice. But that would not stop him.

He used all he had left of it to sing.

Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com