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My name is Marian Marszynski.
I am on assignment for Frontline, dispatched to a territory no one likes to visit, our
old age.
So of course I am in Florida, the holy ground of retirement in America.
I came to this country 25 years ago and tasted American success.
Now I am approaching 60 and wonder, what is the American dream for the old?
In a culture where new is better than old and youth better than age, we don't hear much
from our elders, except when there is a scare about the future of social security or Medicare.
Retirement under Florida's sun attracts all kinds of Americans, the rich, the poor, the
rest of us.
And as for myself, I like Florida, but I am not sure I like the idea of retirement.
What kind of journey will it be, a new beginning or just the end?
I've read a lot of books about retirement.
One of them started this way.
No matter how much Grecian formula you put on your hair, America is graying.
25 years from now, one of every five Americans will be over 65.
The projections are that an army of 35 million baby boomers will join me in my retirement.
So here on the northern edge of Miami beach, where most retirees are Jewish Americans from
the northeast, I am briskly marching into my future.
Do you want to walk with us?
We show you how to walk nicely.
Since when you are retired?
Since when I'm retired?
A year ago.
I walked five miles.
Every single day, seven days a week.
What do you do with your hands?
Just tell me what is the correct way of walking.
Like this?
Long?
All your energy.
Frustration.
Your heart pumps.
Some people would say that retirement is the end of life.
No, I am thinking about whether I should retire or not.
I'm going to be bored.
I'm going to be depressed.
I want an answer for this question.
Actually a few of those questions were already answered for me.
Some years ago, I was brainwashed into a healthy lifestyle at Miami's Pritikin Longevity Center.
As an alumni, I visit my teacher and cheerleader Barbara Udell.
What is the definition of retirement and what does it mean to you?
Chaim, what does retirement mean to you?
Death.
Did he say death?
Could you like give a little more Chaim?
As long as a person, man or woman, are capable of producing and building, they should never
stop.
Retiring at 65, that mindset is archaic because we now have longevity and so we are younger
than we were, than our counterpart of a generation ago, much younger.
Retirement is a very personal word.
To me, it's like marriage.
It's like love.
It's like divorce.
It's like religion, sex, politics.
It's personal to everyone.
My dream about retirement is a return to basics when stripped of titles, honors and obligations,
we can enjoy life's simplicity.
I shared this idea with Louis Shore when I met him on the beach.
Louis spends summers in New York, winters in Miami.
He has the look of a professional retiree.
How is this spectacle of retirement?
Spectacle of retirement is rather disappointing.
I felt lost and I still do at times and I feel that I should have a destiny someplace
to go.
I think we were put on this earth to do something constructive and constructive for me was work,
work, work, work.
But people envy you because you are the last happy generation of retired.
You benefit of the GI bills, you make money, you can go on cruises, you can buy yourself
all the pleasures.
Yes, we did all those pleasures.
Going to the islands and travel through Europe and travel through the Orient, but that's
only temporary.
How do you keep your mind going all the time?
That's the important thing.
You can fall asleep but the mind keeps going.
You get up the following day and what do you have?
You have the same routine.
You got to watch the clock, what time is breakfast, what time is lunch.
Life is very strange.
It's never what you planned for.
You keep on going, that's it.
To keep your brain spinning, sign up for classes at Florida International University, said
Luis.
It was a good tip.
In their catalogue, I found a class preparing young people for retirement, taught by Dr.
Tim Patton, a baby boomer.
The geezers.
How many geezers do we have out there?
Give me a guess.
A lot is a nice general ballpark.
We have a lot and we're getting more.
What we have right now is about roughly 35 million of them.
Within about 20 years, there'll be about 75 million of them.
The boomer group is the other side of the equation because this is the group that's
going to overwhelm the whole American system, especially in healthcare.
How much right now is being spent for the healthcare of Americans?
One trillion.
And you know who's consuming it?
Ninety percent's going for the geezers.
What's going to happen when we get that age, when I get that age?
We won't have it if we keep spending it like that.
