1st Edition

Adventures in Senior Living Learning How to Make Retirement Meaningful and Enjoyable

    If retirement is approaching or you've recently retired, Adventures in Senior Living can help you prepare for the opportunities, needs, problems, and challenges that retirement often brings. Through 31 lively and interesting interviews, you learn how other people have found positive and rewarding ways to make their retirement years meaningful and enjoyable. Opening windows into their own lives, these inspiring retirees share with you a wide range of retirement ideas that pertain to volunteer work, travel, selecting your living arrangements, and getting involved in your community.

    Retirement doesn't have to bring feelings of boredom or restlessness. Adventures in Senior Living shows you that your retirement years can be your most fulfilling, productive, and fun years. You'll have more time to work in that garden you love, make quilts with your friends, spend time with your loved ones, and get exercise. But, possibly even more important than that, you'll have the ability to participate in your community on an entirely new level and to make a difference in other people's lives as well as your own. The life-loving, generous people who come together in this wonderful book are sure to inspire you as they speak about their accomplishments that include:

    • recording books on tape for blind people
    • conducting missionary work at home and abroad
    • brightening the lives of patients in nursing homes and hospitals
    • teaching Sunday school
    • caring for a spouse with Alzheimer's
    • delivering meals on wheels to shut-in people
    • establishing a battered women's shelter
    • rescuing prostitutes from the street

      This book presents retirees, teachers of courses in aging and retirement, activity directors at retirement and nursing homes, family members, and health and mental health care providers with many stories of extraordinary volunteerism, service, and kindness, but it also talks about the needs of retirees and their daily, more personal experiences. To this end, Adventures in Senior Living discusses the importance of continuing study, discussion, meditation, prayer, and fitness in the lives of seniors.

    Contents Foreword
    • Introduction
    • Nurse to African Babies, Then to American Retirees: Marabelle Taylor
    • Caregiving for an Alzheimer's Spouse: Bob Lazear
    • The Flower Lady: Eleanor Jamison
    • Telephone Helpline and Shelter for Battered Women: Nannie Hereford
    • The Library Lady: Mary Ruth Hoyt
    • Recording Books on Tape for Blind People: Virginia Mackenzie
    • A “Can't Say No” Volunteer: June Hansen
    • A Retirement Ministry in Twenty-Five Countries: Paul Lindholm
    • Helping Needy People and Prostitute Rescue Work: Faye Speer
    • A Retirement Ministry Team: Hal and Kirby Davis
    • Overcoming Grief While Helping Others: Vicki McClelland Johnson
    • Pastoring, Writing, Singing, and Caring for Family: Joe Gray
    • Retirement: Deceleration or Cold Turkey?: Arthur Bushing
    • Planting a “Rose” in Westminster Gardens: Bob McIntire and Gayle Beanland
    • Feeding and Caring for an Angel: Henry (Tim) Lowe
    • Serving Navajos, Hawaiians, Alaskans, and Yavapai-Apaches: Jim Douthitt
    • Accomplishing a Musical “Dream” in Retirement: Earle Harvey
    • Taking Widows and Widowers Out to Lunch: Frank Jamison
    • Hospital Chaplain Work in Retirement: Peter van Lierop
    • A Retired Teacher Who Didn't “Retire”: Nelly Finch
    • Overcoming a Bad Beginning in Retirement: Robert L. Caldwell
    • Retirement in Japan, Then in the United States: Mildred (Millie) Brown
    • Choosing Variety in Work and in Retirement: LeRoy (Roy) Engelhardt
    • Caring for God's Creation: Birds, Animals, and Humans: Helen Furgerson
    • Helping Others and Overcoming Great Loss: Rhoda Iyoya
    • Does a Housewife Retire?: Dot Horcher
    • Surviving and Serving in Retirement: Ted Tajima
    • Overcoming Internment and a Handicap to Serve: Arthur Tsuneishi
    • Helping to Evangelize People, Near and Far: Christy Wilson, Jr.
    • Retirement: An Enjoyable Phase of Life: Bob and Peggy Thurman
    • Sharing Stage and Screen Skills with Twentieth-Century Adventurers: Phyllis Love “Osanna” Gooding
    • Insights Gained from These Retirees
    • Appendix: Graphs of Age Groups in the U.S.A. (1900 to 2030)
    • Glossary
    • Bibliography
    • Index

    Biography

    The Reverend J. Lawrence Driskill, STD, is a Pastor at the First Presbyterian Church, a Japanese-American church, of Altadena, Califomia, where he provides services to the Japanese-speaking parishioners.