RiverSpring Living, where dreams come true

With a variety of health services, an on-site museum and the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, RiverSpring Living has helped older adults age comfortably in their assisted living facility for more than 100 years. A recently launched initiative is helping them live even more fulfilling lives.

The new “Golden Dreams” program partners with NYC organizations and institutions to give seniors a chance to live out their life-long wishes. Their first grantee, Jacqueline Kimmelstiel, always wanted to go to college and last week, the University of Mount Saint Vincent helped her make that dream a reality.

“When we learned about Jacqueline’s dream to go to college after only going to school until age 12, we called Dr. Susan Burns, the president of UMSV, told her about Jacqueline’s story, and she jumped right in and made the day happen,” Wendy Steinberg said, chief communications officer at RiverSpring Living.

Kimmelstiel began her day with a class in English literature at 10 a.m. taught by Dr. Leonard Nalencz, followed by a class in French literature taught by Dr. Severine Rebourcet. After a short break, she watched a scrimmage basketball game by the UMSV students and by noon, she graduated with a certificate of achievement.

“Education is the most difficult thing to achieve,” Kimmelstiel said. “But I made up my mind that I would do it well and from top to bottom and that’s what I did.”

Born Margit Hirsch on Aug. 21, 1927, Kimmelstiel was a German-Jew who escaped Frankfurt, Germany to Strausbourg, France when Hitler came into power in 1933. They assumed false identities and she became Jacqueline Lambert, attending school alongside other French children until the intensity of the Holocaust forced her and her family into hiding. She was 12 years old when she left school and would never return, except for some night classes she took at George Washington High School when she arrived to the U.S. and where she met her husband, Albert Kimmelstiel.

He too fought the scourge of the Holocaust, but not before being taken into several concentration camps where he would be relegated to the suffering conditions for five years.

The two went on to have a beautiful life together and raised two boys in Flushing-Meadows, Queens.

“She was a very fastidious, strict mother,” her son Fred Kimmelstiel told The Press. “She really valued education. That was a very important part of our growing up.”

Kimmelstiel worked as a seamstress out of her home and made all of her children’s clothing. She speaks slowly with a thick French accent and has difficulty hearing and recalling her past, but she swoons when she talks about reading romance books and poems.

“I love stories that start well and end well and nothing in between,” she said.

Kimmelstiel moved  to the Hebrew Home when her husband died in 2016. She has five grandchildren and four great grandchildren, several of whom were present during her graduation ceremony.

“We found that many of our residents spent their lives raising families, making ends meet, getting by during the Great Depression and surviving the hardships of the Holocaust,” Wendy Steinberg said, chief communications officer at RiverSpring Living.  “Now that they are in their 80s, 90s and 100s, they finally have the time to experience and realize their bucket list items.  That’s where we come in.”

RiverSpring will continue to grant wishes through their Golden Dreams program about once a month, with their next lucky recipient visiting the ballet for the first time in June.