I soon found out that Tim Patton's agenda for the boomers is larger than healthcare.
I went to hear him again at a faculty meeting.
We don't want to retire.
We don't want to age.
We don't want to be old.
We want to be us.
We're baby boomers.
We've always been what we consider to be the normal age in America.
And so it's not so much anymore that we're retiring as this pleasant end to a long working
career.
It's now also that we're going to be retiring because we're going to be kicked out of the
jobs we have and we best stand being prepared for it to survive a long time.
And it's not just now retiring, having these wonderful years to play a few rounds of golf,
go to early bird dinners and kick off, but we might have 20 to 25 years of retirement.
And that's a scary proposition.
The boomers are worrying about retirement, but the geezers are actually doing it.
They may have more answers for my questions.
After much research, I concluded that geezers live in condominiums.
I know this blanket statement may offend those who don't, but television is known for exaggeration.
I came here to meet Bernie Cohen, a CBS news veteran who retired some 25 years ago.
Bernie moved to the Admiral's port building and ventured into Cando broadcasting.
Each building has its own channel 32.
Now what happens is this.
They can see that and to entice them, we let them know when the mail is in by putting a
sign up there.
So they know they don't have to come down to find out.
I think her name is Bernice.
And the man?
His name is Jimmy.
I know quite a lot of them.
He is my 89 year old assistant.
He is known as our poet laureate.
I'll bring him right in.
We three came from Brooklyn to Admiral's port, a condo we bought, the pleasure we thought.
It never did happen like fools we were caught, three slaves we've turned out to be.
On Monday we're off to Indixie, on Tuesdays we're shopping for fish, and on Wednesdays
we're cleaning the toilets, oh God you don't know it was never our wish.
Our wives flake and ask us three evenings a week to know when they speak, it's action
we seek.
Our neighbors ignore us, they say we are weak, our life's just a sham, no one gives a damn,
we're coming home Brooklyn, we are.
So he's 89 and you are?
I'm going to be 80 this year.
He's a teenager.
Halloween party, 92.
My friend Helen, he made the costume I'm wearing, she's a very talented person.
And I'm sure we're going to have a wonderful time.
That's five years ago, my God.
That's what hurts, when I begin to play these things, people look at that, it's 19, 20 people
have passed away.
Yeah, I'm looking at one of them, he's alright, here, John, he passed away, Doc Wallach is
still going, he's 88, Arthur Scheer, they're still alive, thank God, she just lost her
husband Ayoma, she's 92 now, he died, her cow Lasty, she died, that's the Doc's wife,
she died about six months ago, right here.
I've learned a lot of kando gossip from Bernie.
One story was about a woman who was a nervous wreck when she recently moved from Long Island
to start her retirement in Miami.
This apartment was rented by a family called Margolis.
Her name is Judith Corson.
So is it beautiful?
It's a magnificent apartment, it's a beautiful apartment, I love it, I'm very comfortable
here, it's grand, it's spacious, it's what I'm used to from being in a house, which I've
lived in for many, many years.
What's missing here?
My daughter, my family, I have a connection with that area, after all that was my home
for many, many years.
Is retirement a bad word?
I feel as though it's, it's an ending, it's almost like a waiting period and I don't like
that feeling.
As I was doing it, I was happy, but at the same time I was frightened out of my wits.
Yes, because Judy, what are you doing?
It is, I mean this is going to be a big, big move for you and it's permanent and I don't
like to think in terms of permanency.
You know what Bernie Cohen is telling me now?
That this condo is getting so old that they run out of ideas what to do.
The old timers like Bernie count on newcomers like Judith to energize the condo.
The standard joke here is, he's not good looking, he's not rich, but he drives at night, he's
a good catch.
That fellow who wrote that poem, My Tribe May It Increase, our tribe is not increasing.
Many of the people are simply too old to partake in any social thing.
If they get through a day they're a happy person.
Caterers want to see a hundred people guaranteed.
We can't do that any longer, we don't know if we're going to get fifty or eighty or ninety.
