Working later than planned, picking up extra work, showing up for dinner anyway. Useful, a little awkward, occasionally funny.
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81, Four Decades on the Route, and “I Can’t Seem to Retire.”
Carolyn Wetzel has driven her mail truck through Cape Coral, Florida, for more than four decades. When Gulf Coast News profiled her in 2023, she was 81, the city’s longest-running mail carrier, and still going at each day with as much enthusiasm as her first. “I love this job,” she says, then laughs: “I can’t seem to retire.” A USPS supervisor says Carolyn has worked for the post office longer than a lot of the carriers have been alive. On her route she has watched kids grow up and have kids of their own. The route gave back, too. In the past decade she lost her husband and then her son. She says that without the job she doesn’t know if she would be okay, because her friends at work and the people on her route saw her through. She’s thankful every day. She isn’t counting down, either. She’s heard about a man in Texas who is still carrying mail at 95, so she figures she has a long way to go.
Sandy McConnell is 80 in Nevada and still a full-time accounts receivable specialist. About $50,000 a year. Social Security is another $1,784 a month. Savings: $37. Debt outside the house: roughly $70,000. Two bankruptcies. Years of family living under her roof. She never took the current 401(k) because she needs the money now, not in a decade she does not expect to coast through. She also says sitting home with nothing to spend would make her nuts. Once a month she lunches with old coworkers. At night she plays an online poker league for points, not cash — $40 membership. Peanut butter sandwiches still count as dinner. The job is not a hobby. It is how the month closes.
She Skipped Pools for Decades. Now Tuesdays and Thursdays Are Off-Limits.
Christine Schoenwald loved the ocean as a little kid. By junior high, the pool had become a scary, judgmental place, and for years she skipped every pool party, beach day and water park. Running ended with a cracked knee. Jazzercise hurt. Curves got boring. She even got cut as an extra from a Richard Simmons video. Years later, a comedy show pushed her to do something that scared her, and she performed as a foul-mouthed solo synchronized swimmer, in a swim dress, in front of an audience. If she could do that, she figured, she could walk from a locker room to a pool. She joined the YMCA’s water fitness classes, then the pandemic closed the pool. After her 65th birthday she went back and became a regular again. She water-walks before class, keeps moving during it and takes every chance to jump. Twice a week paid off: toned arms, knees that hurt less and, most amazing to her, blood pressure that has come down. Everyone knows not to bother her Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
Sally Koslow picked the cello over art in seventh grade and became “the writer” instead. Some 60 years later she spotted a beginning painting class at her local community center and signed up on impulse. For weeks there was no paint at all — just how to hold a pencil, how to see shapes, and drawing a face upside down. Her pigs looked like dogs. Her toddlers looked 20. She calls herself a mediocre artist and says it does not matter compared with the bliss of doing it. She moved to acrylics and started painting her grandkids from phone photos. A few began to look familiar. Now they hang in her dining room, and guests ask whether she really did those. Her takeaway: modest expectations, a sense of humor, and hard work. The community-center class was the door. A rec-center class works the same way.
32 Years at the Courthouse. Now “Nana” Sells Flowers from a Tiny Truck.
Linda Cubberley spent 32 years working at the Wood County Courthouse in Ohio. After she retired she wanted to stay active and found work at a greenhouse, but her body said no. She was sore, and it made her sad, because a greenhouse is such a happy place. Her daughter spotted a little flower truck for sale online: a turquoise 1993 Daihatsu Hijet with a four-speed manual and a speedometer in kilometers. Her husband assures her she doesn’t drive fast enough to get a ticket. She named the truck Gracie and opened Nana’s Wildflower Wagon. She buys flowers wholesale, builds the arrangements herself and pops up wherever she likes: graduations, an art walk, a Mother’s Day brunch. She skips the farmers-market commitment so she can still travel and see family. She had two sold-out weekends back to back. “I just like talking to people,” she says, “and seeing the smile on people’s faces.” Her other line: flowers just make people happy, and there’s nothing bad about flowers.
Real Estate Broker. Part-Time Forklift Driver. 82.
Bill Miller has sold houses and land in Asheville, North Carolina, for four decades. He used to teach ninth-grade biology. Three years ago he picked up a side job for a friend’s business that needs forklift and backhoe drivers. He works 15 to 20 hours a week, early mornings, then has the rest of the day for real estate. Some days he is loading trucks with steel. Other days he is covered in grease. He says he doesn’t need the money and is often paid in benefits — and that he’s less active in real estate now because he’s having too much fun driving. The boss is a longtime fishing buddy, and it has turned into something like father and son. He and his wife, 77 and still in real estate too, say they could live on Social Security and savings. Neither one is ready to sit on a couch.
At 75, a Beginner’s Class. Then a Standing Table of Four.
Joanne Cole says that at 75 she found her people. A friend mentioned she played mah-jongg every Wednesday at a synagogue five blocks from Joanne’s home. Joanne wasn’t a member, but she signed up for a six-week beginner’s course and took to it like a duck to water. She loved the touch and clack of the tiles. She practiced every morning on an app she keeps by the coffee maker, because the card changes every year and her brain stays in learning mode. At first she was a “floater,” sitting at a different table each week. Then three women invited her to sit with them for good. One is divorced and lives alone, like Joanne. One is married. One lives with a partner. One is a recent widow. They’re as close as peas in a pod. Ask for a dentist and you get three names. Get sick and somebody drops off chicken soup, since they all live within walking distance. Her favorite part: in mah-jongg you don’t win or lose. You either make mah-jongg or you don’t. As one friend at the table likes to say, it’s only a game.
Neil Wertheimer spent a retirement column trying Meetup, friend dates, and the things people recommend when the office friends evaporate. What stuck was twilight golf and the cheap beer after — a standing reason to see the same faces. He does not pretend it was easy. He does say the laugh at the picnic table is the point.
