Local retirees demonstrate a new twist on the work ethic, concentrating their best energies on leisure activities.
By CARLOS BRICENO
Published February 24, 2004
[Times photos: Michael Rondou]
Dave Thomas, a resident of retirement condominium complex Five Towns in Lealman, accepts an ovation from spectators at Seminole Lanes after he converts a spare on his 95th birthday.
Victory is sweet for Town Shores bocce ball players Jean Sarkis, center, about to hug Ruth Ficalona, left center, while Elizabeth Trupp, right, claps.
Bocce ball is a game of inches, and referee Phyllis Godano’s duties involve some measuring during competitions at Gulfport’s Town Shores clubhouse.
[Times photo: Cherie Diez]
Doris Hash, 70, works from her “command center” in her living room in the Diplomat Building at Town Shores last week to arrange meetings and social schedules. As president of the Diplomat Building, part of the Town Shores Association, she was calling to arrange meetings with her board members. As social director of the John Paul Lodge, she was also phoning a travel agency to plan a trip for the members of the lodge to Las Vegas.
Doris Hash never thought it would happen to her. "I thought I would probably not either live long enough, or I would just never get older," said Hash. "You never think about getting older, and what's going to happen to you."
Besides, she was too busy working to think about retiring. By day, she was the director of the cardiovascular department at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. At night, she worked from home seven days a week as staff supervisor for a home-care service. She dispatched nurses to homebound patients and took catnaps between calls during her 11 p.m.-6 a.m. shift.
"I never thought about retirement," said Hash, 70. "If the hospital didn't have money taken out of my check for retirement, I wouldn't have any money, because I didn't think about retirement. I was never going to retire."
In the early '90s, change was in the air at Methodist Hospital. There was talk of downsizing. When offered a buyout in 1994, Hash accepted. "One day, after 32 years (of working at the hospital), I didn't have any place to go Monday," she said.
She still had her home-care service job, which she had held for 18 years, but in 1994 she quit, to retire for good. She was 61 and had been divorced for several years. She had been working to help support herself and her three sons, who were living in Indiana, Arizona and St. Petersburg.
Over the next three years she traveled constantly, especially to Europe. She went with missionary groups from her church. She went as part of her church choir. She went with doctors and dentists from Indianapolis who took medicine and medical equipment to Haiti and Ecuador. She would spend four to six weeks at a time on these trips. She would also occasionally visit her son in St. Petersburg.
Starting in 1998, she spent winters in Florida. She went on several cruises. The European trips became less frequent. One day, a stranger at a grocery store told her to check out Town Shores, a condominium for seniors in Gulfport with about 2,000 residents. She fell in love with the view of the water and the closeness to shops.
"I can eat, get my hair done, have my nails done," Hash said, referring to businesses within walking distance. "I can get a massage. I can go shopping. There's a post office there. What else do I need?"
She moved from Indianapolis in September 2001 and realized Town Shores had other bonuses. It had a wide range of social and competitive activities, from bocce to cards to dinner dances.
That's when she discovered something else she never thought would happen: She's as busy now as when she was working.
"Now (during the winter), you've got to find time to sit at the pool," she said. "In the summer, we do sit at the pool. But you've got to work it in now because you're so busy."
Here's what keeps Hash busy: She is president of her building; plays pool, bingo, canasta and bocce; rides her bicycle; does tai chi; goes line dancing; sings in a choir; walks; swims; helps organize dinners and flea markets; and - from time to time - skips home after a bocce game. Sometimes she gets just as tired as when she was working. But there's a big difference.
"You're doing things you want to do," she said. "It's not things that you absolutely must punch a time clock. These are things you enjoy doing."
* * *
While interviewing several hundred Boston-area retirees for a long-term study on aging during the early 1980s, David Ekerdt, a professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, noticed a similar thread in most of their answers. They were all busy.
Ekerdt's observations were printed in a 1986 paper titled "The Busy Ethic: Moral Continuity Between Work and Retirement" that appeared in The Gerontologist, a journal published by the Gerontological Society of America. He said the busy ethic is still part of today's culture.
"I think it's a continuation of the work ethic," he said. "In other words, to be active, to be involved, to be engaged in your world, people did that through their jobs and through involvement with their families. And now that they're past their jobs and past their families, how do they continue to assert that they're vital adults?"
For seniors, being vital means being busy, thus proving that they are not frail or in failing health, he said. Society often encourages this work ethic by asking retirees what they're doing with their time.
"We're a little embarrassed about retirement," he said. "We're a little embarrassed about this leisure time, so people feel they have to defend it in a way. And they do it with this four-letter word: busy."
