Client Education

A Great Senior Life

It's Okay to be older, seniors prove

By: Dennis Arp, Special to AccentCare

Long, silken tresses once trailed across Judy Wunsch's neck, shadowed her shoulders and draped down her back as if they would flow deep into a thousand ruby-red tomorrows.

Wunsch, 65, sometimes regrets her recent decision to cut her hair. She never laments that it? no longer red. Long ago she decided gray is OK.

"A friend tells me that if I colored my hair, I could look 10 years younger," Wunsch relates. "I say, it I'm not 10 years younger, Gracie, and neither are you."

Wunsch has never been evasive, and she? not about to start now.

Despite society's emphasis on youth, Wunsch and many other seniors believe it's OK to tell your age, and to look it. Because at the same time, they remain active and curious, meeting the aging process head on, with feistiness and good humor.

They aren? looking to turn back the clock. Instead, like a skilled quarterback in the waning minutes of a game, they are using the clock to their advantage.

In short, they can handle the truth.

"If you can't face aging and can't joke about it, then you're denying a key part of life," Wunsch says. "Truth is, there's more space to grow and more to do at this end of life than there used to be. There's every reason to enjoy it."

Retiree With a Cause

Wunsch, a retired nursery-school teacher who lives with her husband, Bob, in Los Angeles, finds enjoyment these days as a grandmother and as volunteer director for the Alzheimer? Association of Los Angeles.

She works in the association's library, assists with its newsletter, staffs its phone help line and sits on its board of directors. She has even made trips to Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to lobby lawmakers for more funding for Alzheimer's research.

"As a non-professional, I find this very exciting," Wunsch says. "I like that people come to me for advice. I'm part of a world I wouldn't have had available to me otherwise."

Wunsch says she is not the person her mother and her mother? friends were at her age. "They didn't walk around in blue jeans and sweats. I don't play mah-jongg, and I don't play bridge. My social life doesn't revolve around that. We don't have the kind of structured life my parents had."

Don't call Wunsch old; society has made that term far too negative, she says. "In many cultures, they talk about elders. I think that's a much better term."

At the same time, don't say she? "65 years young."

"That's patronizing," she says, "because it implies that all the knowledge, all the experience we're put together isn't really meaningful.

"There are a lot of people my age and older who still have a lot to offer."

An Enterprise Built on Laughter

John Kernell, 66, offers a different term for his age group: geezer.

Kernell, of Charleston, South Carolina, founded a humor-emphasizing online seniors club called The Geezer Brigade (www.thegeezerbrigade.com), where for $24 a year, members can get a newsletter, access to topical discussions, member essays and a daily one-page e-mail from Kernell, the self-appointed "Geezer in Chief."

The e-mails are chock full of Kernell's wry observations, many of them about aging. A recent one included a "then and now" feature. A sample: 1970, long hair; 2000 , longing for hair. 1970, keg; 2000, EKG. 1970, seeds and stems; 2000, roughage. 1970, "whatever"; 2000, "Depends."

Humor has always been a part of Kernell? life, from his childhood through his English, speech and theater studies at Cornell University and his professional life as a public relations executive. After retiring in 1991, he moved to Mexico, where he "lived other people? dreams."

"My whole heart was missing in retirement. I? not doing that anymore."

After suffering a stroke and moving to Pennsylvania to convalesce with family, he headed to Charleston and remade himself as a Web entrepreneur.

"I? not rich, but I have enormous freedom," Kernell says. "I had multifaceted things I wanted to do, and I realized that time is finite. There was an urgency to take things in hand and do it ? not because I was expected to do it but because it was my life."

He picked the name Geezer Brigade for his Web venture because "it says I agree that I'm old and retired, but the tone and content is lively, feisty, hardly over the hill. It's a tongue-in-cheek term."

Kernell even crafted "The Geezer? Creed," which says in part, "I have earned my wrinkles, limps, lumps and scars. I am still trying and I am still erring, but at least I am still trying. I've determined that the last part of my life will be the best, because I've learned enough now to know how to make it that way."

So as Kernell builds his club? membership and works on six books (three for seniors and three for children), he pledges, "I will not go gently into that good night. These are the golden years, but for a different reason. They?e golden with opportunity, not mellowing afternoons."

A Healthy Dose of Positive Thinking

The two most important things that determine success in a person? golden years are good health and financial security, says Dr. Cynthia Schlesinger, a gerontologist with the Veteran? Administration in Los Angeles. If a senior has those two things, it? much easier to have a positive outlook about aging.

It takes a particularly strong personality and attitude to overcome persistent pain or money problems, she says.

But no matter the situation, seniors seldom truly reinvent themselves in retirement, Schlesinger says.

"You hear people say things like, I'm going to travel a lot,?" she says. "But statistics show that if you didn? travel and weren? adventurous as a young person, you won't be that way in your senior years. Your personality doesn't change."

Many times, however, personality traits that had been submerged by societal needs to conform or professional constraints resurface in retirement, Schlesinger says.

"When you're younger, you have to do and say a lot of things just because it's expected, because you have a lot of responsibilities or obligations," says Wunsch, the Alzheimer? Association volunteer. "As seniors, we have a lot more leeway to focus on what we want or what we think is important."

Other seniors may have trouble adapting to transitions that come late in life. "Men in particular are taught to look at themselves in terms of the roles they play," Schlesinger explained. "It's easy for them to say, I'm a doctor or I'm a lawyer. It's harder to say, I'm a jogger or I'm a gardener."

On the whole, however, Schlesinger sees a growing number of seniors with a positive attitude about aging. "If you ask someone in their 90s, they might say they feel like 60, and if they'e 60, they may feel like 40," she says. "If seniors are treated well by society, then generally they have a better acceptance of their status."

Quest for Knowledge Never Ends

Vick Knight has filled many roles in his lifetime. He? been an elementary school teacher, a principal and a district administrator, as well as a hospital fund-raiser, a wine connoisseur, an amateur archaeologist and an author.

And now that he's turned 72, the range of those pursuits is only widening.

In addition to being a regular at his grandchildren's Little League games, he is president of the Lake Elsinore school board, is studying the 35 dialects of the Mayan language, is learning to play the banjo, writes a wine column for the Riverside Press Enterprise and is working on his 26th book, about the various wine-growing regions of Southern California.

Growing old, "I'm maturing," says Knight, who lives with his wife, Carolyn, in Lake Elsinore, Calif. "I can think of myself as a nice mature wine. If you?e of a good vintage, aging doesn? hurt the quality, and in some cases, age enhances it."

Knight says he has periods of forgetfulness, which he kids about as "senior moments." However, he adds, "The truth is I?e been having them all my life. I'm slower now, but I'm also smarter, and I'm more well-rounded."

His personality hasn't changed, Knight says. He has always viewed learning as a lifelong pursuit. "I joined the Navy to see the world, and I never left California," he relates with a laugh. "But I've had a lot of adventure since then."

In August, 2000 he will join an Earth Watch archaeological expedition to Mayan ruins in the rain forest of Belize. He knows the conditions will be primitive, the excavating labor-intensive and the weather hot and sticky. But there? really only one unanswered question that? causing him a small measure of concern.

"I wonder if they?l let me bring my banjo," he says.

Dennis Arp is a Brea, Calif-based freelance journalist who writes about health care-related issues for newspapers, magazines and the Web.