Unretirement

By Bruce Horovitz, Kaiser Health News, December 11, 2017

In his view, Tim Franson utterly failed at retirement.

After 20 years as a high-ranking vice president at drugmaker Eli Lilly, Franson and his wife, Chris, a successful real estate agent, thought they were quietly retiring nearly a decade ago to Bonita Springs, Fla.

For the first month or so, Franson said, he mostly slept. He wasn’t depressed, just mentally and physically exhausted.

Then, “I went crazy,” said Franson. “I’m not very good at sitting around.”

He quickly found himself back at work part time after a friend at a small pharmaceutical company asked him for strategic advice. “Things snowballed from there.”

Today, Franson, 66, consults and works about four days a week, while serving on two for-profit boards and two nonprofit boards.

Welcome to the land of the un-retired–folks who thought they were leaving the work world only to return because they sorely missed something about it, besides the money. These people in their 50s through 80s retired on pensions or savings–or both–but ultimately woke up to the fact there’s more to life than watching Florida sunsets.

This “un-retirement” trend continues to build, according to a 2017 Rand Corp. study showing that 39 percent of Americans 65 and older who are currently employed had previously retired. And more than half of those 50 and older who are not working and not searching for work said they would work if the “right opportunity came along,” the study found.

“We have a mistaken image of life, that you go to school, work for 40 years, then say goodbye to colleagues for the last time and embrace the leisure life,” said Chris Farrell, author of “Unretirement: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community and the Good Life.” “That’s not turning out to be the arc of most people’s lives.”

This isn’t about older folks returning to work because they need the dough. This is about older folks returning to work because they miss the challenges, the accomplishments and, most important, the collegiality.

When retirees are asked what they miss most about pre-retirement life, the No. 1 answer is typically colleagues, said Farrell. “What’s constantly underestimated is that work is really a community. It turns out it’s much healthier and more satisfying to work for a bad boss than to sit on the couch and watch TV,” he said.

Franson gets that. Not that it didn’t make perfect sense for him to retire when he did, at age 58. Lilly offered him a year’s pay and a full pension to take early retirement. Franson had prostate cancer while at Lilly–and though the surgery was successful, he said, “that experience makes you sit back and revisit how you want to experience your remaining days.” At the time, his kids were out of college, and he didn’t have any grandkids yet.

Then, life derailed him when his wife, Chris, took ill and died within a few years. Four years ago, he accepted another consulting job in the Indianapolis area to be closer to his children and grandchildren. Franson has no plans to retire from his un-retirement anytime soon.

Laurie Caraway retired in 2013 as director of clinical data management at Bristol-Myers Squibb at age 56. She picked that age because her father had died at 56, before he had a chance to retire from private practice as a surgeon.

Her husband, Scott, a longtime American Airlines pilot, retired along with her. Scott adapted quickly and learned to be a potter. It was summer, and Laura spent the next three to four months biking, swimming and treating retirement like a vacation. Some days, she simply sat on her front porch swing.

Then, the weather changed. The cold autumn reminded Caraway that something had to change in her life. So, she started volunteering in Guilford, Conn., with a group that works to uplift academically gifted minority women from disadvantaged communities. That expanded into a part-time, paid position managing the group’s consignment shop.

Caraway was presented with an opportunity to go back–on a short-term contract–to Bristol-Myers Squibb. This encouraged her to send her résumé to Your Encore, a retiree return-to-work program co-created by Lilly, Procter & Gamble and Boeing that matches retirees with employers who need their skills. She landed more contracts to which she can always say “No, thanks” and still have time for yoga class.

“There is life after retirement,” she said. “It’s called work.”

Then, there’s Louise Klaber. She retired at age 65 from a 20-year career in organizational development–but is now working again at age 81.

In 2001, the former New Yorker thought she was living the dream when she arranged to retire to New York City with husband Ralph Walde, a college professor.

Sept. 13 was moving day into their apartment on New York’s Upper West Side. But as the horrific events of 9/11 unfurled, they found they were living in a state of shock. Within weeks, they were both signed up to do volunteer work helping prepare meals for the 9/11 site workers. Their shift: 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., chopping squash, carrots and onions. “It made us feel like we were actually doing something to help,” Klaber said.

The prep kitchen shut down shortly after Thanksgiving, and she found part-time paid work assisting people most severely affected by 9/11 find financial aid, mental health assistance or employment. She then contacted ReServe, a national nonprofit that places retired professionals with public service agencies of all sizes, budgets and missions. ReServe linked Klaber with the New York City Law Department, where she has worked part time ever since as an organization development counselor. What drives her isn’t the $10-an-hour pay but the professional camaraderie.

