Sex therapist, 90, focuses on the elderly

PORTLAND - Eleanor "Ranger" Hamilton moved her bed to her living room so she could awaken to see Mount Hood beyond the large windows of her West Linn home.

Hamilton has never stood by convention. And at 90, she doesn't intend to start.

After all, she's a sex therapist who influenced this country's revolution in morals and manners during much of the past century.

She helped young women get contraceptives in the 1940s. She arranged private, semi-open adoptions long before they became legal. She participated in the Kinsey report on Americans' sex lives. She wrote a sex-and-love column for Modern Bride magazine in the 1960s and published several books.

And now this engaging and frank woman may usher in a new phase of enlightenment - sexual fulfillment for elderly women who outlive their spouses.

"I spent the early part of my career teaching women to be sexual - but now there's no men for them to make love to," she says on "PrimeTimers," a cable TV show. "We are sexual until we die."

"She is the wise grandmother that we would all love to have - the one you can feel totally safe in taking whatever issues you have to, and who will give you solid, usable advice," says Oralee Stiles, a "PrimeTimers" host. "She's a national treasure."

Born Eleanor Poorman in Portland in 1909, Hamilton grew up in Oregon. But after graduating from the University of Oregon in 1930, she spent a career as an educator and psychologist in New York and California, returning to Oregon just five years ago.

Her books - from "Partners in Love" to "Sex Before Marriage" - earned her appearances on nearly every talk show, from Phil Donahue's to Johnny Carson's.

She suggested a call-in radio show on sex advice in the '70s. She knew the idea's time had come when another therapist hit the air in 1980. "Dr. Ruth" Westheimer is 19 years Hamilton's junior.

Hamilton's parents, Christian Scientists, paved the way for their daughter's unconventional path, encouraging independence and self-reliance.

As a University of Oregon student in the late 1920s, Hamilton experienced what she will only describe as a "very tough emotional situation" with a boyfriend. She hiked the hills near campus and vowed she would devote her life to improving women's experiences with love and sex.

In 1932, she married Albert Edward Hamilton. He nicknamed her Ranger, a name from a fairy tale and the one she still uses.

The couple ran a nursery school in New York City in the early 1940s for the children of wealthy families. They also took in unwed pregnant women, some in their late teens.

Ranger Hamilton helped find adoptive parents and allowed the birth mothers and the adoptive parents to meet. After the adoptions, she made sure the birth mothers had contraception.

Influence of research pioneers

A pioneering researcher entered the couple's lives in the 1940s. Alfred Kinsey interviewed Hamilton and her husband about their sexual histories.

By the time Hamilton earned a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University, more than 17,000 men and women had been interviewed for Kinsey's monumental study on sexual practices.

"He brought such an encyclopedic knowledge of sex behavior that never had been done, not like that," Hamilton says. "People had conjectured things, but he brought science to it."

In 1948, the Hamiltons moved to a farm and opened a school for exceptionally bright students. They continued to house unwed, pregnant women.

A teacher introduced the Hamiltons to the work of Wilhelm Reich, the first Westerner to describe a mind-body connection. The couple became his students, fascinated by his belief that sexuality is the link to creativity.

Widowed, she changes coasts

Hamilton's husband died in 1969, on the eve of her 60th birthday.

So, her children grown, she formed a close companionship with a woman friend. They set up house together for eight years.

A second long-term companionship followed. The two women built a home in Inverness Park, Calif., northwest of San Francisco, with a tiled swimming pool in the living room. Hamilton reopened her sex-therapy practice in this community of dairy ranchers, counterculture liberals and retired academics. She was 75.

Hamilton remains equally interested in men's sexual lives. She is skeptical about the advent of the virility drug Viagra, worrying that it may simply renew men's focus on the final act, not on making love.

But she views the drug as useful for impotency, and she chuckles, "I wish I'd bought stock in the Pfizer company."

Last October, Hamilton turned 90.

She says her joints creak a little. She's sometimes wobbly on her feet despite replacements of two hips and a knee. A pacemaker keeps her heart going. But she plans to rekindle a small therapy practice.

She is drawn to the stories that make up human relationships. And she feels she still has guidance to offer.

With her trademark twinkle, Hamilton tells the story of when she was in her 40s and asked a 60-year-old woman at what age sexual desire ends.

The woman smiled and said, "I'll let you know."