Lynn Fiedler had just met with a roomful of Pennsylvania state senators to discuss new protections for older adults when one of the lawmakers pulled her aside to offer some advice.
“She said, ‘You're used to sprinting, but I need you to understand the government is like a marathon,’” Fiedler recalled Lynda Schlegel Culver, a Northumberland County Republican, imparting.
Fiedler said she’d been visibly concerned that the competing interests in the room — “one person wanted this, the other that” — would delay a legislative push to create a state registry of people found to have abused older adults in settings like care homes. Industry employers would be required to confirm whether a prospective employee is or isn’t on the registry before making a hire.
Culver has proven correct. Things move slowly. But Fiedler, a sort of accidental activist, remains undaunted: “I have been pushing and pushing and pushing, and that's what it takes. But if anyone tells you one voice can't make a difference, that is untrue.”
The former public school teacher added: “I used my voice and I gathered an army.”
That would be Alice’s Army, named after her mother, whose abuse at the hands of two workers at the Heritage Springs Memory Care center near Lewisburg drew headlines, criminal charges, and lawsuits. Memory care is for people with forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
The ordeal set the stage for Fiedler’s current calling.
“I spent 32 years in public education, advocating for children,” she told PA Local by phone. “Now I'm at the other end of the spectrum advocating for the elder population.”
Fiedler’s advocacy earned her a nomination for Spotlight PA's latest PA Local Heroes profile, a monthly feature sponsored by Ballard Spahr. The nominator described her as “the definition of a ‘change agent.’"
With the help of Culver and law enforcement who investigated her mother’s case, Fiedler created an abuse task force and began championing the adoption of new statewide safeguards.
One piece of legislation, dubbed Alice’s Law, would create a registry for people convicted of or fired for abusing older adults in Pennsylvania. Two Heritage Springs employees, one 17 at the time and the other an adult, were fired for taking and sharing dehumanizing photos of Fiedler’s mother and more than a dozen other patients at the facility. The older employee, now 20, was sentenced to three months in jail, 18 months of house arrest, and years of probation on 12 misdemeanor counts.
Speaking outside the courthouse, Fiedler, incensed at what she calls a lack of legal protections for older adults under state law, told a crowd of supporters, “It’s on to Harrisburg,” PennLive reported at the time.
Culver, who for years sat on the aging committee as a member of the state House, was waiting. “A lot of times folks enlist an association or a lobbying group [to advocate for a cause],” Culver explained. “But for Lynn to be doing what she’s doing, my goodness. It's an honor, honestly, to be working with her. She's a great partner.”
Culver said Alice's Law remains a top priority headed into next year, which lawmakers are already preparing for. The Republican, joined by state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin), published a memorandum seeking co-sponsors earlier this week.
“Hopefully it passes in 2025,” Fiedler said. “I'm thrilled and will keep the pressure on.”
Spotlight PA has previously reported on both Pennsylvania’s looming crisis in dementia care and the commonwealth’s woefully slow investigations of abuse involving older adults.
There are 280,000 Pennsylvanians over the age of 64 currently living with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia, and another 100,000 with related disorders.
The Alzheimer’s figure alone is expected to reach 320,000 by 2025 and swell exponentially from there as baby boomers, one of the largest generations in U.S. history, continue to age. Pennsylvania has one of the oldest state populations in the country.
“This population is very unprotected,” Fiedler said. “They’re almost invisible.”
This year marks the first holiday season Fiedler has spent without her mother, who died in July, a few weeks shy of her 95th birthday.
Fiedler said she lobbies for the sake of her five granddaughters and the scores of Pennsylvanians who will one day need care for a loved one or themselves.
Fiedler’s biological father, a veteran of the Korean War who’d fallen ill with cancer, died when she was 11 months old. Her mother raised her alone before remarrying “the second love of her life,” a man who formally adopted Fiedler when she was eight.
“One of the last things I promised my dad before he died was that I would take care of my mom,” Fiedler said. “And one of the last things I promised my mother before she passed was I would see this through to the very end, and that's what I plan on doing. I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
90.5 WESA partners with Spotlight PA, a collaborative, reader-funded newsroom producing accountability journalism for all of Pennsylvania. More at spotlightpa.org.
