Marilee Asher Shapiro at her home in Washington, D.C., in 2015. (Sarah L. Voisin\/The Washington Post via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cWell, he doesn\u2019t know my mother, does he?\u201d Joan Shapiro said.<\/p>\n
What the doctor didn\u2019t know was that Asher, a 107-year-old working artist, had already survived one global pandemic. And she was about to survive another.<\/p>\n
In 1918, then about 6 years old, Asher contracted the Spanish flu, a deadly strain of influenza estimated to have killed at least 50 million people worldwide.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat she told my brother and I, she remembers being sick upstairs and coming downstairs and seeing her father, who she adored, and knowing that if she saw her father everything would be OK,\u201d Shapiro said.
\u201cIt\u2019s remarkable,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cThat\u2019s all I can say. It\u2019s just unbelievable. I think perhaps it\u2019s because of her art that she\u2019s still involved in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well into the eighth decade of her art career, Asher was due to open a major solo exhibition later this month at the Studio Gallery in Washington, but that was canceled due to the coronavirus.<\/p>\n
Born to an affluent Chicago family in 1912, Asher began studying sculpture in 1936 and took up painting a few years after she moved to Washington, in 1943, with her first husband, Bernard Shapiro. Her first solo exhibition was held at American University in 1947.<\/p>\n
In D.C., the family attended Temple Sinai, where Asher served on the art committee. It was through her association with Boris Aronson that the famed Broadway set designer came to create the synagogue\u2019s ark, Shapiro said.<\/p>\n
Bernard Shapiro died in 1974. Nearly 20 years later, at the age of 80, Asher remarried: She and childhood friend Robert Asher wed at the Cosmos Club in Washington. Robert Asher died in 2008.<\/p>\n
In the early 2000s, seeking a less physically demanding alternative to sculpture, Asher took up digital photography. She studied digital art at the Corcoran School of Art and began manipulating photographs on her computer. She was 88 at the time.<\/p>\n
Her work is now in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
\u201cHere at the facility for senior living I go to tai chi class and to a yoga class, which helps to keep me kind of limber,\u201d she said in the interview. \u201cThat\u2019s very important. But even more important is one\u2019s having an interest, having something that makes you want to get up in the morning and do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asher began feeling unwell in March. It started with general fatigue and gradually grew more acute, impairing her eyesight and making it difficult for her to breathe. By the middle of April, she had all but stopped eating.<\/p>\n
By then, the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing, and at the insistence of her children and a nurse at her senior living facility, Asher went to the hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am quite certain that she thought that she was going to die,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cI really think she thought that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asher returned home from the hospital on April 28. Shapiro says she has good days and bad ones, adding that her mother wasn\u2019t strong enough to do an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s at the edge of the woods,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n
In 2015, Asher published a memoir, \u201cDancing in the Wonder for 102 Years,\u201d in which she writes: \u201cDear God, I don\u2019t know who you are or where you are or if you are. But I do want to thank you for my life and all the perks I have enjoyed. I want to thank you also for 30 more years than are usually allotted according to your Bible. I hope I have not overstayed my welcome. Sincerely, Marilee.\u201d<\/p>\n
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