We try all the time and you see who comes down, here we are, two big pools and here
we are, Bernie, they're home before nine o'clock.
But Jules, after you served them they went home, we were a handful that stayed, you know,
be honest if you're going to talk.
What I saw at Admiral's port worries me, the old so isolated in retirement, don't they
need the young to survive?
Who said that the seniors must live in peace and quiet?
I think about it while cruising South Beach, once a notorious oasis of old age, today and
around the clock celebration of youth.
What a symbol of our segregated society, I need my retirement to be louder, I should
stick with the boomers.
That was a yes shot, but only because we had three no shots before that.
I asked Dr. Tim Patton to tell me more about his prescription for retirement.
Okay, one, we're going to have to stay far healthier because we cannot afford the cost
of health care.
So coming out and just enjoying, finding ways to reduce stress and stay a little bit more
fit and healthy is not what the other generation was concerned with because they didn't know
all of the problems they were going to have.
So they are costly.
Very costly, oh geez.
Because they're not in shape.
Well, not only are they not in shape and have lots of chronic diseases, but they have this
certain sort of demand on the system that says the system is responsible for paying
for them, that they're costly because they would rather go in for bypass surgery than
change their diet.
Because in their mentality, that's what the health care system does.
It fixes you when you're broke.
In the new generation, we don't want to get broke.
We don't want to have to have somebody come and fix us.
We want to stay as healthy as we can.
I think having leisure and recreation activities becomes ultra important.
What do you do if you don't have something to do?
Do you become one of these angry old retired people who lives in a condominium and yells
at people about parking in their parking place?
Yeah, get a life.
Get out.
Tim says the geezers worked one job, saved for retirement, and now drain public health
care dollars.
Those are opportunity seekers, job switchers, and big spenders.
They challenge 65 as retirement age.
They must stay healthy to be able to work longer.
Tim's agenda is that public funds must be used for preventive health care of boomers
today, so tomorrow they will cost less and enjoy more.
What's the situation here?
Well, I'm putting a long way for par, but I can make that.
The whole idea is every hole has so many strokes you're supposed to complete it in.
All this talking about fitness reminds me that I need a hobby for my retirement.
I have none.
I can take five minutes to show you the swing, and you're going to have to take your lifetime
then to learn it.
I turn to Phil Fargiano, who has shown thousands of retirees the nirvana of golf.
So we want to stand tall, do a Japanese hello.
We're bending right from the hips.
If you take your club here, put it next to your lower spine, you're bending right from
the hips, bending forward.
When this turn, when this goes back, the club head goes back, actually, I had a bad attitude
about this dumb game.
I've just happened to have this device here.
My thoughts are wondering the future of social security cuts in Medicare.
Your arms just provide shape to the swing.
What happened to universal health care plan?
Why did we kill it?
To hell with retirement.
I want to be a boomer.
Well, let me understand.
The idea is that the distance between my arms and my ball here are the same all through.
See, watch your head there, move back, move away from me a little.
Your chest turns back and it pivots your weight on your right leg, around in a circle.
Then your downswing comes back around, pivoting around in a circle, hitting the ball.
Golf is not for thinkers, I conclude.
Another explanation is that I'm out of shape.
At the Pritikin Longevity Center, I exercise with the boomers.
I look at my parents, you know, they started work at 20, they wanted just to get to 65
to get their pension.
That's not the type of life that I want.
You know, when I'm finished working, whatever it be, at 55, 65, I want to live the remainder
of my life and that's why I'm here at Pritikin because I'm a statistic waiting to happen.
My mom died at 43, both grandparents, severe diabetics, grandmothers, grandfather died
with emphysema.
I want to live the remainder of my life.
The more you're interested in growing personally, the more you're interested in learning about
how to be a better person, the more you become healthier.
From boomers to geezers and back, I am commuting between my body and my mind.
Tim Patton invited me to his home at a new development where almost everyone is a baby
boomer.
Come on in.
I'd like you to meet my dad.
His father is visiting.
Dad, this was the game.
Dead from Youngstown, Ohio.
Right, right, right.
