Here are four of the many individuals mentioned in Marc Freedman’s book “How to Live Forever, The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations“. I recommend reading it.
Cherry Hendrix
After “retiring” at age 60, she launched the Foster Grandparents program – a national vehicle for bringing more people over sixty into the lives of children from low-income backgrounds. She went on to become an inaugural member of Portland’s Experience Corp – part of a national program that provides tutors and mentors over the age of 50 to 31,000+ children a year.
She retired from that program at age 94 and lived to age 99.
Emmy Werner
Emmy Werner spent her life examining the experiences of children growing up in an array of war-torn and stressful circumstances. She had grown up in Germany, surviving years of bombing raids as a child. Based on more than 50 years of her research, she concluded that powerful bonds with caring adults – sometimes unrelated adults, often older people – made all the difference for the resiliency of children. Children wanted and needed people who showed an interest in them and who listened. It was that simple.
Her work sustained her through age 88.
Aggie and Louise
You may be thinking that the people in this list come from privileged backgrounds, or that they had something else “special” in their lives that gave them the skills to achieve meaningful goals in their later lives. If so, meet Aggie Bennett and Louise Casey.
Both had worked hard all their lives – Aggie as a waitress, and Louise in a sawmill. After they retired from their jobs, they spent 20 hours each and every week at Maine Medical Center in the pediatric ward with children battling serious illnesses. They became family to these children and their families, and the children became family to them.
In the author’s own words, “They taught me much about purpose in later life, about love across the generations”.
Maggie Kuhn
Maggie Kuhn was forced to retire by her employer, The Presbyterian Church, at age 65. When asked what she thought of age-segregated retirement communities and senior facilities, she responded “I think they’re glorified playpens”. So she founded The Gray Panthers to fight ageism and age segregation.
She died at the age of 89, with this epitaph on her grave that she had requested: “Here lies Maggie Kuhn under the only stone she left unturned.“