Many still work after age 75

Willie Nelson is 81, Warren Buffett is 84, Mary Higgins Clark is 86 and David Hockney is 77. All are still working and going strong, and so are more and more Americans 75 and older.

You could be one of them as I am one day and glad of it.

In a recent interview, British painter David Hockney, one of the world’s greatest living artists, captured the joy, meaning and youthfulness he continues to draw from his profession.

“When I am working, I feel like I am 30. When I stop, I know I am not, but when I paint, I stand up for six hours a day, and yeah, I feel like I am 30,” he once said.

Sentiment rings true for Mark Paper, who is 81. He is President of Lewis Bolt and Nut Company in Minnesota, which is a firm owned by his family since 1927. Mark took the helm of the business from his father in 1962 and remains very much involved in the company’s expanding operations. He gets daily and weekly reports, stays in touch with other company leaders and flies out to visit the manufacturing plant in Colorado several times a month.

When asked why he kept working, he said it was what he enjoyed doing.

Although people 75 or older that continue to work are a minority and compose a small amount of the American work force, 11 percent of men are still at it and five percent of American women still work.

Marilyn Tully, 75, still loves working. She has been self-employed most of the time, mostly around the home and interior design. She and her husband faced some hard times in 2007 when he had to close his furniture store in Naples, Fla.

After that, the design business began to pick up and her husband helped her with that. When they found time, they sailed Florida’s gulf coast on her husband’s boat.

Newspaper publisher Jerry Bellune, 77, of Lexington, S.C., works at a pace that would leave many younger workers gasping. He says running the Lexington County Chronicle with his wife, MacLeod, offers him enjoyment that gives him a strong sense of mission and purpose.

On top of that, he says that it keeps him young working with younger people and helping them grow personally.

Jerry says he plans to work as long as he is able and has no plans to stop. His Mondays and Tuesdays are spent in the office writing, talking with the staff about news coverage, and the rest of the week is spent helping with community endeaveros.

Weekends are busy also writing weekly and monthly articles for a business magazine and two trade magazines. The Bellunes do take breaks traveling abroad occasionally and spending time at their vacation home.

Funeral assistant Jerry Beddow, 75, loves working also. A year after retiring as a high school principal in 1994, he began his present job at Patton-Schad Funeral Home in Minnesota.

He works three to four hours a day helping position caskets at the funeral home, carrying flowers, talking to grieving families and driving hearses.

The ranks of people 75 plus who still earn a paycheck will grow in coming years according to surveys, especially among better educated employees and business owners. The average retirement age when the boomers reach their 70s could approach 70 years old. Presently, among those who are 75 and older only 35 percent say that they feel old.

There are three things that will make a person happy. First they must know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, secondly they must have the right spouse as their wife or husband and third they must like what they do to make a living.

I have been blessed to have all three of the above, and my plans are to work until the Good Lord calls me home to Heaven.

HHJ News