A former marathon runner, Klaber still runs almost daily. That, she said, is an important ingredient for staying healthy–but the work is just as important to her vitality.

When will she finally quit working?

“God only knows,” she said. “I’m having way too much fun.”

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Want to stay strong as you age? Find a purpose.

By Judith Graham, Washington Post, September 24, 2017

After making it through the maelstrom of middle age, many adults find themselves approaching older age wondering, “What will give purpose to my life” now that the kids have flown the nest and retirement is in the cards?

How they answer can have significant implications for their health.

Over the past two decades, dozens of studies have shown that seniors with a sense of purpose in life are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, disabilities, heart attacks or strokes, and more likely to live longer than people without this kind of underlying motivation.

Now, a report in JAMA Psychiatry adds to this body of evidence by showing that older adults with a solid sense of purpose tend to retain strong hand grips and walking speeds–key indicators of how rapidly people are aging.

Why would a psychological construct (“I feel that I have goals and something to live for”) have this kind of impact? Seniors with a sense of purpose may be more physically active and take better care of their health, some research suggests. Also, they may be less susceptible to stress, which can fuel dangerous inflammation.

“Purposeful individuals tend to be less reactive to stressors and more engaged, generally, in their daily lives, which can promote cognitive and physical health,” said Patrick Hill, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who wasn’t associated with the latest study.

But what is purpose, really? And how can it be cultivated?

Anne Newman, a 69-year-old who splits her time between Hartsdale, north of New York City, and Delray Beach, Fla., said she’s been asking herself this “on a minute-by-minute basis” since closing her psychotherapy practice late last year.

Building and maintaining a career became a primary driver in her life after Newman raised two daughters and went back to work at age 48. As a therapist, “I really loved helping people make changes in their lives that put them in a different, better position,” she said.

Things became difficult when Newman’s husband, Joseph, moved to Florida and she started commuting back and forth from New York. Over time, the travel took a toll, and Newman decided she didn’t want a long-distance marriage. So she began winding down her practice and thinking about her next chapter.

Experts advise that people seeking a sense of purpose consider spending more time on activities they enjoy or using work skills in a new way. Newman loves drawing and photography. She has investigated work and volunteer opportunities in Florida, but nothing has grabbed her just yet.

“Not knowing what’s going to take the place of work in my life–it feels horrible, like I’m floundering,” she admitted in a phone interview.

Many people go through a period of trial and error after retirement and don’t find what they’re looking for right away, said Dilip Jeste, senior associate dean for healthy aging and senior care at the University of California at San Diego. “This doesn’t happen overnight.”

“People don’t like to talk about their discomfort because they think it’s unusual. And yet everybody thinks about this existential question at this time of life: ‘What are we here for?’” he noted.

Newman’s focus has been on getting “involved in something other than personal satisfaction–something larger than myself.”

“I think people can get a sense of purpose from very simple things: from taking care of a pet, working in the garden or being kind to a neighbor,” said Patricia Boyle, a leading researcher in this field and a professor of behavioral sciences at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“Even small goals can help motivate someone to keep going,” she continued. “Purpose can involve a larger goal, but it’s not a requirement.”

Older adults often discover a sense of purpose from taking care of grandchildren, volunteering or becoming involved in community service work or religion, she said. “A purpose in life can arise from learning a new thing, accomplishing a new goal, working together with other people or making new social connections when others are lost,” she said.

Tara Gruenewald’s research highlights how important it is for older adults to feel they play a valuable role in the lives of others.

“I think what we often lose as we age into older adulthood is not a desire to contribute meaningfully to others but the opportunity to do so,” said Gruenewald, chair of the department of psychology at California’s Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences at Chapman University. Her research has found that people who perceive themselves as being useful had a stronger feeling of well-being and were less likely to become disabled or to die during a seven-year follow-up period than those who didn’t see themselves this way.

“In midlife, we contribute to others partly because it’s demanded of us in work and in our social relationships,” Gruenewald said. “As we grow older, we have to seek out opportunities to contribute and give to others.”

After Barry Dym, 75, retired a year ago from a long career as an organizational consultant and a marriage and family therapist, he said, “I didn’t ask myself, ‘Did I have a larger purpose in life?’ I asked myself, ‘What gives meaning to my life?’”

Answering that question wasn’t difficult: Certain themes had defined choices he’d made throughout his life. “What gives meaning to me is helping people. Trying to have an impact. Working with people very closely and helping them become much better at what they do,” Dym said in a phone conversation from his home in Lexington, Mass.

In retirement, he’s carrying that forward by mentoring several people with whom he has a professional and personal relationship, bringing together groups of people to talk about aging, and starting a blog. Recently, he said, he wrote about discovering that he feels freer now to “explore who I am, where I came from and what meaning things have to me than at any other point of my life.”

