Rejecting the Rocking Chair: Many of Today’s Older Adults Are Entering Retirement Determined to Keep Active and Avoid Physical and Mental Decline

By Dan Kelly, Reading Eagle, Pa.

Feb. 3–THE TRADITIONAL notion of retirement has been turned on its ear. Images of sweater-clad seniors sitting on love seats, sipping tea and dozing off during Lawrence Welk reruns no longer apply.

And retirement planning is no longer just about money.

The key components of successful aging today are avoiding disease, maintaining high mental and physical function and active engagement in life through productive activities and close personal relationships, according to a MacArthur Foundation study of aging in America.

Retirement is now being called rewirement and rehirement.

Instead of being places to spend your dotage, new retirement communities sound more like spas, with offerings such as comprehensive wellness programs and massage courses.

“The retirees we’re getting in here want to be resourceful, they want to know what they can do to help,” said Gwendolynn F. Didden, director of service centers for Berks ENCORE.

Formerly the Berks Senior Citizens Council, even the agency’s name reflects a new vigor in its clients, especially the baby boomers who are just starting to reach retirement age.

“They’re (retirees) joining in groups with their friends,” Didden said. “The boomers are coming in with a completely different attitude.

“I think the new concept of not retiring but rewiring is really true.”

Dick and Jeanine Walter said they watched their parents and neighbors become inactive and decline before their eyes.

“That’s kind of when we started getting smart about it (retirement),” Dick said. “We saw what happens in life when you’re not active.”

Dick, 75, and Jeanine, 74, are planning to sell their house in Eagleville, Montgomery County, and move into the Heritage at Green Hills retirement community in Cumru Township.

Cheryl Anderson, director of the Well by Design program to be offered at the Heritage when it opens this year, said she surveyed prospective residents about the activities they wanted.

Water activities, sports and concerts were the top three responses. More sedentary options such as scrapbooking, pen pals and stamp collecting got fewer than 10 percent of responses.

The goal of the Heritage, Anderson said, is not only to keep residents happy, but also to keep them healthy.

Dr. Sam Alfano, medical director at St. Joseph Medical Center, said depression brought on by a lack of activity is the biggest problem in his senior patients, and it can cause psychological and physical damage.

“When they get depressed they don’t eat, they don’t take care of themselves,” said Alfano, who specializes in internal medicine and geriatrics. “They need that activity, that network of friends and family to remain active.”

The other problem is physical.

“Being sedentary is not healthy for a lot of reasons,” he said. “They lose muscle mass, so they don’t breathe as well and don’t walk as well, they gain weight, develop diabetes and heart disease as all their muscle is replaced by fat.”

Together the physical and psychological symptoms disrupt sleep, often prompting the patient to self-medicate with alcohol or medications to help them sleep.

“None of that addresses the underlying problem, that they are depressed,” Alfano said.

He said that well before people retire, they should get ready by joining organizations, clubs and other activities that will provide them with a network of friends and activities when they do stop working.

“I also tell my patients to come see their doctor when they aren’t sick to talk about things like vitamins, good nutrition and exercise so they won’t get sick,” Alfano said.

Dr. Robert J. Cannon, dean of continuing education and community outreach at Albright College, said he prefers to say rehiring, not retiring.

“We lose a lot of value by having people retire and not continue to participate in the economy,” he said.

Cannon said the enrollment of senior citizens has risen at Albright by 65 percent from 37 in 2003 to 57 in 2007.

“We encourage people to think about retirement for one career as rehirement into another career where they can continue to use the intellectual capital they have built over the years,” Cannon said.

Mary Ann Hayes, 59, Wyomissing, retired from her job as an English teacher and department head at Brandywine Heights High School two years ago.

She also has taught various English classes at Alvernia College since 1985. And after she retired from Brandywine, she kept right on teaching at Alvernia.

“If I had any plan at all for my retirement, it was to not go home and sit in a chair,” Hayes said. “I’ve seen people do that. One of them was my mother.

“She got to the point where she didn’t have any interest in anything,” Hayes said.

In addition to continuing teaching, it could also be said that Hayes is rewiring herself. She’s pursuing a divinity degree and plans to become a minister in the United Church of Christ.

Rodney and Mary Ann Focht of Muhlenberg Township said they have always been active and planned to stay that way when they retired.

Rodney, 72, is active in the Knights of Columbus.

“It’s an everyday thing,” he said. “I clean floors, wash windows, whatever needs to be done.”

Mary Ann, 68, volunteers at a local nursing home twice a week and helps with bingo at the Knights of Columbus on Thursday nights.

“It gets you out of the house,” Rodney said.

“We’ve been married 50 years, and it’s been good,” Mary Ann said. “But you don’t want to have too much togetherness either.”

Mary Ann makes a good point, said Lynne A. Nessle, a licensed clinical social worker and coordinator of the senior assessment program at Reading Hospital.

Spending more time with a spouse could prove to be one of the biggest sources of stress in retirement, Nessle said.

“When people retire they aren’t always aware of the sources of stress,” Nessle said. “Then suddenly they are always together.”

Planning for retirement should include more than one plan.

“Say you plan to travel in your retirement and then you or a loved one becomes ill and unable to travel,” Nessle said.

Having a backup plan can help you move seamlessly between activities you can do even with a new set of circumstances, Nessle said.

The reason plans are needed is that most people draw a sense of self-esteem and selfworth from their job. Suddenly losing that identity could make life seem meaningless or without value, she said.

Retirees and their loved ones should look for symptoms like a lack of motivation and sleep and appetite changes, which may be signs of depression.

Watching a neighbor waste away was enough to prompt Dick and Jeanine Walter to plan for an active retirement.

“These are very real issues,” Dick said. “Both of us are eating better and exercising better and having a more strict consciousness about health.”

“We don’t want to get like the neighbors and the relatives that we’ve lost,” Jeanine added. “We want to put that off as long as we can.”

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