4 Life Lessons From Tony Bennett and Other 89-Year-Olds

Bennett and Dick Van Dyke are going strong and happy

By Liz Fedor for Next Avenue

Tony with his son Danny, 2007 Grammy Awards

Singer Tony Bennett, at 89, isn’t resting on his laurels.

He recently released a new album, The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern. In an interview with NPR, he recalled how much he loved singing for his relatives as a boy. “It created a passion in my life that exists to this moment as I speak to you, that is stronger now at 89 than in my whole life,” Bennett said. “I still feel that I can get better somehow. And I search for it all of the time.”

Bennett’s not the only 89-year-old who is defying stereotypes of older age. Actor Dick Van Dyke just wrote a memoir titled Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging. Queen Elizabeth continues to carry out the royal responsibilities she inherited in 1952. And Marilyn Hagerty, my friend and former colleague, continues to write regularly for the Grand Forks, N.D., Herald.

Their daily lives offer four lessons for all people of all ages:


Lesson 1: Spend Time with People of Different Generations

 With her sky-high shoes, infamous meat dress and outlandish theatrics, Lady Gaga stands opposite Bennett on the pop star spectrum. Yet Bennett saw an opportunity for an interesting collaboration, so he reached across their 60-year age gap and created a hit album of jazz standards and toured the country with the artist he calls ‘Lady.’

By working with artists who are younger than he is, Bennett is living in the present and learning how younger people interact with each other.

Lesson 2: Don’t Bow to Pressures to Retire

Actors, writers and professors are among the professionals who are leading the way to prove that there isn’t one right age for people to retire.

Like Queen Elizabeth, who hasn’t bothered to respond to speculation about her retirement, so are a slew of women in the public sector. Janet Yellen, 69, plays a key role in guiding the nation’s economy in her post as chair of the Federal Reserve System. Following deadly ISIS attacks in Paris, two American women have important roles in proposing U.S. policy to combat terrorism at home and around the globe: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate for president, is 68, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is 82.

Lesson 3: Look for the Silver Lining

On his new album, Bennett sings, “A heart full of joy and gladness will always banish sadness and strife. So always look for the silver lining.”

During the many years I’ve known Grand Forks Herald columnist Marilyn Hagerty, she has always exemplified this attitude. I’ve watched her lose her husband and daughter, overcome breast cancer and pick up the pieces after her home was flooded. Despite her sorrow, she perseveres by being out and about in the world and moving forward. She enjoys her grandchildren, regularly plays bridge, cheers at college games and volunteers at her church. But Hagerty has loved being a journalist her entire life, so she makes time to report and write informative and wry columns laced with her self-deprecating humor.

People like Hagerty and Bennett focus on what they physically can do; they don’t dwell on what they can’t do.

Lesson 4: Indulge Your Passion

In his new book, Keep Moving, Van Dyke writes about how he danced in celebration of his 89th birthday: “I shimmied and shook, my hips going right and then left, my arms and wrists undulating like long snakes.”

When someone told him, “You don’t act your age at all,” Van Dyke concluded that “old age is part fact, part state of mind, part luck.”

He loves to dance, so he indulges that passion. And to ensure that he can keep dancing, he works out daily by walking on a treadmill and lifting weights.

Van Dyke has another wise piece of advice for people of all ages: Don’t worry. “The less you worry, the better your attitude is, and a positive, worry-free, guilt-free attitude is key to enjoying life at any age — especially old age.”

 © Twin Cities Public Television - 2016. All rights reserved.



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Why I'm Not Buying the Retirement Gloom

In the emerging Unretirement movement, you are your best investment

By Chris Farrell for Next Avenue

Thinkstock

Gray wave. Age wave. Geezer tsunami. (Pick your favorite — or most hated — euphemism.) Catchphrases like these capture the realization that we’re living longer and that older Americans make up a growing share of the population. As economist Laurence Kotlikoff and columnist Scott Burns say in The Coming Generational Storm: “The aging of America isn’t a temporary event. We are well into a change that is permanent, irreversible, and very long term.”

Living longer should be a trend worth celebrating. But many people believe that America’s boomers can’t afford retirement, let alone a decent retirement. They fear that aging boomers are inevitably hurtling toward a lower standard of living.

And here’s their evidence: We’ve just been through the worst downturn since the 1930s, decimating jobs and pensions. Retirement savings are slim. Surveys show that boomers aren’t spending much time planning for retirement. The prediction that the swelling tab for Social Security and other old-age entitlements will push the U.S. government and economy into a Greece-like collapse seems almost routine.

The Unretirement Movement

Don’t buy into the retirement gloom. I’m not.

