Retirement doesn’t necessarily begin at age 65 anymore, and for some women, it doesn’t even begin at 75. They are still working or involved full tilt in volunteer activities as if 75 were only 55.
They are among the harbingers of a demographic revolution worldwide. At the United Nations’ Second Assembly on Aging in Madrid last week, it was reported that older people will outnumber the young for the first time in history by 2050, when one of every five people on the planet will be over age 60. Right now, one in 10 are over age 60.
“We need to recognize that as more people are better educated, live longer and stay healthy longer, older persons can and do make greater contributions to society than ever before,” UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said at the conference.
While the process of aging is extremely variable, experts say that women tend to age more successfully than men.
“They are more social [than men] and they know how to communicate better, so they’re not so isolated,” said Linda Gannon, professor of psychology at Southern Illinois University.
With increased life spans and the emphasis now on preventive medicine, septuagenarians, especially women, in the workplace are becoming more common.
Whether they’re still working by choice or necessity, the number of women age 65 and older in the workplace has been ticking upward, from 7.3 percent in 1985 to 9.7 percent in 2001, the latest figures available from AARP. And an AARP study last spring showed that 80 percent of those in a national sample of Baby Boomers intended to work into what traditionally have been the retirement years.
Those who age successfully often have taken steps to stay physically healthy. “And they keep using their mind, they keep learning new things, they keep meeting new people,” said MaryBeth Buschmann, professor of medical-surgical nursing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
But even women with chronic diseases or other difficulties can cope well with aging, she said.
“They realize that a lot of things are modifiable.
Let’s say somebody has arthritis. Maybe they can’t walk the distance they used to walk or climb as many stairs, but they still walk, just maybe not as far, or they take rest periods.”
We sought out five women who belie the stereotypes about age. It’s just a number to them, not a definition. They don’t pay attention to other people’s perceptions about older women. They’re too busy living.
To be sure, these women are not in work situations where corporate managers make them feel that they’re wearing out their welcome, and, most important, they are in relatively good health.
Still, they have survived the deaths of spouses and friends and other changes that come with increasing age. Their coping mechanisms and ways of looking at life can inspire women of any age.
Eadie Levy
Eadie Levy, 80, spent most of her life as a homemaker and never held a paying job in her life. That is, until she was 57, when her sons, Mark and Larry, lured her into the restaurant business.
The restaurateurs/developers wanted to shore up D.B. Kaplan’s, a delicatessen they formerly operated in Water Tower Place. So Levy moved to Chicago from St. Louis with all her recipes, rolled up her sleeves and taught the kitchen staff how to prepare them.
Levy was used to cooking and entertaining. Her husband, Paul, was a wholesale phonograph record distributor for the Midwest region, and through the years, dinner guests at their home included Paul Anka, Bobby Darin and more.
“I guess I did a pretty good job,” Levy said, modestly. “They put me in front greeting the customers.” She did the same at the Chestnut Street Grill from 1979 to 1991, then went back to D.B. Kaplan’s for a couple of years, while spending one day a week at the then-new Mrs. Levy’s Delicatessen in the Sears Tower.
When the Chestnut Street Grill and D.B. Kaplan’s closed, Levy switched to Mrs. Levy’s full time, and now works every day from 6:30 a.m. until 3 p.m.–that is, when she’s not traveling to the stadiums and entertainment venues nationwide where the Levy Organization has contracts for food services.
In fine weather, she has been known to walk to Sears Tower from her Gold Coast home.
“I’m never going to retire,” she said. “I love being around people. “I’ve met all the presidents from Reagan on. CEOs greet me on the street.”
The job was her saving grace when her husband of 40 years, who had been ill for 10 years, died in 1980.
Six years later she remarried, only to lose that husband too.
Positive thinking gives her strength.
“God tries you,” she said, simply. “Whenever God deals me lemons, I make lemonade. I am an up person. My cup is always half full.
“I’m also in good health,” she added, knocking on a wooden table. “People don’t have a clue as to how old I am.”
Grace Lai
For years Grace Lai, almost 75, worked at husband Harry’s side in an independent graphic art studio.
When Harry died in 1985, Lai closed the studio and went to art school. (Harry had always said her drawings were flawed by problems with perspective.)
She then managed to carve out a niche for herself by donning a hard hat and sketching the action on construction sites as workers pour cement or operate cherry pickers. Developers use her watercolors for promotional purposes. She is also the official artist for the Construction Safety Council.
It hasn’t always been easy. Lai suffered a stroke in 1994 that left her right side paralyzed. She had to relearn how to walk and talk. She also had back surgery in 1999.
“I overcame [my disabilities] and that was a big thrill,” Lai said. “But I have to get up every day and do a whole series of exercises before I do anything else.”
That routine includes basic tai chi exercises and working her fingers with therapeutic putty to keep them agile. She also walks stairs in her high-rise condominium.
