Profile: The Gray Revolution

It’s possible there are more Joe Mankos in the pipeline, men and women who are three decades younger and just getting involved in their communities. Yes, possible — but don’t bet on it. The numbers are simply not there. In fact, Bowling Alone is a memorable book for its dire warning about the coming collapse of “social capital,” as Putnam puts it. “Each generation that has reached adulthood since the 1950s has been less engaged in community affairs than its immediate predecessor,” he writes. “It is as though the post-war generations were exposed to some anti-civic X-ray that permanently and increasingly rendered them less likely to connect with the community.” Thank God the Manko Generation is stepping up to the plate in retirement. But that only buys us a little time, because “the Grim Reaper is silently at work, lowering political involvement.”

When they made Joe and Lynn Manko, they apparently broke the mold.


WOW. WOW. What a view. We’re standing in Joe and Lynn’s apartment in Symphony House on a sunny Friday afternoon. We’re looking east, across the Delaware and deep into New Jersey. We’re looking south, all the way down Broad Street to the stadiums and beyond. The perspective is a fitting backdrop to a discussion about the city’s future.

Since Lynn and Joe moved here, it’s so much easier to go out to dinner, to get to an Orchestra concert, to attend a show at the Prince. “It’s so much fun to be in the city,” says Joe. “I mean, I love Lower Merion, but there’s not much going on at night.” To a connector like Joe, getting involved in the community is fun. You meet interesting people. You become a more interesting person.

“There are boards that are looking for people,” he says. “There are so many organizations! And a lot of people say, ‘I’ll write a check, don’t bother me, I don’t have the time.’ I’m not gonna say to them, ‘You have the same time I have.’ To which I would get, ‘Yeah, but you’re nuts.’”

He’s kidding. Sort of. But Joe has no regrets: “At my funeral, nobody’s going to say I didn’t live life to the fullest.”

At least he’s passed along his sense of civic obligation to his son Glenn, who’s on the board of the University of the Arts. And that’s where they were all going: to the annual gala and inauguration ball for the new president, Sean Buffington. It’s right next door to Symphony House. Okay, maybe this is a small town.

I leave so they can get ready. Later, when the evening shadows climb the face of their condo building, they ride the elevator downstairs and walk the hundred yards up Broad Street to Dorrance Hamilton Hall. There they dance until midnight, whereupon they bid adieu to their community of friends and family. They walk down the red-carpeted steps and off they go, gently into that good night.