How a VCU expert’s anti-ageism message resonated in a Connecticut town
Newtown made Tracey Gendron’s book a communitywide read, and her recent visit highlighted the myths and realities of age bias.
October 17, 2025
Tracey Gendron, Ph.D., chair of the VCU Department of Gerontology, with Jeff Capeci, first selectmen for Newtown, Connecticut. Gendron’s book, “Ageism Unmasked,” was featured in a program called Timeless Newtown: Embracing Every Generation. (Contributed image)
By Haley Tenore
If you don’t think you’re part of the “aging population,” think again. We all are – from the moment we’re born – according to a Virginia Commonwealth University expert, whose efforts to fight ageism took her on the road recently for a program that might ring familiar to the VCU community.
Tracey Gendron, Ph.D., is chair of the Department of Gerontology in VCU’s College of Health Professions as well as executive director of its Virginia Center on Aging. Her expertise is tapped extensively in academic, professional and media realms, and a September engagement – in Newtown, Connecticut – provided a new audience: the equivalent of a townwide book club.
With similarities to VCU’s Common Book initiative, in which students and other community members read and discuss a shared text, Newtown had selected Gendron’s book – “Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It” – as a featured element of a program called Timeless Newtown: Embracing Every Generation.
“I’d love to see Richmond do it. I’d love to see other cities do it,” Gendron said. “It’s a first step to acknowledging that ageism is something that we can change.”
Timeless Newtown was organized by Friends of Newtown Seniors, a community organization fighting negative stereotypes about aging. John Boccuzzi Sr., the group’s president, developed the initiative after reading “Ageism Unmasked,” and to share its message, he worked with Newtown officials to order and distribute 1,000 copies through local libraries.
The townwide read began this past January, with subsequent events and discussion groups tied to different chapters of the book. The culmination was Gendron’s visit to Newtown on Sept. 18.
“It was exciting. It was the first time that I’ve seen a whole town adopt this kind of initiative,” Gendron said. “John even had the governor sign off on it. So, there’s a proclamation that this town is going to be addressing ageism and reading this book. That was just impressive and a best practice. If they can do it, then every town can do it.”
John Senior, a member of the Friends of Newtown Seniors, promotes the townwide read of VCU professor Tracey Gendron’s book “Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It.” (Contributed image)
Gendron’s visit to Newtown was busy, with a Q&A at the local senior center and a video interview with Boccuzzi. Then came her presentation at town hall in the evening, which included a book-signing and plenty of questions and answers. Among her key themes:
- The importance of embracing your age, which can reframe age-related discussions from negative to positive.
- The value of adding “elderhood” as a distinct stage of later life.
- The role of generational labels, such as baby boomers or Gen X, as a form of ageism, as birthdate alone does not predict ability.
- The anti-aging market as a realm for promoting products more than healthy living, while reinforcing the stigma of physical signs of aging.
“Often, people think about aging as the physical decline of our bodies,” Gendron said. “But it’s important to recognize that aging is a process of simultaneous decline and growth that leads us to become our unique selves. Don’t dismiss all of your hard-earned lessons.”
And with many people connecting their sense of self-worth to their ability to work, they can feel untethered in later years.
“When you’re not working anymore and you don’t have that same identity as someone who is contributing in that way and working, it’s easy to feel like you are no longer valued,” Gendron said.
The Department of Gerontology offers Virginia’s only master’s degree program in gerontology, and
VCU is one of fewer than 100 universities nationwide that is a designated Age-Friendly University. Gendron has helped power VCU’s stature – and her TEDx Talk last year has more than 80,000 online views – and her efforts to fight ageism reflect a longtime commitment.
She said her journey to gerontology had roots in her high school years, but the path became clearer when she saw within herself the same factors she is now dedicated to challenging.
“I had a close relationship with my grandparents, so I always liked being around them and being around older people. I just knew that that was the right career field for me,” Gendron said. “But ageism, which is really my area of research and focus, came later. That was 15 years ago, when I began to realize how deeply embedded it was within myself and how deeply invisible it was in the culture. And that’s what I wanted to really dig down and understand more about it.”
Learn more about the research being conducted by the Virginia Center on Aging.
