For Seniors : Radio Commentator Relishes the Age of Enlightenment

Connie Goldman had it all: dream job as a national radio commentator, dream apartment in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, secure income. So what made her leave it all for a new career? Passion. And a mission: to produce, write and talk about positive images of aging. Eleven years ago, at the age of 53, she had no idea that her mission had anything to do with herself.

Goldman, a native of Minneapolis, was working in public radio there when someone from National Public Radio in Washington asked her to fill in as guest co-host for “All Things Considered.” It was a two-month temporary job that changed her life.

“Just when I was getting ready to go back to Minnesota, the weekend host of ‘All Things Considered’ became ill and I was asked to fill in for him. At about the same time, a friend showed me this great apartment in Georgetown--high ceilings, brick walls--well, the weekend host didn’t get well quickly. Twenty months later, NPR gave me a desk, a telephone, a tape recorder and the 1970s equivalent of technology--a typewriter,” she said.

Goldman became the arts reporter. She interviewed a lot of creative people. But the fascinating ones, she believed, were older.

“These were exceptional people,” she recalled. “They had wit and wisdom and years of experience to draw from. But the perspective of society was and still is: You’re as disposable as Kleenex, the economy doesn’t want you anymore, you’ve had your time. That’s the prevalent attitude.”

But even celebrities said things such as, “Oh, I’m too old to do this,” or “I should have done that when I was young.” And that made Goldman mad, although she didn’t know why. She interviewed young children and asked them about older people. They told her stereotypical things like “they sit around,” “they don’t smell good,” “they fall asleep when you talk with them.” It surprised Goldman that they did not connect older people with positive relationships such as with grandparents.

And that’s when her mission seized her.

“I realized there must be something to say in praise of age, something both the young and old could benefit from,” she said. She left NPR in 1983, formed a nonprofit corporation, created a production company (she was the only employee) and applied for grants to produce radio shows.

Getting money for public radio shows is tough enough. But shows about old people? It took two years before she received enough funding--she got a $7,000 seed grant from the National Endowment for the Arts--to do her first show. Since then she has produced 12 others.

The half-hour segments air on NPR. Her most recent show, which aired in December, was “The Grandparent Connection: To Love and Be Loved.” It was, she says unashamedly, a warm-fuzzy. More than a decade later, she has a new way of thinking about what’s old.

“I’m an older person now. It doesn’t mean I’m obsolete, damn it! It doesn’t mean I don’t work hard, travel, date men, go to dinner parties. I’ve had vast life experiences, raised children, been educated. If we are self-conscious and act as if being older is a country we never want to go to, if we act as if this is a terrible time of life, how can we get respect from the younger generations?” she demanded.

Reality check. There are things that diminish with age: hair, energy, health. And there are things that increase: weight, wrinkles, grayness. But after spending most of life trying to figure out who we are, the beauty of aging is that you just might find out--but you have to keep exploring and you can’t do that if you stop growing.

How do you keep growing when society wants to publish your obituary?

Goldman is not a psychologist, anthropologist, sociologist, gerontologist or advice columnist. Yet she has some ideas.

“My knowledge comes from what other people told me about their lives. I retell the stories. When I started doing this I didn’t believe it had anything to do with me. But what I didn’t realize was that I was taking early retirement. This is really my retirement career,” she said.

Goldman believes everyone should have a retirement career but it doesn’t necessarily have to be work. It’s just a plan to continue growing--and that could mean walking on the beach and meditating. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re doing nothing--there’s a bigger world inside (of you),” she insists.

Being busy is not the answer. Busy without satisfaction, Goldman says, isn’t productive. It’s just filling time. “I started all this with my eye on busy, active seniors. But this idea of busy every minute--the aerobic grandmother syndrome--is as dangerous a stereotype as the ones the kids told me. By being busy, maybe we’re missing the wisdom and satisfaction only available to older people. We can’t stay young forever, but we can stay fresh, alive and aware. We are challenged to find our own process of creativity, to discover a new way of being in our retirement years.”