Retirement is being redefined. Rather than slowing down, many women are envisioning that period of their lives as a chance to find a new path and are planning to do things like travel, teach, write or volunteer.
Meanwhile, some women who have retired find they miss working and want to go back to the field they left. A case in point is Mary Wells Lawrence, whose recent book “A Big Life in Advertising” (Knopf, $26) documents her career highlights, from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Now 73, Lawrence has expressed a desire to return as an advertising consultant and was recently quoted in the press as saying: “I have fabulous health, I have tremendous energy, I’m possibly better than I was 10, 15, maybe 20 years ago.”
With the superactive Baby Boomers beginning to enter retirement years, will this kind of second wind become more common? Phone and e-mail exchanges with a few younger women indicate that the prospect of working at that age doesn’t appeal to all, whether in advertising or beyond. Here’s where they said they want to be at 73:
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“I hope to be 10 years into retirement with a single-digit handicap in golf and aspiring to be on the senior LPGA tour.”
–Susan Fultz, 36, managing director of RAB Central, Chicago office, a pharmaceutical advertising company
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“I hope to happily be the target rather than the targeter of other people’s marketing efforts. I’ll be done paying for [her child’s] college–just! That’s assuming no graduate education. So, I see myself mostly retired, working part time at a ski resort (Vail or Breckenridge), reading a lot (fiction, no industry books, no business tomes), skiing a lot and laughing about what it was like way back when!”
–Kary McIlwain, 43, president and CEO Young & Rubicam, Chicago
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“I don’t see myself ever able to fully retire. I’d like to be either teaching or consulting in this industry. . . . My other career aspiration is to write a really bad B-grade novel under a pen name.”
–Mary Moudry, 46, president of DDB Worldwide, San Francisco
“What I’d like to be doing at 73 years old is sitting on the veranda in Paris or the south of France or West Africa sipping on something fabulous with a good-looking something waiting on me, and writing my own book and threatening to come back to the ad industry! How about that?”
–Carol H. Williams, 50-something, president, CEO and chief creative officer, Carol H. Williams Advertising, Oakland, Calif.
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“At 73, I still plan on doing something in terms of using my business and work experience but probably not in the profession I’m in today. I’ve thought long and hard about business opportunities–such as a horseback-riding school that one day a week has teenage volunteers teach disabled children.”
–Christine Driessen, 46, executive vice president and chief financial officer for ESPN
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“I hope that I’ve had a very fulfilling career, a successful career, and I will be able to take some time to enjoy many grandchildren. Of course, I only have one child right now at 34 so we’re looking pretty far in the future. . . . I have a grandmother who’s 88, so who knows? Maybe I’ll be coming back with a second, third or fourth career as well.”
–Cindy Syracuse, senior director, marketing communications, Burger King
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“I see myself focusing on a few things that I really love. I see myself being a mentor of young women . . . volunteering in schools, perhaps serving as an adviser for the Consumer Products Safety Commission or some standards-writing body.
“Mostly, I picture myself doing the typical traveling, spending time with the grandchildren, reading, sewing, gardening, getting up early even though I don’t have to, to read the Tribune or go for a leisurely walk.”
–Carol Smith, 39, senior project engineer at Underwriters Laboratories Inc. in Northbrook
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“Having had a baby at age 41, I see myself at 73 feeling good about having raised a child and have her complete her education. At 73, I see myself traveling abroad, volunteering for my church and using untapped skills, doing things–like taking voice lessons–that I never had the money or time to fulfill when I was younger. And I believe that physical fitness is the key to leading a healthy and happy retirement.”
–Debra Walker, 42, a partner with the law firm of Clausen Miller P.C.
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“I’d like to teach and do what I’m doing til at least 70. At 73, I’d like to take it a little easier but definitely still be active and have a busy retirement. I would travel, teach or be a consultant part time and be involved in organizations.”
–Pat Hutson, 53, professor of telecommunications, DeVry University, Addison campus
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“I see myself having no regrets. I see myself as still attractive and valuable to society. I see myself even more in love with the same man, my crazy playwright husband. I see myself teaching children the importance of nature in our lives; how it affects our spirit and soul. I see myself still in the garden with dirty fingernails and a sunburn, donning my finest straw hat.”
–Carole Ann Langrall, 39, president of A Garden of Earthly Delights, a floral design studio in Baltimore
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“Mary Wells Lawrence has the right idea. . . . I am fascinated by the crone archetype: the matured woman who has let the fruit of all her life’s experiences ripen within her … I think our culture needs a battalion of crones in its work force, and I plan to be one of them. . . . I expect that at 73 writing more books, speaking, and traveling will be the things that I’ll be passionately pursuing.”
–Martia Nelson, 51, coach and author in Sebastopol, Calif.
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E-mail: jfitzgerald@tribune.com
