Ask Margie Higgins when she’ll retire, and she’s liable to laugh.
“I’m only 80,” she says.
She still works at law offices around Bangor and helps teach at-risk youth as a volunteer foster-grandparent in Hampden. Her daughter, Eastern Agency on Aging volunteer director Carol Higgins-Taylor, convinced her to try the Penquis foster-grandparent program.
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it or could do it,” Higgins says, but she found herself enrolled anyway. “[Carol] can be very persuasive.”
As the percentage of Americans over 50 grows, there are now more opportunities than ever for older Mainers to stay active. Exercise programs, senior college courses, and volunteer positions abound to keep physically, mentally, and civically engaged.
“It’s the old adage of ‘use it or lose it,’” Higgins-Taylor says. And that adage is getting a workout as baby boomers enter retirement age. “These are the Woodstock kids,” she says. “They’re expecting to be active.”
Body • Most people can’t stay perfectly healthy as they enter their sixth or seventh decade, but that doesn’t mean they should stop trying. Even small amounts of exercise can relieve pain of chronic conditions like arthritis by lubing the joints and releasing endorphins. Studies also have shown that even moderate weight training can have dramatic results.
While exercise programs can be as simple as a morning walk at the local mall, a class targeted to seniors can be the safest route for those with health issues. In addition to its popular pool classes, the Bangor YMCA offers one of the state’s only certified cardiovascular rehab classes. The class is a mix of treadmill work, weight lifting, and slow aerobics, like most fitness classes, but it also has medical staff, blood pressure readings, and a pronounced warm-up and cool-down period, says Kevin Dunton, assistant health and fitness director. “Most people usually don’t warm up properly on their own,” he says.
Not everyone can do all the exercises, says Dunton, but they are encouraged to do what they can. He gives an impressive statistic supporting the class’s effectiveness: Some regulars have taken it for more than 25 years.
Mind • Educators are beginning to view the brain as just another muscle group that needs lifelong exercise. While some people keep mentally active through daily habits like reading, writing, and even doing the crossword puzzle in the paper, others need a more formal programming to keep the gray matter in top form. After beginning in Portland little more than a decade ago, the number of independent senior colleges in Maine has grown to 18, with over 5,000 students.
As interim executive director at the Penobscot Valley Senior College in Bangor, Stanley N. Marshall Jr. oversees 300 participants and dozens of classes geared towards people 50 and older. This fall, the college will hold an eclectic mix of courses, from “Broadway and Hollywood Musicals” to “Understanding Controversies in Science,” and will also sponsor day trips.
The job of a senior college, says Marshall, is to stimulate the elder mind. “You won’t find cribbage tournaments here, but you may find a puppet troupe,” he says. And these classes are impossible to flunk. There are no grades, tests, or required readings, and students should feel free to interrupt their teachers.
Diane Cutler of Bangor, a longtime Penobscot Valley Senior College student, loves the college’s philosophy of learning for the fun of it. “I wish I had this 60 years ago, when learning wasn’t much fun,” she says.
Throughout her senior academic career, Cutler says she’s taken a class on why the earth is warming and a class on why the earth is cooling. She’s also taken constitutional law, twice.
But the college is more than just a way to satisfy intellectual curiosity; it’s also a way to bond with peers. Cutler says within the opening minutes of her first class, she found herself “bonding with a whole new group of people.”
“I cannot conceive of what these years would be like without it,” she says. “It makes you want to live forever.”
Soul • The classes Diane Cutler attends are taught by volunteer instructors, usually retirees from academic life. Older volunteers also teach many of the health classes for older adults. In fact, older Mainers make up the backbone of nearly every volunteer organization.
It’s a good thing that retirement-age Mainers are such good volunteers, says Dr. Lenard Kaye, director of the University of Maine’s Center on Aging, because Maine is the oldest state in the union and doesn’t receive enough federal funding to care for its population. “We have been underserved,” Kaye says. “We have to turn inward.”
Many times these volunteers are helping their peers stay connected and healthy. Jo Cooper, director of Faith in Action Downeast Connections, says senior citizens are the backbone of her network of volunteer drivers in the Ellsworth area, ferrying clients to exercise classes, doctor’s appointments, vet appointments, social get-togethers, etc. Volunteer coordinators like Cooper marvel at the dedication of older volunteers. Cooper says while the recent spike in gas prices may make it hard to recruit new volunteers, it hasn’t stopped the current drivers.
“I haven’t had one complain to me they couldn’t do it because of gas prices,” she says.
Paula Burnett, director of the UMaine Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, says she’s seen that same dedication with her volunteers, including one 103-year-old. She has volunteers who work six days out of seven in multiple sites, and the baby boomers want to do even more.
“We had a real big push from baby boomers,” she says. “They want to take charge . . . they literally want to get their hands dirty.”
Burnett says volunteering is a way for older Mainers to stay engaged in the community and nourish their souls. For some, volunteering gives a reason to get out of bed in the morning. “It’s a chance to play, to grow, and for those who are single, sometimes to meet new spouses,” she says.
One in four of older Mainers volunteers, according to a UMaine survey, and people over 65 rack up the most volunteer hours on average. These volunteers are an important cog in the Maine economy, says Kaye, giving services for free that would otherwise cost the economy some $18 per hour. And volunteering keeps older Mainers physically and mentally active, thus saving untold millions in hospital bills.
“Civic engagement actually is the best medication that you can take,” Kaye says.