Here’s why: The signs of a grassroots push to reinvent the last third of life are unmistakable. Call it the “Unretirement” movement — and it is a movement.

Unretirement starts with the insight that earning a paycheck well into the traditional retirement years will make a huge difference in our future living standards. You — and your skills and talents — are your best retirement investment. What's more, if society taps into the talents and abilities of sixty-somethings and seventy-somethings, employers will benefit, the economy will be wealthier and funding entitlements will be much easier.

The Unretirement movement is built off a series of broad, mutually reinforcing changes in the economy and society that are transforming an aging workforce into a powerful economic asset. Boomers are the most educated generation in U.S. history and they’re healthier, on average, than previous generations. A century-long trend toward a declining average age of retirement has already reversed itself and — it’s safe to say — you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“Many people aren't slowing down in their 60s and 70s,” says Ross Levin, a certified financial planner and president of Accredited Investors in Edina, Minn. Adds Nicole Maestas, economist at the Rand Corp., the Santa Monica, Calif.-based think tank: “Yes, America has an aging population. The upside of that is a whole generation of people who are interested in anything but retirement.”

Your 'Next Big Thing'

Just ask Luanne Mullin, 60. She has done marketing for a dance company, opened a theater company and run a recording studio. These days, Mullin is a project manager at the University of California, San Francisco, overseeing the construction of scientific laboratories (she does mediation at the school on the side).

“I think there’s more and more of us at 60 who are saying, ‘OK, what’s my next career? What do I want to do that’s fulfilling?’” Mullin told me. “I’m all for what’s my next big thing.”

Mullin loves her work, but she’s also wrestling with the same questions as many of her peers. “What is this aging thing?” she wonders. “Am I living fully? Is this the second half of life I dreamed of, or if not, how do I pull it together?”

When Unretirement is Tougher

For many in their 50s and 60s, the transition to Unretirement is much tougher — especially for those who are involuntarily unemployed, like Debbie Nowak.

She didn’t see the layoff coming. Nowak worked for more than 30 years in customer relations for the pensions and benefits department at Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., In November 2011, at 58, she lost her job there.

Nowak, who has a high school diploma, let herself grieve until the holidays were over. In the New Year, she got her severance, went on unemployment and began thinking about embracing something completely different from her old job. “I never thought of myself as a risk taker,” she says. “After 30 years, I thought I should take a risk.”

Nowak had a stained glass hobby, making window panes, mosaic trays, and other objects. That led her to the idea of working in the wood finishing and furniture-restoring business. Last year, she got a certificate from The National Institute for Wood Finishing at Dakota Community Technical College in Rosemount, Minn. To pay for it, Nowak took out a loan and the state chipped in from its displaced workers fund.

Today, she has a part-time job at small furniture-restoration company. “It’s a crap shoot, a risk I was willing to take,” says Nowak. “This is also a way to produce additional income in retirement.”

As Mullin and Nowak demonstrate, we’re living through a period of experimentation while redefining retirement. Many people are stumbling about, searching for an encore career, a part-time job or contract work that offers them meaning and an income.

Some find it extremely tough to get hired, cobbling together a job here and a contract there, assuming they’re healthy. Especially vulnerable are less-educated workers who never made much money or never had jobs with employer-sponsored retirement and health benefits.

How Society Will Change

The rise of Unretirement calls for a whole cluster of changes in how society rewards work, creates jobs, shares the wealth and deals with old age. Unretirement will affect where Americans live out their lives, too, as they seek communities and services equipped for them.

Taken altogether, boomers will construct a new vision of their retirement years, which will impact how younger generations will think about their careers.

“People tend to learn from examples or stories handed down from previous generations — but there are few stories to navigate the new context of old age and retirement for the baby boomers,” writes Joseph Coughlin, the infectiously enthusiastic head of MIT’s AgeLab, a multi-disciplinary center. “When there are no set rules you make them up. The future of old age will be improvised.”

Copyright© 2014 Next Avenue, a division of Twin Cities Public Television, Inc.

Front Porch is a not-for-profit support system for a family of companies that serve individuals and families through full-service retirement, active adult communities, and affordable housing communities.

More information is available at www.frontporch.net.

Still Working After 75 — And Loving It

By Chris Farrell for Next Avenue

January 20, 2015

Thinkstock

Willie Nelson is 81; Warren Buffett is 84; Mary Higgins Clark is 86 and David Hockney is 77. All are still working and going strong. So are more and more Americans 75 and older. You might be one of them someday — and glad of it.

