Some retirees find work preferable to downtime

Debbie Waltzer//March 28, 2003//

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Ronald Bolt tried to retire. Honestly. It just did not work.
He loved his job with Rochester Telephone Co. and later, Frontier Corp. He started in sales with the company in 1963, fresh out of the Navy. Bolt, 63, worked his way up the corporate ladder, eventually becoming general manager of open market plans.
Then, in the mid-1990s, things changed. For at least five years prior, a lot of his buddies had been talking about all of the advantages of retiring-more free time, an opportunity to travel, hang with the grandkids. In fact, a lot of his Frontier colleagues did retire, but Bolt was not ready.
That changed in 1996, a transition year, when Frontier froze all pension benefits and offered an appealing incentive retirement plan.
By then Bolt was ready.
“I thoroughly enjoyed working and it was a great 33-year run,” he says. “But I started listening more to my cronies, so I primed for retirement.” His last day on the job was Dec. 30, 1996.
For the first couple of weeks, Bolt reveled in his newfound freedom.
“The shackles were off,” he says. “I could make my own day, do whatever incented me. My wife and I took a trip to the Florida Keys, we went scuba diving, I met friends for lunch and we made plans for an extended trip come summertime.”
The thrill lasted exactly two months.
The opportunity to work in the yard? Three feet of snow covered the lawn. The advantages of sleeping late? All the days melded into one. The chance to design one’s life? Too much freedom for a man who likes routine.
“I failed at retirement,” Bolt admits. “For me, retirement meant I had no real need to get out of bed. I had no goals and no place to go. I got lax, mentally stale and dull, and honestly didn’t care what day it was. While this was a great new life for many of my friends, it was sheer misery for me.”
Within two months, Bolt was re-employed.
In February 1997, he called a former business associate and landed himself a position as vice president of operations for Structured Technologies Inc. Bolt became Bolt again.
“It was the best move I ever made,” says the Penfield resident, father of three and grandfather of five, with one more on the way. “During my brief retirement, I felt like a caged animal who quickly ran out of things to do. Work is my panacea. I feel better, I’m healthier and livelier and productive. Work is adding years to my life.”
While quickly coming out of retirement was the right solution for Bolt, others transition into their new lives in different ways. But sometimes they need help. That is why Career Development Services Inc. offers a three-part workshop called “Reinventing Your Life,” which was launched one year ago and already has attracted more than 100 attendees.
“We are targeting folks ages 50 and over who are pondering the next chapter in life,” explains Carol Silver Elliott, president and CEO of CDS. “Some are still working, while others are recent retirees. Our goal is to help them build a template for their new lives.”
That new life might include full- or part-time work in the same or different profession, volunteer work, new hobbies and more.
“People who retire at age 50 are young, usually healthy and they have a burning need to be productive, whether it’s through helping children learn to read or pursuing a new line of work,” she says. “We want to help our clients find activities that meet their passions and satisfy their talents. Just because they’re retired doesn’t mean they’re done!”
So discovered Linda Sabha, even though she has not taken the CDS course.
In December 1998, Sabha, 54, took advantage of AT&T Corp.’s offer that enabled 50-year-old employees with 30 years of service to retire. Sabha, who at the time was a national account manager assigned to the Corning Glass account, jumped at the chance, even though she knew she would desperately miss friendships with co-workers and cherished clients.
Initially, Sabha, a Perinton resident who is single, relished her new life. She slept later than 5:30 a.m., her usual wake-up time. She organized all her closets. She went to movie matinees and traveled around the country visiting friends and family.
The first six months were bliss. The second six months were depressing.
So one year after her retirement, she called a former colleague who knew of an opening. Sabha was offered the job and was ready to accept-but at the last minute, she remembered the occasional workplace stress, office politics and icy roads at 6 a.m.
Taking a deep breath, Sabha declined the offer, looked deep within at her true passion for painting (she holds a degree in visual arts from Empire State College), threw herself into her artwork and began selling her watercolors.
This is Sabha’s new path. She has had four one-woman shows so far, has sold numerous paintings, has taken classes at Writers & Books and written a few screenplays (one of which was judged in 15th place in a national contest that attracted 600 entries), meets former colleagues for lunch every Friday to catch up and recently joined the Rochester chapter of the Executive Women’s Golfing Association.
“Not working gives you the ability to try out crazy things you’ve never done before,” she says. “And if I get bored with this, I’ll just do something else.”
When Gordon Booth retired from Eastman Kodak Co. in 1997 after nearly 30 years with the company-most recently as vice president of field operations for copy products-he already knew what his “something else” plan would be. Teaching was going to be his next career.
During his last three years at Kodak, the married Pittsford resident and father of two took evening graduate education courses from SUNY College at Brockport. Since he already had earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University as well as an MBA from the University of Michigan, Booth just needed the education courses and student-teaching experience to qualify for a teaching position.
While initially planning to look only for high school teaching positions, Booth could not say no when an offer came through to teach chemistry and physics to seventh- and eighth-graders at Pittsford Middle School.
Nearly five years later, he could not be happier.
“Middle school students are a riot,” he says. “Sometimes they’re real squirrelly, and sometimes they complain when I push them to excel, but they are truly up for the challenge.”
Booth sees real parallels between his former and current professions. “As a corporate manager, I was always coaching and counseling my employees, and we do the exact same thing in teaching.”
Initially concerned about coming into a new profession at age 51, Booth now feels enormous acceptance and gets calls regularly from others in his age bracket who are thinking about making such a switch. Booth counsels them to go for it.
“A lot of people think there’s no life after Kodak, Bausch & Lomb or Xerox, but I say that’s just not true. There is quality of life. You just have to make a plan and go for it. I like to tell my friends that I’m making one-third of what I made at Kodak and I’m working twice as hard-but I’m having four times more fun.”
(Debbie Waltzer is a Rochester-area free-lance writer.)