Why Retirees Don't Stop Working

By Evadna Bartlett

Research has good news for retirees still in the work force. Work promotes health, a study verifies.

A comparison was done by the Center on Aging and Health at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. It showed retirees working 15 or more hours a week in Baltimore public schools showed they were stronger and more physically, cognitively and socially active than the nonworking control group. The information is included in a June 27, 2005, Business Week cover story on the graying work force.

Locally, chemical engineer Bill Casto retired at 57 from Union Carbide, but continued to do consulting work for 18 years, keeping his skills honed. "I just think it was mostly to keep my fingers in the pie," the St. Albans-area (Washington, D.C.) resident said.

He's done no consulting for the past two years, but has turned his longtime woodworking hobby into another career of sorts. Often assisted by wife Fran, he creates wooden toys for a Proctor toyshop.

The Castos also are active volunteers with St. Albans Jericho House for the homeless, Christmas in April, Christ's Kitchen meal program and Lakeview United Methodist Church.

Volunteer work provides many of the benefits of employment, experts say. But Herschel Facemyre, retired Putnam County school principal, knew when he retired five years ago that hobbies and volunteering would not satisfy him for long. He didn't have anything specific in mind, but he had ruled out substitute teaching, a common route for retired educators.

"It's difficult after being an administrator," he said. "Two months before I retired, I had no plan."

Then he was asked to head the area AmeriCorps program. He had worked with program participants during his last few years at George Washington Middle School in Eleanor.

"I retired in June and on July 5 started as the director," Facemyre said.

One thing led to another, and 14 months ago he was asked to become the executive director of the four-county ARC of the Three Rivers, a service agency for the mentally and physically disabled.

"I have to be involved with other people," said Facemyre, previously a member of the ARC board.

"I don't consider myself in a second career," he said. "I consider what I'm doing as really contributing."

It may be that healthy working seniors in the future also could help Social Security survive, the Business Week article suggests. By raising the qualifying age, even while at the same time expanding Social Security's program disability for workers with health problems that preclude employment, there would be savings, proponents say.

Columnist Walter Updegrave dissents.

"Only 26 percent of current retirees have worked and almost half of those don't work anymore because they're not healthy enough or feel they're too old," he wrote in the August 2005 edition of Money Magazine.

Source: Charleston Daily Mail. Powered by Yellowbrix.

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