Orange County Commentary : Editorials : Working Past ‘Retirement Age’

The names Holly Lash Visel, Ferd Johnson and Carl Civic might not mean much to most people, but jot them down. They are good names to remember when you start to worry about what you’re going to do when you get “old.”

Visel is 83 and, after 62 years, still teaches voice at her Balboa Island studio because she wants to and because she believes that if you have a great deal of knowledge about anything, it’s unfair to the people you could help, and yourself, not to use it.

Johnson, 79, has been drawing the Moon Mullins comic strip for 61 years. When the work is going well at his studio in Corona del Mar, Johnson says he feels as young as he ever did.

Civic, 81, still holds down a steady job as manager of the luggage department at Robinson’s in Newport Beach. He tried to retire once, about 11 years ago, but it didn’t take. He was bored after four weeks.

Their continuing careers were outlined in recent Times stories, but they are not so much unusual as representative of many people who refuse to recognize some chronological script that calls for quitting, no matter how strongly a person feels there is much left to contribute.

Some companies, such as the Naugles fast-food chain, are beginning to recognize the value of so-called senior citizens. Naugles even tries to recruit what it terms “mature adults” or, as one ad called them, “oldies but goodies.”

Some older people continue to work for the extra money, or to fill their lives and keep them in touch with the world. Some, as H.L. Mencken once explained, “go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.” All of them seem to have the spunk that President Eisenhower displayed when he told interviewers on the day before his 75th birthday that “I’m saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.”

It’s encouraging to see that at “retirement age” and well past it, there is, for some, still a choice and the opportunity to keep going as long as they can.