There’s Johnetta, 101, whom she’s known for 70 years and who has Alzheimer’s disease. “I call her every day and just say ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ She never knows, but she says hi back, and I tease her,” Smith said.

Then there’s Rhea, 90, whom Smith visits regularly at a retirement facility. And Mary, 95, who doesn’t leave her house anymore, “so I fix her a basket about once a month of jelly and little things I make and send it over by cab.” And fellow residents at Smith’s Chicago senior community, whom she recognizes with a card and a treat on their birthdays.

“I’m a very friendly person,” Smith said when asked to describe herself.

But find them they did: 31 older men and women with exceptional memories, mostly from Illinois and surrounding states, are currently participating in the project. “Part of the goal is to characterize them—who are they, what are they like,” Rogalski said.

“Social relationships are really important” to this group and might play a significant role in preserving their cognition, Rogalski said.

Smith, one of the SuperAgers, has plenty of thoughts about that. At her retirement community, she’s one of nine people who welcome new residents and try to help make them feel at home. “I have a smile for everybody,” she said. “I try to learn someone’s name as soon as they come in, and if I see them it’s ‘Good morning, how do you do?’”

What she does every day, she said, is “show people I care.”

William “Bill" Gurolnick, 86, another SuperAger in the study, realized the value of becoming more demonstrative after he retired from a sales and marketing position in 1999. “Men aren’t usually inclined to talk about their feelings, and I was a keep-things-inside kind of person,” he explained. “But opening up to other people is one of the things that I learned to do.”

With a small group of other men who’d left the work world behind, Gurolnick helped found a men’s group, Men Enjoying Leisure, which now has nearly 150 members and has spawned four similar groups in the Chicago suburbs. Every month, the group meets for two hours, including one hour they spend discussing personal issues—divorce, illness, children who can’t find jobs, and more.

Activities are another way of cultivating relationships for Gurolnick. On Mondays, he bikes 20 to 30 miles with more than a dozen older men—many of them from his men’s group—followed by lunch. On Tuesdays, he’s part of a walking group, followed by coffee. On Wednesdays, he goes to the Bernard Weinger Jewish Community Center in Northbrook for two hours of water volleyball. On Thursdays, it’s back to the JCC for pickleball, a racquet sport.

“You really get a sense of still being alive,” Gurolnick said, when asked what he takes away from these interactions. “You get a sense of not being alone.”

Another SuperAger, Evelyn Finegan, 88, is hard of hearing and has macular degeneration in both eyes, but otherwise is astonishingly healthy. Without her best friend, Grayce, whom she’s known since high school, and friends who live in her condominium complex, Finegan might have become isolated.

“It’s very important to keep up with your friends—to pick up the phone and call,” said Finegan, who talks to Grayce almost daily and chats with four other friends from high school on a regular basis.

Today, the staples of Finegan’s life are attending her church, going to a monthly book club, volunteering at a resale shop, socializing in her building, attending a club of Welsh women, and seeing her grandchildren whenever she can.

“It’s so nice to spend time with Evelyn,” said her upstairs neighbor, June Witzl, 91, who often drives Finegan to doctors’ appointments. “She’s very kind and very generous. And she tells you what she believes so you really feel like you know her, instead of wondering what’s on her mind.”