“I’m spiritual, very spiritual,” she said when asked about her source of strength. For Lai, a longtime Sunday school teacher, that means an unshakeable faith in God and in the efficacy of praying. She also talks a lot to herself–positive affirmations.
When the pain from her fibromyalgia just won’t go away, Lai starts painting.
“If I lose myself in painting, that’s good,” she said. “You have to think very positive, otherwise you’re a goner.”
“You know, 75 seems old, but I don’t feel old.”
Miriam Apter
Miriam Apter, 89, a native of San Francisco, attributes her longevity, in part, to the good start she got in the Bay area.
“It was a healthy environment,” she said. “You could be outdoors and active all year round, and I grew up on fresh fruits and vegetables purchased directly from the farmers.”
Apter, a quintessential “lakefront liberal” and a nearly full-time volunteer, still sticks to a diet high in fruits and vegetables, and she walks for fitness.
She moved to Chicago with her family after college in Cincinnati when her father was called to lead the then-newly established Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism.
The mother of three, Apter plunged wholeheartedly into volunteer work in the South Shore community where she lived in the 1950s. A movement was under way to keep the South Shore integrated when the city’s demographics were changing rapidly, and community organizations burgeoned.
“I’m very concerned yet with schools and lack of affordable housing,” said Apter, who now lives in Hyde Park. “We’re one human family and we have to recognize that.”
After her husband’s death in 1985, she coped by becoming even more active.
She is involved in the League of Women Voters, the Chicago Council of Jewish Women, the Chicago Council on Urban Affairs and the South Shore Cultural Center. A member of the city’s Human Relations Commission since it began under Mayor Richard J. Daley, Apter recently had her commission renewed.
“You need a reason to get out of bed in the morning,” Apter said. “You have to have something to do and something to think about. I keep reading, too, because you tend to go back and sort of recast your own history in terms of what you’ve learned that you didn’t know before.”
“Those of us who live to be 90 are kind of freaks today. But as more people do age and stay active, people can see that, barring Alzheimer’s disease, you don’t lose all your brains and everything else.”
Evelyn Echols
Evelyn Echols, 87, is not one to “sit down in one of God’s waiting rooms, Florida and those places.”
She has owned a travel agency in New York City, worked as an editor for Holiday magazine and founded a school in Chicago that trained students for the travel and hotel industries.
After she closed the school in 1997, she worked with former Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas to develop a program for high school seniors to prepare them for entry-level positions in tourism or hospitality.
Recently, she started a consulting firm aimed mainly at travel agents.
“One must be adaptable,” Echols said. “I wake up every morning and then I say: `This is the day God has given me. I’m going to make the best of it.’ “
Echols acknowledges that she is blessed with good health, except for an eye disease (macular degeneration) that she coped with by “training” her peripheral vision.
“I took yoga lessons in India about 40 years ago and I practiced every day since. I also swim every day. As far as eating, I’m pretty much a vegetarian.”
She said three things have kept her going: depending on God for guidance and support, diet and exercise, and work. She might add a life philosophy that does not include brooding about the past.
“I lost my husband in 1995, but I always say I can’t complain. I had 44 years of wine and roses.”
Echols, who is completing a motivational book, “Finding the Passion in Life,” said the project afforded her occasion to examine life events and their effect on her.
“How did living during the Depression contribute? Well, it contributed perseverance, empathy and [knowing] you’re not going to die from going hungry two days.”
She is fond of quoting an adage whose origin is unknown to her: “For what is past I thank you. For what is to come, yes.”
Echols intends to “die with [her] boots on.
“I have no fear. I feel that I’ll go on to something else, probably more interesting, more challenging.”
Addie Wyatt
Addie Wyatt, 78, retired from being national vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International union when she was 60. And about two years ago, along with her husband, Claude, she retired as co-pastor of the Vernon Park Church of God on the South Side.
But her schedule is as busy as it ever was, and she has never wavered in her commitment to civil rights and women’s rights. She is the head of the Wyatt Community and Family Life Center, near the church, and she is on the A-list as consultant for a host of labor, community and church leaders.
As much as possible, she also is available for untitled people in her community, taking the time to visit the sick, attend funerals and weddings and counsel troubled young people.
She lectures at labor events, hoping to inspire those who weren’t around during her trailblazing days in the 1940s and 1950s when union organizers, especially those who were African-American and female, faced hostile receptions in some quarters. She also is involved in the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), a group she helped found in 1974.
For Wyatt, age is “something to be grateful for, because with age you bring such marvelous experiences that you never would have had, had you not lived as long.”
“You have to have the will to keep on moving, physically and spiritually. If you don’t, you won’t be able to.”
Service, she believes, is “fulfilling, rewarding and the greatest exercise that we can have . . . . Strength comes from keeping yourself involved.”
Though Wyatt said she has enjoyed relatively good health, she is troubled by arthritis and a few months ago she fell in her home and broke three ribs.
But with support from “the people who love me,” she picked herself up and “just kept going.”
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For more of the latest thinking on aging, check out the Chicago Tribune Magazine online at chicagotribune.com/aging