In a recent interview, British painter David Hockney — one of the world’s greatest living artists —captured the joy, meaning and youthfulness he continues to draw from his profession. “When I’m working, I feel like Picasso, I feel I’m 30,” he told Tim Lewis of The London Observer. “When I stop I know I’m not, but when I paint, I stand up for six hours a day and yeah, I feel I’m 30.”

'It's What I Enjoy Doing'

I imagine that sentiment rings true for Mark Paper, age 81. He’s President of Lewis Bolt & Nut Company in Wayzata, Minn., a firm owned by his family since 1927. Paper took the helm from his father in 1962 and remains deeply involved in the company’s expanding operations. He gets daily and weekly reports, stays in touch with its executives and flies out to visit the manufacturing plant in La Junta, Colo. several times a month.

“Why not stop working?” I asked Paper. “You have money. You’re 81-years-old. Haven’t you heard of retirement?” His answer: “It’s what I enjoy doing.”

Plenty of other septuagenarians and octogenarians feel the same way.

Although people working at age 75 and over are a distinct minority— comprising less than one percent of the total labor force — roughly 11 percent of American men 75 and older are still at it and 5 percent of women that age are. By contrast, in 1992, only about 7 percent of 75+ men and 3 percent of 75+ women worked.

Indeed, after declining sharply in the early postwar decades, the average age of retirement in America has risen over the past two decades, to 64 for men and 62 for women, calculates Alicia Munnell, head of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

While the labor force participation rate for men 75 and up is currently about double that of the rate for women, the gap is expected to shrink. Boomer and Gen X women are well educated and more attached to their jobs than previous generations.

'I Can't Imagine Not Being Employed'

Marilyn Tully, 75, loves working, too. She has been self-employed her entire working life in businesses mostly revolving around the home and interior design. “I can’t imagine not being employed,” she says. “Especially if you still have the energy, which I do and, like me, you have the creative urge.”

That doesn’t mean there haven’t been rough patches. In 2007, she and her husband had to shutter their Naples, Fla. furniture business, a casualty of the housing market implosion, and her interior design company suffered. These days, her design business is picking up, she represents a successful jewelry designer and consults on inventory management for high-end designers. (Her husband handles the administrative and IT sides of her firms.) When they aren’t working, they sail  Florida’s gulf coast for two weeks at a time on the trimaran Tully’s husband built. “It’s a good life,” she says.

'It Keeps Me Young'

Newspaper publisher Jerry Bellune of Lexington, S.C., 77, works at a pace that would leave many younger workers gasping. He says running the Lexington County Chronicle & Dispatch News with his wife, MacLeod, offers him “enjoyment, exhilaration, a strong sense of mission and purpose.” On top of that, says Bellune, “it keeps me young, working with younger people and helping them grow personally and professionally.”

And he has no plans to stop. “I'd like to work as long as I'm able and can still make a contribution,” Bellune told me.

Here’s a typical workweek for him: Mondays and Tuesdays, he’s usually at the office, writing, proofing pages and talking with the staff about coverage, and the rest of the week he’s mostly writing and helping with community endeavors. Weekends are busy, too, writing weekly and monthly articles for a business magazine and two trade magazines. (He’s also a consultant and manages a family investment fund. Tired yet?)

The Bellunes do take breaks, traveling abroad several weeks a year and spending time at their vacation home. “We have an excellent staff that permits us that leisure,” he says.

'It Keeps Me Off the Streets'

Funeral assistant Jerry Beddow, 75, loves working, too. A year after retiring as a high school principal in 1994, Beddow began his current job at Patton-Schad Funeral and Cremation Services in Sauk Centre, Minn. He works about three to four hours a day, helping position caskets at the funeral home, carrying flowers, talking to grieving families and driving the hearse. “It keeps me off the streets,” he laughs.

After researching my new book, Unretirement, I’ve come to believe that the ranks of people 75+ earning a paycheck will expand in coming decades, especially among better educated employees and business owners. It isn’t inconceivable that the average retirement age when the youngest boomers reach their 70s in the early 2030s could approach 70.

“Public opinion in the aggregate may decree that the average person becomes old at age 68, but you won’t get too far trying to convince people that age that the threshold applies to them,” notes Pew Research in its report, Growing Old in America: Expectations vs. Reality. “Even among those who are 75 and older, just 35 percent say they feel old.”

The ones who are able to keep working well into their 70s, I think, will find themselves leading richer lives, both financially and psychically.

Copyright© 2014 Next Avenue, a division of Twin Cities Public Television, Inc.

Front Porch is a not-for-profit support system for a family of companies that serve individuals and families through full-service retirement, active adult communities, and affordable housing communities.

More information is available at www.frontporch.net.