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Start an orphanage in the Philippines at age 80? Of course!

By Gail Wood, CS Monitor, April 10, 2013
It was the last place Lois Prater’s children expected her to go—overseas to become a missionary.

At age 80, Ms. Prater, who had been a stay-at-home housewife all her married life, sold her Seattle-area home, her car, and other belongings to build an orphanage in the Philippines. She became the unlikely helping hand for hundreds of orphaned children over the years.

“She sold everything,” says Bonnie Swinney, one of Prater’s three daughters. “The only things she kept were the things she could use in the orphanage.”

In 1991, Prater, with her own money, bought 12 acres of land covered with mango and coconut trees near Orion, a small town in the Philippines. Three years later, the doors would open to King’s Garden Children’s Home, a 2,000-square-foot, white stucco building, giving orphaned children from infants to teens new hope.

“I can’t imagine at my age going over there now,” says Ms. Swinney, who is 73. “What she did was amazing.”

For 13 years, Prater lived in the Philippines, enduring both physical and financial hardships. She had to overcome a number of challenging physical ailments along the way. And there was the difficult task of living in a foreign country, far from her family. Yet she refused to come home.

Finally, with a new manager in place, Prater retired and returned home to live with her daughter near Seattle just before her 90th birthday. She died in January at age 100.

“I didn’t know anything about business, about building an orphanage,” Prater said several years ago when talking about her decision to open King’s Garden. “All along, I’ve just trusted in God, and He’s answered my prayers. I did what I could do, and God did the rest.”

Just a few years after King’s Garden Children’s Home opened, Prater invested in expansion. King’s Garden tripled in size and started a school. Over the years, an average of about 60 children at a time have lived at the orphanage.

Prater’s unlikely journey began six months after her husband, Galon Prater, died in 1988. While Lois Prater was watching a Christian TV program, Lora Lam, a missionary on the program, asked for people to join her on a three-week outreach trip to China. Prater, who had attended Bible school as a teenager and had earned her ministerial license, felt her childhood desire to become a missionary rising again.

“I said, ‘Lord, I’m too old to go now,’ ” Prater said.

But she went, making three trips, one to China and two to the Philippines, taking part in open-tent meetings. Inspired by her trip with Ms. Lam to China, Prater returned for a second trip several weeks later with 11 other women for a month-long stay in the Philippines. She later made a third visit to the Philippines alone and was speaking at a church when a poorly dressed man came up to her after the service and offered to sell his baby to her for 1,000 pesos, or about $40 at that time.

“That impacted my soul so deeply I knew I had to do something,” Prater said.

So, in 1990 she returned to the United States and sold her home for $65,000. She sold everything she had, determined to build an orphanage.

Prater admitted selling her home wasn’t easy.

“I struggled, but I knew that what I was trying to do was something much more important than hanging onto my faded couch,” Prater said.

At 89, Prater had a physical setback and was forced to step down as the orphanage’s director. She returned home, this time for good. But she made several short visits to her orphanage over the next few years.

The orphanage and school continues to do well today. Monica Jarvis assumed directorship of King’s Garden Children’s Home in 2005 and remains in that position with the support of the Assemblies of God World Missions.

“To think that my mom opened the orphanage at 80 and worked there until she was 89 absolutely blows me away,” says Swinney, who has adopted several children from King’s Garden Children’s Home. “My mom has the biggest heart.”

Each of the children brought to King’s Garden Children’s Home has a heartbreaking story. One of the first children, who had no name, was brought to Prater when he was just nine days old. Prater named him Albert. His alcoholic father was in jail and his mother moved into the jail with him because she had no other place to stay.

One-by-one, Prater took in each of that mother’s four children, keeping them out of jail.

Another child, who Prater named Tommy, was brought to King’s Garden Children’s Home by the police when he was just one year old. Tommy’s ear had been cut off by his father. Heidi, another child brought to Prater by the police, came to King’s Garden with stomach worms and head lice. Many of the children who come to King’s Garden are in need of medical treatment.

The mother and father of a girl named Jennifer died, and she moved into King’s Garden when she was 10. Her step brother brought her to the orphanage because she had no other place to live.

“I feel I’m not talented enough to do any of this,” Prater said while she was still overseeing King’s Garden. “But God enables me. My responsibility is to do what I can. He does the rest. My only regret is I didn’t start when I was younger.”

Prater’s story has been an inspiration to others, including her daughter, showing how it’s never too late to live a life of serving others.

“My mom was such an amazing person,” Swinney says. “She had tremendous faith in God.”

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