Retired Seniors Draw on Years of Experience to Offer Business Advice : Training: The volunteer corps offers one-on-one counseling to people who are novices in business or need help to advance.

WASHINGTON — In an age of multibillion-dollar buyouts and mergers, an unassuming army of 13,000 is teaching Americans to think small.

Members of the volunteer Senior Corps of Retired Executives draw on decades of business experience as they offer free, one-on-one counseling to people who are just getting started in small business or who need help moving ahead.

“Since we have attained hard-won skills in our business lives, this is the best way we can volunteer,” said Ann Oxley, a SCORE member from Ft. Wayne, Ind., who volunteered for a year as the group’s marketing director here.

“It’s refreshing to see that you can use what you learned from all the bumps and slashes you got going through the business jungle.”

SCORE, sponsored by the Small Business Administration, has 13,000 active members, 80% retirees and 20% active business people. Those still in business generally help put on workshops that SCORE offers its clients for a small fee. With more than 750 chapters and satellite groups nationwide, SCORE has served more than 3 million people over the past 25 years.

Just recently, SCORE and the SBA sent out a notice seeking information on retirees with language skills that might be useful as Eastern European nations open to the West. Volunteers may be asked to help translate publications or speak to foreign delegations.

John Daniels, executive director and one of only seven full-time paid employees, said SCORE’s impact is hard to measure in dollars and cents, but success stories abound.

In Hostetter, Pa., SCORE counselor Lou Sabers helped the struggling volunteer fire department cut its loan payments in half by obtaining a special 2% emergency loan from the state. “They told us they were on the brink of bankruptcy,” Sabers said.

In Independence, Mo., Norman Westheimer, a 78-year-old former vice president of the former GEM Corp., helped Brenda Louderback revamp her ad strategy for Diessl Jewelers and analyze her profit-and-loss statements. “I only wish I had studied harder and followed more closely the advice and input that was so generously offered,” Louderback said.

In San Diego, 76-year-old David Gilbert--with 30 years in the import-export business--helped brothers Jim and Joseph Hadzicki turn their prototype giant kite into Revolution Kites, which racked up $500,000 in sales its first year. “It was nice to have somebody who had been through this kind of stuff before who could recommend the proper steps,” said Jim Hadzicki.

Other less-evident successes are found in the ranks of people who decide not to go into business or to postpone it after SCORE members lay out the demands of running a small business and the potential pitfalls.

A survey of SCORE clients in the Midwest found that 27% had canceled or delayed plans to go into business after contacting the organization, in some cases preserving savings that otherwise might have been lost to failure.

“We have people who think about taking their retirement money and opening up a pizza parlor right across the street from a Pizza Hut,” Daniels said.

“We have prevented many, many casualties, which is good for the American economy as well as for the individual ego. It’s crushing to fail,” Oxley said.