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Boomers to Redefine Retirement
July 4, 2004, The Detroit News

By DOUG GUTHRIE

At 49, Diane Hoffman wishes she could be more like her parents, members of the Greatest Generation who managed to find time to give back to the community even before they hit their golden years.

It’s not that she hasn’t tried to be more involved. She’s walked in a cancer fund-raiser and sorted food at a Warren food bank, but like many baby boomers, her job, gardening and weekend activities absorb her time.

“My mother and father used to read the newspaper from cover to cover. They never missed voting in an election. I’d like to do more, too, but I’m so busy,” Hoffman said.

As baby boomers age — the first of America’s largest generation will reach 65 in seven years, with some already leaving the work force — experts say their busy lifestyles may redefine retirement in ways that could put public services at risk.

So far, the 77 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 have fallen short of their parents in civic engagement, according to a recent Harvard University study. They read and vote less. They are less likely to join groups, and they don’t volunteer as often.

“It’s been said that people of the Greatest Generation bowled in leagues. Boomers bowl, but they bowl alone. They are involved in a different type of community,” said Susan Moses, deputy director of the Center for Health Communication at Harvard School of Public Health.

“It’s more self-serving,” Moses said of the kind of volunteering boomers are doing, like coaching and helping out at their children’s schools.

The cost of self-centered giving in years to come could be the loss of public services now supported by volunteers at places like museums, hospitals and charitable institutions, Moses said.

“In the future, in some communities without volunteers, some services won’t be offered,” she said.

The Harvard/MetLife report is one of several recent attempts to plot the future of the nation’s biggest generation and economic engine.

“This Harvard study is all about creating a new paradigm that the older years are a time to give back,” said Chris Johnson, a participant of the study and manager of the 50-plus volunteer program for the Thousand Points of Light Foundation in Washington. “Service should be a life experience expectation of all people 55 and over.”

Redefining aging

While their parents were the generation that worked to retire, boomers are plunging headfirst toward reshaping the meaning of retirement and the image of aging.

In 1950, about half of all men 65 and older continued to work. By 1985, just 16 percent of men 65 and older held full-time jobs, according the Brookings Institution. Now, with many boomers predicted to live into their 80s and 90s, up to 80 percent expect to continue to hold at least part-time jobs into their 70s, according to the AARP.

“I’ve called them the yuppie elderly, but I don’t think we are going to get away with calling them elderly for long. It will be redefined as they live it, just like every other stage of life has been redefined by the boomers,” said Bill Frey, a University of Michigan demography research professor currently in Washington as a Brookings Institution scholar.

The possibility of layoffs, downsizing and early retirement buyouts have kept Glenn Krcek of Sterling Heights from making concrete retirement plans. He also has a busy lifestyle he wants to keep, one that includes playing hockey and driving his black Corvette.

“I’m definitely more indulgent than my parents,” said Krcek, 56, a manufacturing designer at General Motors Pontiac Center. “Our idea of retirement is to continue doing more of the same thing we are doing now. Retirement isn’t the end of lifetime. I want to keep driving my sports car, managing my 401(k) and probably, I’ll still be working in some capacity.”

Others talk about working longer just to survive.

“I’ll be paying for my house when I’m in my 70s,” said Lucinda Koivu, 49, of Clawson, who is an account manager at an attorney’s office. “Our parents usually had one person at home not working, so they had time (to volunteer). When you’re working a full-time job and you’ve got kids, and economical or not, the kids want more stuff, and you’ve got to do everything at home when you get off work, you don’t have time for that.”

Kevin Mitchell, 49, doesn’t consider himself a typical boomer. The Orchard Lake resident, who works in Dearborn fitting artificial limbs and orthopedic braces, is president of Michigan Adaptive Sports. His hobby is teaching physically challenged people to water and snow ski, kayak and bicycle.

He helped build a wheelchair repair shop in the basement at World Medical Relief based in Detroit, and he helped collect used prosthetics for World Relief to be sent to nations.

“I don’t have many friends who do what I do,” said Mitchell, the father of four daughters and two stepchildren. “They look at me and tell me they wish they could do more, that they wish they could feel as good as I do and could get as much out of life as I do.”

Mitchell said helping means delaying his plans to repair his front porch.

“You are going to volunteer whether you are busy or not,” he said. “People who didn’t volunteer before aren’t out volunteering after they retire.”

Rekindling the fire

Frey, who at 58 is at the front edge of the boomer generation, believes his peers will volunteer later in life because they once were idealists. They protested in favor of civil rights and against the Vietnam War. They suffered the cynicism of Watergate. The passions of boomer youth may have been beaten down by practicality, but he expects those emotions could be rekindled.

“Somewhere in their psyche is a sense of social consciousness,” he said. “They may have been overwhelmed by the babies and hours and work, but peel back the layers and they are still the best-educated generation in history, more liberal on issues like abortion and gun control and diversity and such. It leads me to believe some of that will resurface again when they have the time to sit back and reflect on what life and the world is about.”

At the Thousand Points of Light Foundation, Johnson said experimental methods of reaching the 50-to-65-year-old group are being tried now to create a pathway for the larger generation to come. One plan is to build a “boomer corps,” of lightly paid volunteers, taking into account the perceived need to continue working.

Researchers aren’t certain if Generation X, those born between 1966 and 1978, will follow in the footsteps of the new path forged by boomers or if they too will define their own way.

“I think it could be about role modeling,” Moses said. “With an extra decade to live beyond retirement, the boomers could set an example based on the Kennedy idealism of their youth.”

You can reach Doug Guthrie at (313) 222-2359 or dguthrie@detnews.com.