The Boomer Files: Meaningful Pursuits

With only his grandfather's entry visa to work with, this took hours of research by Greenberg in the archives of Ellis Island, the great clearinghouse for immigration through New York City. Dusty records in local courthouses turned up the information that his grandfather had traveled to this country—luckily, before there was a Department of Homeland Security—on a visa in the name of a relative. On a trip to Poland, Greenberg drove to the little village where his family had lived, expecting a warm welcome from the local officials. Instead, the woman guarding the municipal records told him they were closed except by special permission, relenting only after he managed to produce a photograph of himself with Pope John Paul II. On a return trip, Greenberg was able to identify his great-grandfather's house, still standing, and to piece together the sorrowful history of the Holocaust in that little corner of Europe; his great-grandparents, he found, had probably been killed on the spot by German soldiers. "I learned that my family lived in this town back to the early 18th century at least," he says. "It gives you a sense of your history, to be able to see and touch and feel the place where your great-grandparents were from."

Others have had similar epiphanies, sometimes after elaborate preparations—Richard Gelfond, 52, the CEO of Imax, hired researchers to track down his ancestors in Ukraine—but others, like Debbie Findling, 43, a Los Angeles foundation executive, made her discoveries just by walking around, taking pictures and talking to people. "When I was there [Frysztak, Poland, the town where her father, a Holocaust survivor, was born], I started knocking on doors, and whoever answered, I would ask if anyone remembered the Jews of Frysztak. I connected with this man who was 82, whose best friend had been Jewish. He told me the fate of my grandfather and showed me the mass grave where all the Jews were buried. I stood and said the mourner's prayer for my grandfather."

So the journey of transformation the boomers began decades ago continues. It has sent them around the world in search of projects where they can help—to Kyrgyzstan, where Americans taught farmers the best way to dry prunes; to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, where volunteers built picnic tables and painted a day-care center; to a children's clinic in Romania, where Sue Surma, a 58-year-old nurse from Minneapolis, was so aghast at the smell that she raised $800 on her own to buy diapers and rubber pants for the infants. It has taken them back to ancestral homes in countries as diverse as Greece and China, and sent them on quests for the perfect baby zucchini to wrap in prosciutto, dunk in sesame seeds and flash-fry to make an amuse-bouche that you won't find at Applebee's. Sometimes it even finds them in the same place for 45 minutes, pedaling like mad, seeking to transcend the boomers' lifelong enemy, age itself.

With Charlene Dy, Christina Gillham and Margot Edelman

© 2007