So, is a geezer's name a bad name or a good name?
Who told you I was a geezer?
There are some things you don't need to tell a person.
You think I am a geezer?
I am in the middle.
I am 60.
I am not a boomer and I try to be a geezer, but I am not quite there.
Tell me your routines.
Describe it.
Well, I don't know if every day was the same, but you know, it's basically the same.
We always woke up early in the morning, I mean, we're awake 5.30, quarter to 6.
Why do people who are retired get up at 5 o'clock?
Because they're going to bed early.
You have to hurry into the day to do nothing?
No.
It's an inconceivable idea to wake up and not have any plan of what to do for that day
or the next day.
Yeah, I've been doing fine for about five years and don't bother me one bit, I'm telling
you the truth.
I'm not saying that...
Geezers and boomers.
Is it an old feud between fathers and sons or the beginning of a new American dream?
No more retirement at 65.
Stay in shape.
Keep working.
Just change gears.
You could go through the whole list of your friends from the Blairs to the Corbett's all
the way down the line and God bless them all, they're not near as good of shape financially
or physically as you are.
And mentally, most of them are baskets.
Back at the Admiral's port condominium, Judith waits for her brother Herbert to arrive from
New York.
The reason Judith was so nervous about retiring was that Herbert was supposed to move with
her but change his mind at the last minute.
Now she hopes he will reconsider his decision.
This is a Lincoln.
And the man that is in this Lincoln is your brother.
You know what traffic I hit all the way...
Senor, if I tell you I had such a rough trip.
Did you sleep?
I stung my head.
Just the thoughts of making changes.
I got out of the motel...
Herbert's retirement has been a bitter one.
He lives in the past, Judy told me.
He thinks he had a life and it's all over.
I tell you the wallpaper has to go.
I used to have that in my bedroom for the girls I used to bring up.
That doesn't open.
Yes it does.
It's a couch.
Now it opens.
Oh my God.
Oh yeah.
Each one of our travesties, you know, each one of our...
Herbert did well in the textile business and thought he had a wonderful family.
And I loved life and I loved...
But he divorced 20 years ago, retired soon after, and concluded that life failed him.
It killed me.
It destroyed me.
My incentive for my business was rough.
I couldn't function as good.
It's in my head and I'm trying to get it out of me.
I'm beginning to understand that the real problem of retirement is not just money and
health, but the mind and the spirit.
I decided to sign up for a different kind of class at the Elders Institute.
It is called Writing Your Memories.
It's midnight and I suppose I should go to bed.
But why?
I'm not tired.
There's lots of programs on late night TV.
In fact, I feel like having a little snack.
Maybe I could hop in the car and take a ride to the Rascal House for some matzo ball soup.
You know what?
This is a good time to do a little laundry.
At this hour, nobody will be using the washing machines in our building.
And when the clothes are cleaned and dried, I'll put a lot of cream on my face and nestle
down in a nice bubble bath.
Maybe I'll be sleepy by then, but if I'm not, it's okay.
No matter how late I go to bed, I can sleep as long as I want in the morning.
I'm no longer bound by time and schedules.
A prisoner for more than 50 years has earned her freedom from labor.
It's called retirement.
Hi kitty.
Her name is Betty Sullivan, 69 years old.
She worked as an administrator in a medical school.
How much Betty needs to be happy?
It probably costs me about, oh, maybe a thousand a month.
That's it?
Yeah.
$600 apartment and $400 for the rest?
Right.
Well, so what are you talking about?
Yeah, to be happy.
So most people can afford it.
Well, those people that are only getting like 500, say, from social security or something.
What's your social security?
I can't really do that.
What's your social security?
Mine is $7.88, I think it is.
And then I have a small pension.
I think my main responsibility is just to keep myself alive and within my budget so
that I don't overdo it and to keep healthy, actually, and to try to have a little fun.
But I've always had fun in my whole life, you know.
My philosophy was always live and laugh.
So what do you think about death?
I think differently about death than I did before.
When it happens, it happens, you know.
