Leaning on one another, learning together

Too anxious to drive, Liam panicked in the passenger seat and willed each of the 102 miles separating Philadelphia from York, and Liam from his mom and dad, to pass by quickly.

He had been trying to persuade his parents, Bill and Anne, to join him in Philadelphia since 2010. They had finally sold the house they had raised him in and downsized into an apartment, but that apartment remained too far away for Liam’s comfort, and it had never felt farther than it did that day in summer 2021.

“Your mom is in the hospital,” his father had said on the phone. Anne was having chest pains. An ambulance took her to the emergency room. Bill, who has lost some of his vision to glaucoma, no longer drives and was anxiously waiting for word at home.

Corinne, Liam’s girlfriend, had read his face and insisted on driving. “I put on Taylor Swift to keep it light and tried to talk about anything but the situation. He wasn’t saying anything,” she remembered.

Fortunately, Anne was OK. “I thought it was a heart attack. Thank God, it wasn’t,” she said. It was, however, a wake-up call.

Anne Ladof of Moorestown, N.J., and Bill Anderson of Framingham, Mass., met 50 years ago in Washington at a Vietnam War protest. She was a political science student at American University. He had just finished law school at the University of Connecticut. They married two years later, in 1974, and moved to York, Pa. Before he retired, Bill was a founding partner at Anderson, Converse & Fennick, where he specialized in disability and bankruptcy law. Anne subsequently earned a law degree from George Mason University and a master’s in clinical psychology from Millersville. Also now retired, she spent part of her career as a lawyer with what was then Central Pennsylvania Legal Services and part as a therapist, often with Catholic Charities. The couple was very active in their synagogue, Temple Beth Israel.

Anne and Bill were surprised and thrilled when, after 17 years of marriage, she became pregnant and Liam Ladof-Anderson, their only child, was born.

“He was always big on computers,” said Bill, who is now 75. “He was in front of his first one at age 2 and was soon taking it apart and putting it back together again,” notes Anne, now 69. “He also played soccer, and we all did a lot of hiking.”

Bill and Anne think their relationship with their son was rather typical. He would question them, but what child doesn’t question their parents? They would try to answer. Liam says he was a handful, and they were extraordinary.

“They taught me to be critical of authority, and unfortunately for them, that included them,” he said. “I was an angry kid and we argued and fought, but I never doubted for one second how much they love me. They were my biggest advocates. They taught me that I could do anything.”

Liam’s middle school called home when he refused to say or stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in protest of the second Iraq war. The first time, they reached Anne. “They said he was a distraction. I said this was not a big deal to us — didn’t they have other issues to worry about? And that his grandmother wouldn’t say the ‘under God’ part and I won’t say it. The vice principal hung up on me.”

A meeting with Liam and his parents was called. Bill showed up with pages and pages of First Amendment law.

As a teenager, “I had some ugly mental health and addiction issues, but my parents didn’t pressure me,” said Liam, who is now 30. “They told me I would get there in my own sweet time.”

In 2010, Liam moved to Philadelphia for college and later that same year began asking his parents to move east, too. Liam started at Drexel but graduated from Rutgers with a degree in mathematical economics — game theory. He now cohosts Well There’s Your Problem, which he describes as “a leftist engineering disaster podcast, with jokes,” and also works as a business analyst.

Liam met Corinne McGrath on Bumble in 2017, her senior year, when she was studying actuarial science at St. Joe’s. She grew up in Willow Grove and is a senior business analyst at Peco.

They watch Jeopardy! together every night and play lots of video games. They like American cities and make weekend road trips throughout the Northeast corridor.

“As soon as we got together, he told me he had been wanting his parents to move to the city because they were getting older,” said Corinne, 26.

Soon, she wanted that, too. Her parents, Sandy and Sean, both 51, moved from the suburbs to the city as young empty nesters in 2019. Corinne hoped their move would inspire Bill and Anne so that Liam wouldn’t worry so much and she could get to know them as well as he knew her parents. It inspired Liam to push his parents harder, but still they did not budge.

Bill was ready to move to Philadelphia when his progressive vision loss left him unable to drive. “Where we lived in York, you really for all practical purposes need to drive. If Anne were unable to drive, I knew we would have a really tough time of it. We had friends who would help us, we could get by for awhile, but I knew it was not ideal,” he said.

“I dragged my feet,” said Anne. “We had lived in York for 40 years. The thought of not being around our temple, our community, our friends, was really hard. And then I had a feeling like, ‘I can’t be getting old. I’m not that old!’ ”

In 2020, Bill called Liam to say that he and Anne were selling their house and moving to an apartment — in York. Anne thought this was a reasonable compromise. “I pretty much had a meltdown,” said Liam.

Later that year, the heart scare was the first big wake-up call, but Anne hit snooze. Then a few months later, following cataract surgery, she was in excruciating eye pain. Her cornea had been scratched. She could not drive herself, Bill could not drive her, and she could not stand to wait for Liam. “Well, I’m stuck,” she thought. A friend took her to the eye doctor the next day. She was finally ready to relocate.

On Halloween of 2021, Anne, Bill, and Toby, a big orange cat, moved to the apartment that Corinne and Liam found for them near the Art Museum.

“We are now at the role reversal part of our lives, in which our worried son tries to parent us,” Anne said.

Liam did come to the rescue when a glass cooking dish broke in Anne’s hands on its way out of the oven. And both couples anticipate a day when Bill and Anne will need more help. But that’s someday. Now, they are having fun. And Bill, who in York stayed home unless someone drove him, is more independent than he has been in years.

“I can walk to the supermarket. I can walk around the neighborhood,” he said.

He and Anne are making the most of their senior SEPTA passes.

And they are spending much more time with Liam and Corinne.

“It’s been wonderful,” Liam said. “There’s no one else I’d rather fight with.” (To be clear, their fights are mostly about movies.)

Anne, Bill, Liam, and Corinne celebrated Passover together with a Seder. They plan to take their first family vacation with a 2023 trip to Paris.

And while the youngers are there when needed, they are counting on help from their elders in the not too distant future.

“Liam and I want to get married and have kids one day. We want all of our parents to be part of that.”

Both of Liam’s grandfathers died before he was born. He wants his children to know theirs.

“That’s a very big deal to all of us,” said Anne.