Ready for an encore?

Retirement is changing, and so is the way people look at life, time and the meaning of 'careers' By Debbie Gardner PRIME Editor So, what are you doing for the rest of your life? If you're part of the generation labeled "the baby boom," traditional retirement age is right on your doorstep. But with lifespans expanding and health improving, that 20-plus span of years between 65 and say, 85 or so may look like an awful lot of endless downtime. If you're part of the World War II generation, well, you're right in the middle of that thing we call traditional retirement, and only you can answer how physically, emotionally and spiritually satisfying this phase of your life is. There's no denying that the world is changing, the pace of life is changing, and society's views of work and aging are changing. Maybe that means retirement needs to change, too. That's the view of Marc Freedman, social trend watcher and founder and president of Civic Ventures. He believes boomers, and maybe their parents, too, are prime for an encore. Freedman is the author of the book, "Encore Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life." "Given today's lifespans, not many people look forward to endless retirement, thirty years of R &R," Freedman told PRIME through an e-mail interview. "More to the point: they can't afford it even those with diligent savings plans.The Golden Years version of retirement that reigned over the past half century is obsolete. Stretched from a sensible and justified period of leisure and relaxation into a phase as long as midlife in duration, retirement, once a powerful version of the American dream, has been distorted into something that no longer works for most individuals or for the nation." To Freedman's mind, anyone approaching or over the age of 65 has accumulated too much wisdom, honed and perfected too much talent, to just sit on the sidelines. "And half of those between 50 and 70 say they want to do work that improves life in their communities," Freedman observed, referring to the interviews he conducted for his book. Maybe your encore will lead, (or already has led) you to volunteering for your church, a local school, hospital or favorite charity organization. Or maybe, like some local people PRIME spoke with recently, it will lead to a new career. From teacher to artist/author For Kris Crimmins of Wilbraham, her encore career as an artist and children's book author was, as she says, an outgrowth of an old love of writing and painting, and her first career. "I was a remedial reading teacher in Monson," Crimmins told PRIME. "For many, many years I just loved the artwork in children's books. It's gotten so phenomenal that it's a pleasure to read children's books." Like many women, Crimmins' work life was interrupted by child-rearing. She taught for five years, stayed home with her children for 17 years, then returned to the classroom for another five years. "I didn't actually retire," said Crimmins, who was in her 50s when she made the change. "I just decided I didn't want to work as a teacher anymore." In this way, Crimmins echoed the attitude of many of the individuals Freedman had interviewed for "Encore" who said "I'm done with my midlife career, but I'm not done yet." Crimmins said she "took a couple of years off" and began dabbling in art again, taking a few classes and working with an artist friend who lived down the street. "She would mentor me in watercolors," Crimmins said. "We would go out on location and sit right next to me [and] would say to me 'nope, you've got to do this' and then she'd go back to holding her own brush." Around that time Crimmins also discovered an illustration class at the Rhode Island School of Design. She took "a class at a time" over the next three and a half years, finally earning a certificate in children's book illustration. "I didn't pursue a degree . I already had so many degrees I felt I didn't need it," she said. " I just needed to study the missing parts." That course of study, coupled with ongoing workshops in painting have launched one career as an artist who shows her work through Wilbraham Art League exhibits. She said she's sold one acrylic painting so far. But Crimmins didn't stop her pursuit of children's literature with the illustration course. She's also spent the past five years studying writing at the Springfield Jewish Community Center with local memoir and creative writing teacher Sylvia Rosen. "She did develop my writing and got me on the road," said Crimmins, who currently has several children's books out with publishers for consideration. She also has three adult romance novellas in the works. When PRIME posed the question "why make this kind of career change at 50+?," Crimmins answered candidly. "I was going through a period of 'What am I going to do with the rest of my life?'" she said. "I have a lot to share and a lot of time left, I think. I'm not going to sit in a rocking chair and wither away." "I wanted to do something constructive and fun and keep my mind active," she said. "And [I wanted to] try out all the things I didn't have time to do before." From dropout to masters candidate For George Mallalieu of Hampden, his decision to enroll in Boston's Berklee College of Music at 59 was an encore to an encore. It was also an enormous challenge. Mallalieu has suffered with a lifelong visual impairment; at this point in his life he can't read and sees only shadows and color and light. And, he dropped out of school in the eighth grade. But Mallalieu had never let his physical or educational shortcomings get in the way of his success, or his possibilities. He's already retired twice, once from his role as founder and owner of Sandy's Music and Sound in Springfield, Mass., which grew to one of the largest sound and equipment stores in New England in the 1970s, and again in the 1990s from the position of general manager and personal consultant to Dr. Ahmar Bose at the Bose affiliate in Hawaii. "When I worked with Bose I was with a lot of people with PhD's from Harvard and MIT," Mallalieu said. "I was this eighth grade drop-out. When I went to work, I got awards; but I was always worried that I'd answer a question wrong and lose my job." So, when he and his second wife, locally well-known folk performer Joan Corbin, moved back to Hampden, he decided to finish the education he'd interrupted years ago. "I'd paid for my [daughter's] education, for my first wife's education, I figured it was my turn," Mallalieu said. "I always wanted to go." But first he had to get his GED, a tall order when he kept being handed "this thick book that I couldn't read." He found a way around the problem, offering to pay for the class for the teenaged daughter of a tenant, and