But I think that I'm not so sure there's anything afterwards.
That's what I mean.
But whereas years ago I did, I know I was very philosophical and spiritual maybe about
life hereafter.
But now I'm not so sure.
So I kind of think this is it and that this is heaven right here.
See?
I mean, the house is filled with the colors.
It's all green.
Yeah, because I figured it was so small that I had to keep it simple.
But you know, they're fixing the balconies outside.
So we can't use our balconies.
See all the dirt and everything?
They're putting railings on the balconies.
When my boyfriend comes over then I pull it bottom out.
Yeah, and you move it.
Otherwise it's, yeah.
Yeah, well, for the size of this?
I'm writing a chronology of everything I can remember.
Head cosmetic eye surgery at St. Francis Hospital.
I tell you, I have those bags here.
Are you going to get rid of them?
I mean, how is it?
Does it make sense? Is it good?
Yeah, it's good.
You go in the office and they give you an injection,
then you have to stay wide away,
without any anesthesia,
because you have to be talking to him while he's doing it.
Then he takes these scissors and he cuts away all the skin,
and you have these big holes, and it's so gruesome.
But it's great now.
Yeah, that was 20 years ago.
So you have under, under, and over.
You have this also?
Yeah.
Just once.
Office was the worst.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was terrible.
I'm meeting somebody new.
I met him and I'm going to start seeing him,
because he's an active kind of a person.
And the boyfriend that I've had for the last 12 years is like a couch potato.
You have to have somebody different for all the things that you like to do,
because there's not one person that wants to do everything you want to do.
She brought me to her line-dancing class at the local shopping mall.
Betty told me that her 17 years of marriage were good,
but only while they were bringing up their seven children.
Only after her divorce she realized that all the while her life lacked freedom.
For Betty, retirement is an adventure.
Another woman in my Florida life is Regina Blank,
who I adopted as my Jewish mother.
Regina is 89, still a professional seamstress.
She and her friends like to go to Rascal House,
the famous Jewish restaurant for the ultimate retirement's self-indulgence.
I start to make the leather, I open up the leather.
For Regina, a Holocaust survivor,
surviving this festival of cholesterol, is peanuts.
In Regina, I see my own mother, who lived with us until she died at 82.
This bread, to pick up the meat, you make the leather.
The bread.
You take it home.
I know you take it home, that's the deal.
Regina has been a regular at this bingo hall for a quarter of a century.
I don't go for the money.
When I sit home and sew, I would make more money, believe me.
Just, I go to spend the time.
You're not dating Regina.
I tell you, I buried two boyfriends.
You had, after you lost your husband, you buried two boyfriends?
He's got to appeal to me, understand?
What are you looking at?
Someone like you, honey.
There used to be 200 players here.
Now two dozen make a crowd.
G-53.
Bingo!
This is Regina's condo, built in the early 70s and aging now.
Although Regina has outlived most of her peers,
her sewing customers keep coming, and she likes feeling independent.
But her family worries that one day Regina will no longer be able to care for herself
and thinks she deserves a more comfortable life.
So her granddaughter Amy is trying to talk her into moving to the famous Century Village,
a luxury retirement community in the suburbs.
So Amy says that you should move out, right?
I don't want to move. I'm too old. What, I'm going to look for new friends?
Many of her friends have already moved to the same place, to Century Village.
So what are you telling her?
That she won't have to make new friends because they're all there already.
It has security. It has transportation provided for her.
Just, it's, I'm too old to move. You think moving is so easy?
What would my own mother have said on the subject of a more comfortable life?
The only comfort I need is you, she would tell me.
I'm afraid another thing. My sister was living here in this apartment.
Then her husband passed away.
The daughter insisted she should move to Arizona.
When she moved to Arizona, she was living in that new place maybe three weeks, or two weeks, and she died.
I know, but this is, you know, there's an old saying that you do not move old furniture.
Amy arranged for Regina to tour Century Village,
which promises worry-free living for active elders and has been a big success in Florida.
Welcome to Century Village, Mrs. Blank.
