Winter 2010

A Growing Gray Army
By Jack Rosenthal
Aging Well
Vol. 3 No. 1 P. 5

ReServe helps elders share their talents and maintain vitality

If Shakespeare were still alive, he’d be 445 years old—and he’d have to rewrite one of his most famous passages into something called the “Eight Ages of Man.” Infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, shrunk shank, and then second childishness: None of those encompasses the new age of life that people are experiencing around the world.

ReServe Elder Service is a fast-growing nonprofit organization dedicated to fulfilling this new stage. So far, it has enlisted more than 1,000 older adults in New York who are eager to use their lifetime skills and give back to society. Now ReServe is about to go national, finding partners in other cities who also recognize the effects of enhanced longevity.

Longevity may be the most important phenomenon of our lifetimes. America is coming to understand that it’s more important than passing world events, the pill, space travel, or even Twitter.

In her book about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt called No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin added an epilogue recounting what happened to the principal characters: Their friend Crown Princess Märtha died of a liver ailment at the age of 53. Harry Hopkins, a heavy smoker, died at the age of 55. Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd died of leukemia at the age of 57. Eleanor outlived them all; she was 77 when she died in 1962.

What a difference a generation makes. When I look at the obituaries in The New York Times each day, I find myself calculating the average ages. They’re almost always in the 80s and at times over 90. Yes, there have always been people who lived to be very old but never before have so many people lived so long—and never before have so many lived so strong. Millions now look forward after retirement to 20-plus years of decent health, sustainable income, productivity—and service.

America has always relied on an army of volunteers, both young and old, to work for social causes. At ReServe, we’ve recognized the importance of a new dimension of service: money. Money makes the difference. Employers want and need professional services. The ReServe stipend of $10 per hour for about 15 hours per week is a long way from professional compensation. But it constitutes a contract and it means that ReServists and employers both take their work seriously. The ReServist doesn’t stay home because of the sniffles; the employer doesn’t settle for ReServists licking envelopes.

ReServe also tests another proposition: nonprofits, always short of resources, can appreciate the value that ReServists bring. The most obvious is their professional skills as lawyers, doctors, teachers, writers, social workers, administrative assistants, and other occupations. Another is the informal mentoring that ReServists typically bring to an organization, drawing on their long history of making things work. Still another dimension is the one we hear described by one employer after another: “And they have a work ethic!”

Since Herb Sturz and I started ReServe in 2005, it has made 1,050 placements in scores of public and nonprofit agencies in New York. Sometimes the work is for specific projects such as the 80-page Greening Guide that Dorothy Bolch, a former managing editor for the Raleigh News & Observer, created for the United Jewish Appeal/Federation. Sometimes, ReServists fill a permanent need. A juvenile reentry program at the Harlem Community Justice Center was sagging until the program director engaged several ReServists, including Bill Long, who had worked for 40 years for the State Board of Education. Long works with young people on an individual basis and has formed a basketball league that engages many more.

Lila Sternglass was sent to a small nonprofit called New York Youth at Risk. “We hit it off immediately,” she said in a StoryCorps interview, and the agency’s mission excited her. She ticks off her satisfying variety of responsibilities: writing invitations to a fund-raiser, translating brochure language out of social worker speak (from “incarcerated” to “in jail”), helping set strategy, and overall, she says, “bringing them basic discipline.” Beyond satisfaction, she says, “I can use the money. It gives you a sense of value about yourself.”

Other ReServists like working in successive placements. Willie Wirwaiss had retired from a position in government relations for a telephone company. He was surprised at how much he liked his first assignment putting his lobbying skills to work for Sanctuary for Families, which each year serves 10,000 battered women and their children. That led him to the New York City Department of Health. “I’ve felt like my talents are being used. I’m appreciated. Here I am, approaching 70, and I love coming to work,” he says.

Opportunities abound to reenlist the talents and services of third agers who still have lots to contribute. There are schools, hospitals, nonprofit organizations, and myriad agencies with positions waiting to be filled by older adults whose abilities can change a life or an organization. Be on the lookout for ways in which you can be instrumental in helping your patients or clients find the connection that will set the stage for productivity and satisfaction.

— Jack Rosenthal, president of The New York Times Company Foundation, is cofounder and chairman of ReServe Elder Service.