At 94, Stephen Richardson still competes in rowing and running.
“There are no second acts in American lives,” Scott
Fitzgerald famously wrote. That may have been true in Fitzgerald’s day, but
now, in the 21st century, as more and more baby boomers are
transforming our expectations of old age, retired Americans are discovering third
acts in their lives—life-altering experiences that happen after the age of,
say, 65.
In October I wrote a blog post, “No, I don’t want to Die at 75!” in response to a widely discussed
article in “The Atlantic” by a famous
scientist named Ezekiel J. Emanuel. He wrote
that he wanted to die at 75 and that, after he turns 65, he plans to
discontinue all his health care because the
“manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially
destructive,” as it burdens our children
with the “wrong kind of memories…We
are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual,
even pathetic.”
I should mention here that Mr. Emanuel is a youngster of 57,
and that I am about to turn 74, which makes me too old even to count as a Baby
Boomer (people born between 1946 and 1964.) I wrote in my post, “I submit that my quality of life in my late
sixties and early seventies is better than at any previous time in my life,”
and I gave examples, ranging from returning to my first love—painting—to
visiting a Hindu wedding in India, a butterfly sanctuary in Mexico, sea turtle
beaches in Nicaragua, and, especially, discovering the ineffable joys of being
a grandmother.
After that blog post was published, I began to hear of
fellow senior citizens who had achieved truly remarkable third acts in their
lives at an age when, according to Mr. Emanuel, they should have been buying
burial plots.
Take Stephen Richardson, who, at 94, still competes in
rowing. He began rowing when he was a student at Harvard in the mid-1940’s, but
it wasn’t until he turned 50 that he started running marathons as well. He ran
at least 28 marathons between the age of 53-68, including a first-place finish
in his age group at the London Marathon, and recorded his best-ever mile time
at the age of 60. Now, six years short
of his 100th birthday, he still competes in rowing and running.
Three friends, Katherine Southworth,78, Jack Taylor, 80, and
Marilyn Wentworth, 84, got together after retirement—when they were all in
their seventies and living in RiverWoods
retirement center in New Hampshire--—to write and publish a book about
World War II memories. They collected 75
first-person narratives, including period photos, maps and a detailed
index. Before they ventured into publishing,
Katherine was a director at a New York school, then an EMT for the North Hampton
Fire Department, Jack earned a PhD in
physics at MIT in 1961, then served at the Army Signal Corps Laboratories
doing research on detecting nuclear tests, and Marilyn, after working on Wall
Street, entered graduate school at age fifty, earning a masters degree, then
becoming a registered dietician and teaching college level nutrition. All three became first-time authors after the
age of 75.
The most unexpected third act I heard about belonged to
Nancy Alcock, a native of Tasmania and a biochemist who worked for Memorial
Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute before her semi-retirement as one of the first
women faculty members at the University of Texas Medical school. An independent woman who had never married,
the last thing Nancy expected when she quit work at 74 and moved into the
RiverWoods community, was to become a first-time bride, but that’s what
happened.
Dr. Henry Hood, a retired neurosurgeon who, by coincidence,
had worked with Nancy at Sloan Kettering but never knew her there, had also
moved into RiverWoods with his wife, who was in poor health. After she passed away, Dr. Hood became a
member of RiverWoods’ Resident Council and got to know his former colleague,
Nancy, during council committee meetings.
When they were married in 2008 in the Cathedral of the Pines in Rindge,
NH, Henry’s children and grandchildren were in attendance. Later they flew to Tasmania for a similar
celebration with Nancy’s family. Nancy and Henry are not a rarity—in fact,
there have been six weddings at RiverWoods alone in the past four years.
RiverWoods is one of 1900 Continuing Care Retirement
Communities in the United States, the majority of which are non-profit. A CCRC
guarantees that their residents, who join when they are able to live
independently, will have lifetime health care at both Assisted Living and
Skilled Nursing levels, if and when they need it.
Because such communities provide amenities encouraging
residents to discover new activities and creative outlets-- such as art
studios, libraries, pools, fitness centers, gardens and access to nearby theaters,
shops and sports-- it’s not surprising that many retired citizens have
reinvented their lives, because they are encouraged to pursue passions they
didn’t have time for earlier. In fact, it appears to me that the Baby Boomers,
who basically invented their own style of being teenagers, then campus
activists, then deeply involved parents, and environmentally responsible
consumers, are now creating a new way of being old, boldly finding third acts
in their lives instead of declining into Mr. Emanuel’s characterization of us
as “feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”