This is your granddaughter, Amy. Nice to meet you.
Have a brochure over here. I'd like you to hang onto it.
Can you hold this for your granddaughter? Thank you.
Okay, please come with me.
We have 13,000 people. We have 724 acres. There's 90 acres of water.
You also have all the amenities of the clubhouse belonging to over 70 clubs.
First I'll show you our beautiful lobby.
Would I want to be surrounded by 13,000 people of the same old age, I ask myself? Of course not.
I would feel cut off from the real noises of life.
And it has everything that you need over here. You'll have a lot of friends over here.
As a matter of fact, many people have met their wives over here and met their husbands.
And this is the place where if you want to meet someone, this is a wonderful place.
You'll be very happy over here. And there's many people to choose from.
So why don't we, let's step over here and I'll show you a few more things, okay?
But Regina is much older than I.
Would she replace her own niche in life by this elegant, isolated summer camp for elders?
And over here we have a room in here where we have a piano in there, we have an organ.
There are choir groups that meet here. And it's a very lovely place because if you want to learn how to play piano, we will teach you.
Over here you have your beautiful living room. And it's a very lovely apartment.
And it's something very attractive.
Regina decided to stay in her old building.
And when you see her back at the poker table with the Kandas' last Mohicans, you understand why.
Pair of tens. Pair of juices.
They all lost their husbands here. They share a bond and fight the solitude by sticking together.
So what do you say? A nickel. Wait a minute. She hasn't put any money in. Where are you going?
She said she checked. She checked and she bet. I did not bet. And I paid. And it's up to you.
For Regina there was no choice between old friends and new comforts.
You have a straight and you have a full house. What do I need two bathrooms for, she said.
Three jacks and two tens.
Judith is still trying to convince her brother Herbert to stay with her in Florida.
They share their best times at Highlight.
She is a cautious gambler.
What are you doing? One, two, four, eight.
He is an emotional player.
Herbert says he hates gambling. He calls it a make-believe life, void of feelings.
But he keeps playing.
Very good. One more.
Cool.
Good boy. One took. One took.
I see. So now, now, now, now. One, two, and...
If one goes out, I've got it. One more. One more.
Cool. Cool. Oh, you son of a bitch.
You wanted three to win. And you wanted three to win.
Where is three? Who is winning? Oh, you son of a bitch.
Who is winning? Oh, you gave it away, you bastard.
Three and three lost it. Son of a bitch.
Three lost it. So we all...
We all lost. We all lost.
Judith plays bridge at the local club.
But this is not for Herbert.
He wants out of his retirement, but cannot make new business connections.
His savings are shrinking.
Do you see yourself as an elder already?
No, I think I'm a youngster. You're the aging youngster.
I still feel like I'm a kid.
So in this age, the attachment to what was before...
...stopped you from creating something new.
Absolutely. Very well put.
When I ask him what's missing in his life, he says, love.
Live life, Judith tells him. It's gone, he answers.
I'm hoping time will be on our side.
Herbert is stuck in the unfinished business of his past.
He cannot let go of his old life, so he cannot start the new one.
It takes time, right?
To learn to deal with the problems.
You can get over almost anything if you have the patience and the time.
Baby.
Will he come to Florida? No.
Herbert is not the only one among retirees...
...with a sense of being stuck or frozen, a liminal figure.
I was forced to retire.
When I was forced to retire, I came down here and put my hands up.
What am I going to do?
I had no hobbies while I was working, and I don't play cards...
...and I don't play tennis, and I don't play golf...
...and I don't do shopping, window shopping or shopping in stores...
...or go to luncheons. What do I do?
You see, I'm looking back to...
Howard Saltzman knows how to deal with those feelings.
Do we not, as older people, the elders, sometimes look backwards...
...and try and drop that paradigm, so to speak?
As Saltzman for 40 years, he then finished college...
...and became the most inspiring coach of retirees.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...
...to front only the essential facts of life...
...and see if I could not learn what it had to teach...
...and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
He teaches a class at the Elders Institute...
