“The future is there,” said the email. Hilda Jaffe, then 88, told her children that she planned to sell the family home in Verona, New Jersey. She had decided to start a life again – alone – in an apartment in a room in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan.
Fourteen years later, Jaffe, now 102 years old, still lives alone – a few pies of frenzied flashing lights and crowds this course through Times Square.
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