* * *
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Joe McGrath sat in a chair at Seminole Lanes intently watching the scoring monitor and the bowlers. His team was squaring off against a better team during one of two bowling leagues sponsored by Five Towns/Terrace Park, a retirement condominium complex in Lealman with about 3,000 residents. A little more than 100 residents participate in both leagues.
The majority of the 30 seniors bowling that day were laughing, joking around and high-fiving each other. McGrath was all business.
"You want to beat them," said McGrath, 85, a tall, thin man. "It's what makes sports, being competitive. We're always trying to win. I know I am, anyhow." He has been bowling for 50 years, and admits he's not as good as he was 10 years ago when his average was 180. Now it's 158. His legs just don't have the same strength, he said.
McGrath, a widower, is on the Five Towns golf team, goes to dances at the clubhouse, attends the men's club meetings and plays cards. As long as his health holds up, he said, he plans to keep on his current activities, which also include going out to dinner.
"We try to participate in all the activities around because some day we won't be able to drive," he said. "Five Towns is the place to be as long as we have activities here. We can survive not driving."
Residents can choose from many activities. There are six swimming pools, two recreational halls, exercise and billiards rooms, several card rooms and shuffleboard and tennis courts. Other activities include bingo, bridge, a travel club, dinner dances and movies.
"Everything in general is good," said McGrath, who has been living in Five Towns since he retired in 1983. "The people are all my age. The music that's playing in the clubhouse is our music. The dancing is our dancing. It's a wonderful place to retire in my particular age group."
McGrath, who would rack up five consecutive strikes later that afternoon, paused and then slowly began to stand up. "Excuse me," he said. "I have to bowl now."
* * *
Seniors tend to move into retirement communities when they are in their late 50s to early 70s. Most are active and healthy, so the activities in their communities appeal to them, said Jennifer R. Salmon, an assistant professor at the University of South Florida's School of Aging Studies. As the years pass, those who remain active - staying mentally and physically fit - will have a better overall quality of life and "more positive life satisfaction," she said.
Since retirement communities are not meant to be nursing homes or assisted living facilities, what happens to a senior who is lonely after the death of a spouse or who has several health issues or who might suffer from depression?
Residents from Town Shores and Five Towns said these issues are common, but people look out for each other.
"When I was sick the other day, my neighbors on both sides of me, they never let me alone for a minute," said Lois Moon, 86, a Town Shores resident since 1978. "They brought me food all the time. I could never starve. I'm trying to lose weight, but they put it on me. They're watching over you like little hawks."
Another source of help are agencies that assist the elderly. Susan K. Frank, the supervisor of the Gulfport Multi-Purpose Senior Center, said her office sometimes gets calls from a resident or neighbors concerned about a friend's declining health.
What overwhelms some seniors is the realization that they may have to leave their community and home, get rid of their belongings and move to a place to receive long-term care. "Sometimes their fierce independence - it has served them well throughout their life - reaches a point where it becomes their enemy," said Frank.
Frank said the goal of the center's social services program is to help seniors remain in their own homes for as long as possible.
If the senior asks for help, there are a range of services the center can contact, from Meals on Wheels to a licensed companion service to mental health counseling from the Suncoast Center for Community Mental Health, which is housed in the senior center, she said.
* * *
On a sunny Thursday afternoon, Hash sat on a bench by the bocce courts near the Town Shores clubhouse, wearing large sunglasses, stylishly dressed in a green velvet pants suit. Earlier that morning, she had worked as an usher during a Florida Orchestra performance at the Mahaffey Theater in downtown St. Petersburg and then rushed back to join her bocce team.
The league, in which residents of different buildings play one another, has about 150 players. Her building had just won two matches that afternoon, which made Hash happy because the opposition was more experienced.
Before she came to Gulfport, Hash had never heard of bocce and had never played canasta or pool. But now she loves all of them. She thought her life in Florida would involve only walking, sitting by the pool, bicycle riding, taking an occasional trip and staring out into Boca Ciega Bay, looking for dolphins, she said.
But now that she has tasted how wonderful retired life can be, she wants to keep enjoying it.
"I'm going to keep going no matter what," she said. "If the day comes when I can't do as much, then I'll just invite people into my house. We'll play cards. We'll have parties. We'll have something to eat. We'll watch some movies, you know. I don't ever see a day where I can't drive or where I can't walk. Even if I have to get a walker one day, I'm going to make myself go. I am a survivor."
Bocce ball is a game of inches, and referee Phyllis Godano’s duties involve some measuring during competitions at Gulfport’s Town Shores clubhouse.
