In Memoriam and Inspiration: 'She Worked Past Age 100, Inspired Many More'

In 40 years of interviews as a journalist, I've never met anyone quite like Hedda Bolgar.

The pioneering psychoanalyst, who attended lectures by  Sigmund Freud as a young woman and fled Vienna for the United States when the Third Reich entered Austria, was teaching and seeing patients at the age of 99 when she told me:"I'm so far behind, I can never die."

Three years later, the Brentwood resident was still a working therapist at age 102, when she received an Outstanding Oldest Worker Award in the nation's capital. When I called to congratulate her, she talked about a lecture she was preparing, among other projects she was juggling.

Several of the therapist's friends contacted me Monday[May 13] with the news that Bolgar, who once told me she didn't fear death but didn't want it to be too "undignified or painful," died peacefully [that] morning in the home where she dazzled me with her intellect, spunk and grace.

"It's probably not a coincidence that she held on to life until Mother's Day, as she was indeed the mother of a generation of psychologists, psychoanalysts, and an entire community of mental health workers and patients," said Janet Woznica, a longtime friend and director of the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies.

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Steve Lopez:  She Worked Past Age 100, Inspired Many More