Jon Dickman, born in the Bronx NY, grew up in White Meadow Lake, NJ, and moved to Eugene in 1970 to attend the University of Oregon. He moved up to Portland in 1994 while a student in the MSW program and stayed here to share his life with his now husband Bob Wilson. Retired, he spent many years as a child care worker, with his first preschoolers now 55 years old. More recently he was a para-educator and educational assistant for Portland Public Schools.
During the 70s and 80s Jon was involved in children’s theater, puppetry, and storytelling, and has also been the writer of a humor column, a playwright, an interim family shelter house director, and an extra in Animal House. He has served on the boards of Playland Day Nursery and Kol Shalom Community for Humanistic Judaism, where he also served as Ritual Director and Children’s Education Director.
Currently Jon volunteers as one of the regular hosts for the Portland FolkMusic Society’s weekly virtual (Zoom) song circles and has been a volunteer for the Village for over a year, for which he is scheduled to facilitate an ongoing memoir group called “It’s All About Us.”
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Susan Hodge moved from Seattle to Portland in 2016 to join her daughter’s new born family. They now have two little ones, and are committed advocates of multigenerational living. Before retiring she was a high school Language Arts/ Humanities teacher for 30 years.
Susan became a Village volunteer in 2018. As well as being a driver, she wrote for the Newsletter under Pat Vivian’s supervision and currently participates in the partnership program and the membership committee. She is also the proud member of a circle group that has met regularly throughout the pandemic. Susan believes in caring for each other in ways that foster independence and nurture friendships.
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Suzanne Silverstein has been enthusiastic about the aging-in-place concept for a long time and has been involved in the development of Northeast Village since its inception. Consequently, I have been involved in the membership committee for several years and in programming for a time. It has been a pleasure to see how the Village has enlarged its mission from primarily providing services to building a true community of members and volunteers.
In my past life I was a teacher—middle school, high school doing compensatory education and some social studies—community college doing remedial math. I was in the Peace Corps in Tanzania and then taught in Germany and Okinawa for the Department of Defense Schools.
In 2007 my husband Simon and I moved to Portland to be closer to our sons and grandchildren, all of whom lived on the West Coast. But the truth of the matter is that I’m a New Yorker.