having her read the material to him as payment. She didn't stay with the class until the end, but she did go far enough that Mallalieu was able to pass the exam. Then Mallalieu, who had always been a natural musician he met his second wife, Joan Corbin, playing in clubs in the late 1970s decided to apply for the guitar performance degree at Berklee. Corbin, who had lost a social service job with the Valley Occupational Council in 2003, agreed to apply for the music therapy program at the same time, both for her own advancement and to give Mallalieu an assistant with reading and papers. (He recorded most of his classes for study purposes.) Though Corbin had worked in the human services field for 30 years, she said she had never advanced academically beyond the associate's degree she received at Springfield Technical Community College. In that respect, she, too, fit Freedman's model of an encore career-changer. "If your work-life spreads out over 40 or 50 years, it makes sense to think that, at some point, you're going to want to get additional training and new skills in a formal education setting," he told PRIME. And, as a recent breast cancer survivor, the fact that Berklee's music therapy department was associated with the Dana Farber Cancer Institute where Corbin was treated made the idea of going back for a second degree doubly appealing. But even with the support of his wife, and grants and a non-traditional scholarship to help defray the cost of college, Mallalieu said the task was daunting. "It's hard, going to school. I had failed at everything at school, but succeeded at everything at life," Mallalieu said. For Corbin, it was the physical challenge of facing tests and performance evaluations that were the biggest obstacle. "It was very hard for me the first couple of semesters. I had second thoughts," Corbin said. "When I was younger I studied but didn't really have to study. I was an honors student." "When I went to Berklee I thought I could do the same thing," she continued. "At the first test, I froze. I read the test, but I couldn't understand the questions." She said she talked to people at the school who reassured her that her experience "happens to a lot of people when they come back to school." In the end, both graduated Magna Cum Laude this past May. But their education odyssey is far from over. Mallalieu has applied to take a double master's degree in social work and counseling at Harvard. "I fell in love with the kids because they needed someone who was steady, someone who would listen," Mallalieu said of his experience learning alongside the other undergrads at Berklee. "I learned early that I shouldn't give advice, I wasn't qualified, but I could give them my life experience. "It was more important to me to change the lives of young people through counseling that through teaching guitar," he said of his decision to continue his degrees. Corbin is looking at taking a Masters degree at Smith College. She already hosts a music therapy program called pallicare music through the Berklee Internet radio station. "It's opened up so many avenues, going back to school," she said. Part of a national, and local, trend "Many midlife career changers are looking at where they can make a difference and where the jobs are," Encore author Freedman said in response to PRIME's question about what types of careers seem to be attracting encorers. "That takes a lot of them to second careers in education, health care and government work all areas facing severe labor shortages." Mallalieu and Corbin's plans for the future reflect that trend. And so do the advanced degree programs at several local colleges. According to Ellen Noonan, assistant dean of Continuing Education at American International College (AIC), the college's part-time baccalaureate program sees "[older folks] coming back to complete a degree they may have left many years ago. They come back and need maybe two years." She also sees older students coming back just to get a degree. "My oldest student is 74 years old and she's doing it for personal satisfaction. she's pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies," Noonan said. The other trend she sees is teachers coming back to complete their masters degree to advance in their careers. At Springfield College (SC), Don Shaw, director of Graduate Admissions said he's been observing a steady growth in students over age 50 returning for advanced degrees "over the last 10 or 12 years." "It's not something that's brand new," he said. But he said the older student is often much like George Mallalieu. "They've made their money, they're set and can make the move, or they feel the time is right to make the move," he said. Claire Burns, publicist for Springfield College, said the common theme she sees with the midlife student population is that "people are pursuing education in the human helping fields." "Most often they are changing careers," she said. "They have not been in human helping fields and at this stage they want to change to a human helping direction. Or, they want to advance in a human helping field." Shaw cited some of the human helping fields offering degree programs at SC as "social work, psychology and counseling, occupational therapy and art therapy." But it's never easy "Going back to school, financially, it's a killer," George Mallalieu confided. "The first semester we had to sell our rental property." But Mallalieu said that shouldn't dissuade midlifers who really want to go back to school from following their dream. "The mistake most people my age make is looking at the cost of the school. The larger school has much larger resources," he said, referring to the pool of nontraditional scholarships, grants and other endowments that may be available, if the student is willing to dig and do the application work. Even Freedman admits that "it's tough to change jobs after 50, let alone careers. Those who have tried have found that reinventing one's worklife calls for an act of imagination at any age." "Those who have made and saved more money in their lifetimes may have more flexibility, but the desire to have an encore career isn't limited by income," he said. "Whether you've retired from a clerical job at an electric company or retired from running a company, you still face the same question: what am I going to do for the next 20 or 30 years?" He said men and women looking for an encore of work and purpose may find "It's not easy, but they are questioning their values, following their passions, rethinking their training, networking, volunteering as a way to paid employment, and selling their experience as an asset." For a list of resources to help you or someone you know get started on an encore, visit www.encorecareers.com