...called Think Tank. Any subject goes.
I was always busy, making a living, doing my job...
...and suddenly that stops.
And it didn't happen over a long period of time...
...it happened when I did decide to retire.
So I was at first frightened. Frightened of the unknown.
The most important thing is knowing what to do with your spare time...
...because a lot of people just vegetate.
And I was more interested in learning and getting more experience with life...
...and doing all the kind of things I haven't been able to do...
...because I was tied up in business all my life.
Most of you here, I don't know what your assets are...
...but your assets are going to go to your children, are they not?
And the figures are well into the trillions, not the millions.
Trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars are going to pop in...
...to these young people coming in. Is it not true?
The problem with the current generation is they want immediate gratification.
They don't want to wait as we waited, worked hard, accumulated a little money...
...and took everything in stride.
As things came along, we waited for it.
But they want everything that took us a lifetime to have.
They want it at the early part of their lives without working as hard as we did.
Our parents gave us more of love and wisdom.
We have a tendency sometimes, because maybe we're younger...
...and we have more things that we do...
...we have a tendency to give more things than a material thing.
I couldn't think of the word. More material things than our parents gave us...
...probably because we may be able to afford it more than they did...
...but also because it makes it more convenient for us to do so.
And the kids have grown up to accept the fact that lots of times they expect these things.
All the values that you're talking about that the children seem to lack...
...is not their fault. It's our fault.
Whoever has children like this, they fail to instill the values that we treasure.
The values can still be taught. The values are different.
I saw a movie in which there's a bad sister...
...who won't take responsibility for her father, dying father...
...and the good sister, who gives her whole life.
And I was the leader, so I said, do you think the bad sister was bad?
And they said no. And of course they did...
...because the new attitude is you've got to live your life. It's only once.
And it's precarious. It's dangerous.
So that we have to have new mores that will take care...
...perhaps eliminate a lot of the wildness that we've catered.
Are we capable of doing this individually?
More than all the other experts and teachers I met in Florida...
...it was Howard Salzman who helped me learn to think about old age.
In the process of growing older, you do become obsessed with yourself.
In the first place you cut off from business all the damn people around you.
Your work and your friends.
Most of these people come from up north.
New York is up north, and all of a sudden they're alone.
They have no job, they have nothing.
Now what the hell else are you going to be obsessed with except yourself?
Your only company is yourself.
And occasionally you pick up a friend or two. That's a critical thing.
Then if you really want to engineer something...
...you may wish to create a new style of living.
Right. And so then, in a sense, from the humanistic point of view...
...retirement is this second chance for a human being.
You're hitting it right on the head.
It's a second chance to live, to be a human being.
Is it possible that our American economy has been such that it has separated us?
You know, we're estranged from society and estranged from each other.
You know, in the Orient, another place like that, comes the second chance...
...when you stop working 60, 65, whatever it is, you really are on the search.
Search of enlightenment, whatever you want.
And you give your business over to the children, you give away your responsibilities...
...and you begin searching for, you know, answers and stuff.
If you didn't learn how to live before you reach 65...
...it's very difficult to teach you how to live afterwards.
That's one of the shortfalls of our education system.
We're so technically, you know, oriented...
...that we didn't tell them how to be a human being, how to live, how to enjoy life.
And suddenly the job ceases and there they are.
Now what do I do? You know, that's basically what it is.
In Howard I found a spiritual brother.
In Betty Sullivan, a sister.
I haven't seen you for such a long time.
It's in today's newspaper.
Yes.
It's still in today's newspaper.
But I'm not getting any response on it.
So if I should do that again, I believe I'd have to change the ad a little bit.
And here's the personals.
And it's under women seeking men.
This is my ad.
It says, easy going Gail would like to date happy-go-lucky gentleman.
65 plus.
Ready for companionship and maybe more.
I didn't put that sentence in. They did.
But I think of myself as the ex-cheerleader type.
That's what I should put.
Absolutely.
Ex-cheerleader type kind of person.
Ex-cheerleader searching for...
You're still sticking with 65 plus?
