For the last five years he also has used it to keep in daily contact with son Barry. Barry e-mails in the morning. Collen responds in the evening. If he doesn't, Barry calls.
So far, the system has worked pretty well, connecting the retired teacher in Rhode Island with his father in the tiny East Bay apartment. Collen is sitting in his sheepskin-covered desk chair smack in the center of the studio apartment, swiveling 90 degrees at a time and pointing out the highlights.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, January 06, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 45 words Type of Material: Correction
Dr. Morris Collen: An article in Saturday's Section A about 95-year-old doctor Morris Collen said that when he earned his medical degree in 1939, penicillin had yet to be discovered. Penicillin was discovered in 1928, but no one was successfully treated with it until 1942.
"I must introduce you to my family here," he says with a wave at the pictures above his bed, a gallery that includes four children, seven grandchildren, five great-grandchildren -- and Bobbie.
"See, there's my wife. We were married 60 years. And you know the expression 'soul mate'? She was."
The black-and-white portrait shows a handsome woman in her 50th year, with a direct gaze and a confident smile. There is a single plastic rose taped to the frame. Collen recounts his daily ritual.
"I say good night [to Bobbie] and I say good morning," he says, tearing up, halting. "You see that red rose? She loved red roses. And when she died, I put 60. One for each year. On her grave. Buried with her."
Bobbie was a nurse, a poet and, as he puts it, "a piece of cheesecake!" She died at home in 1996, after a long battle with Parkinson's disease and the dementia that often accompanies it.
Collen took care of her to the end and for the next decade remained alone in their 4,000-square-foot house on three acres.
"I'd come home and open a can of kidney beans and throw the can away, and that was my dinner," he says. Then one night, he came down with a serious stomach ailment. He vomited and became dangerously dehydrated. One night slipped into two as he lay there, wondering whether to call 911.
"Finally, it cleared," he recounts. "But that made me realize that living alone at my age was foolish."
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Collen likes to say that he inherited his father's body and passed it along to son Barry -- the skinny arms and legs, the old man's pot belly, the creaky heart.
Barry describes that heart as "golden"; Collen knows it requires careful attention. He also knows it is proof of the leaps medical science has taken in the seven decades since he got his degree.
"I'll never forget when I was a young physician, 50, 60 years ago," Collen recounts. "And a man in his 50s came in. He said, 'You know, my father died of a heart attack at 60. My older brother died of a heart attack at 60 . . . Am I going to die of a heart attack at 60?'
"Well, his lipids were way up, and I knew he would," Collen continues. "I told him, 'Well, be careful, keep your weight down, exercise. And that was all, all we could do."
It's a story that hits home for Collen. His father, a grocer in St. Paul, Minn., died at age 67 after heart attack No. 2. When he himself was 70, he had a funny feeling in his chest.
His own physician had lots more ammunition than Collen did as a young doctor. He gave Collen an angiogram and then an angioplasty to rout out a 90%-blocked main artery. Collen has since had a pacemaker put in.
"Modern technology and modern Permanente medicine has given me 25 years," he says. "I keep saying, you've just got to live long enough, and you see wonderful things happen."
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maria.laganga@latimes.com