Yeah.
They really like our music.
Ex-cheerleader searching for an ex-football player.
For ex-football player? Okay, that's good.
Now what can be negative about football player has to be playful certainly.
No touchdowns.
So ex-cheerleader searching for ex-football player.
I am bubbly, you must be funny.
I found another class.
Sing that song again.
Where seniors romanticize their past.
Love and marriage, love and marriage.
Here's an institution and this marriage has global gentry.
And they will say it's elementary.
By now I am no longer just a reporter.
I feel like an insider.
To this conclusion, love and marriage, love and marriage.
Goes together against horse and carriage.
That was all my mother, you can't have one other.
I told Howard Salzman about my Sinatra experience.
The older person is reliving the old experience.
We're doing Frank Sinatra, we're going to the restaurant, we're seeing this show.
What they did for 40 or 50 years, do you wish to go...
How about taking a trip to somewhere you've never been?
How about meeting people you were afraid of?
How about going into the ghetto or whatever?
Meeting strangers, how about meeting a stranger?
There is a tendency with the older people, particularly in the condominiums, to cluster.
Once you walk into retirement, you have to walk into a new age and a new life.
You cannot drag the past into it.
There is certain experience in everything, yes, you can't deny.
But you're looking for enlightenment, so to speak.
Here is a grand time of your life, 65 or whatever it is.
And suddenly the world opens up and you must leave the past alone.
All the past is going to do is torture you.
So this poem would really hit on this.
There is a phoenix within us all that calls from the depths of our being.
When we listen we hear, continue on.
Physical limitations are but an invitation to another route.
So make haste, the royal bird readies itself for flight to heights you never dreamed of.
Are you a polka person?
Yes.
Are you a polka person?
Yes, why?
It's about teaching me.
Betty had no answer to her personal ad.
I had an idea.
I invited her to the last Polish-American club, still offering an old-fashioned dancing floor for seniors.
Betty was bubbling.
One thing she didn't know was that I also invited Howard.
Hi, Sal.
What's your name, Sal?
Howard.
Hi, Howard.
What's your name, Betty?
Betty.
Oh, hi, Betty.
Hi.
Samba, when, when?
I remember on the beach we were talking about retirement and all being a liberation of freedom.
She is incredible at turning these things into a celebration of freedom.
She really is like a little girl living in fairy tales.
She wants to dance all day, she wants to do things.
I like to think that life is dance, like this dance tonight.
Life is a dance.
It is a dance.
That's the great dance that you're going to do to the very end when you take your final step into the polka and you put your hand up and take down the lid.
And hopefully you can find a partner that you can dance with.
When I was single I started to write a poem about getting married.
And it started off, it started off like this.
It started off, in just a little while, callalooies will bloom along the aisle.
And then I got married and I never finished the poem.
So now I'm divorced and I live alone and everything.
So now I've got to finish the poem.
So how do you suggest I finish it?
We'll do it on poetry.
Let's see what we got.
Okay.
Tender lips.
Tender lips come close.
And I may touch you.
Let your soft breath through.
Tender lips come close.
And I may touch you.
Let your soft breath through and become one with mine.
That we may spend some time in the tender embrace of the moment.
My journey to the land of our second chances was coming to an end.
The most important thing I've learned is that aging is about living in time.
And it can be a joy, an illumination for the mind.
Perhaps the Spanish say it best.
There were for a retiree is jubilado, jubilation.
What a great idea.
There's more to explore about the challenges and rewards of retirement at Frontline's website.
Learn more about some of the retirees featured in this film.
A guide to websites on the Internet of special interest for retirees.
And our viewer discussion, a chance to share your thoughts about adjusting to retirement.
Explore Frontline online at www.pbs.org.
Next time on Frontline, once we were brothers.
Some of us made it, some of us didn't.
The income gap is so profound.
How did this happen?
Inequality is growing more rapidly in the black community.
Are we not our brother's keepers?
What kind of people are we really?
And what do we do about it?
Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores the two nations of black America.
Next time on Frontline.
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