TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Local Retirees Are Having The Best Times Of Their Lives

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

Lou Mingacci, 82, plays matinee bingo on Wednesday in Avon Park. Mingacci has been playing for over ten years.

ADVERTISEMENT

By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: May 4, 2008

A study published last month by a University of Chicago sociologist concluded that senior citizens make for the happiest Americans, with more socially active seniors being the happiest of them.

A Highlands Today reporter went out and told several seniors and one recently-retired baby boomer about the study. Then he asked whether they were content with their lives, and what they thought of the study.

The Study

The study described a surprisingly large percentage of the elderly who find themselves content with life. And even with worsening health, it reported that they are more physically active and more socially involved than their younger counterparts, according to the Associated Press.

"Life gets better in one's perception as one ages," said study author Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist.

The University of Chicago performed more than 20,000 surveys and interviews since 1974, concluding that the happiest Americans are the oldest, and older adults are more socially active than the stereotype of the lonely senior suggests. The two go hand-in-hand: Being social can help keep away the blues.

A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches and pains and the deaths of loved ones and friends. But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, Yang said.

This is partly because older people have learned to lower their expectations and accept their achievements, said Duke University aging expert Linda George. An older person may realize "it's fine that I was a schoolteacher and not a Nobel prize winner."

George, who was not involved in the study, believes the research is important because people tend to think that "late life is far from the best stage of life, and they don't look forward to it."

Yang's findings are based on periodic face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of Americans from 1972 to 2004. About 28,000 people ages 18 to 88 took part.

Overall, about 33 percent of Americans reported being very happy at age 88, versus about 24 percent of those age 18 to their early 20s. And throughout the study years, most Americans reported being very happy or pretty happy, according to the study.

It appeared in April's American Sociological Review.

A 62-Year Marriage

Lou Mingacci casually set up his Bingo board Wednesday morning at the Avon Park Bingo hall. It was the matinee "Share Your Wealth" round, and the 81-year-old World War II veteran said he makes it every week. It's one of the few times he's away from his wife, Dottie.

They've been together 62 years, but Lou doesn't take his wife to the Bingo hall because her health doesn't permit it. Bingo has been one of Lou's favorite pastimes and he said that Dottie wanted him to keep enjoying it even without her.

"I love her to death," Lou Mingacci said.

He also recalled his time in the European Theater, before he met Dottie. He, his best friend and others in his Army squad were patrolling some prisoners when a German officer threw a grenade at them. Mingacci and his friend both ran for cover, but they were hit.

Mingacci survived. His friend didn't, and he continued his tour of duty without him until the Allied forces declared victory.

Then he remembered returning to Fort George, Md. He saw "this one girl" at the base. She was Dottie.

"Six weeks later, we were married," he said. His navy blue World War II baseball cap lifted as he started grinning. "The people on my mother's side of the family said that won't last."

He proved them wrong. Mingacci said there were no rough spots or challenges keeping his marriage together.

"Everybody has an argument, but we never had one that was real bad," he said.

He spent the next 31 years working as a letter carrier in Maryland and then near Miami, where he owned a gas station. Now, the Sebring retiree has his home, his dog, children and wife.

What keeps him happy? Again, his wife, he quickly answered.

"I'm not doing too badly for an old man," he said.

Away From The Stresses

Eleanor Van Wie's blue-collar life was not what she dreamed of having as a kid. When she first joined a plant in Naples, it was "just something that came up.

"15 years later, I was still there," she said.

Van Wie and her husband had a thing for racing swamp buggies. Rather, her husband built them and she raced them.

"When my husband had open-heart surgery, we got rid of everything," she said.

Later in life, her job as an assembly supervisor started stressing her out. For her it was like "walk(ing) around with a baseball bat saying 'you touch that, I'll kill you.'"

"I took my job too seriously, so I quit," she said.

Van Wie missed her racing days, but leaving her job was one of her happiest moments. She said she now relaxes by working on the family's 10-acre farm near the Avon Park Air Force Range. She's currently building a veterinary fence.

"I got two great kids, a husband, a roof over my head and food on my table," Van Wie said. "Financially it could be a little better, but we manage."

Greg Plank lived a similar progression. Even though he didn't find his job as a construction controller all that stressful, he simply hated Ohio's cold weather. When he retired less than two years ago, he left for Tanglewood north of Sebring.

The silver-haired 61-year-old Vietnam War vet finds himself playing some tournament or another with his neighbors several nights a week.

Reached Thursday evening, he said he had to hang up as he was playing a card game called Hand 'n Foot (he won, he said an hour later). Two nights earlier, he played a few rounds of Pétanque, a French game where he throws iron balls towards a reddish "pig" to see which team can get the closest to it.

Though he lived in Tanglewood for less than two years, he met 10 times as many people here as he did in Ohio, where he spent most of his life.

"I love Florida. That in itself is the biggest reason we came here," Plank said. "We've met so many people down here."

The Golden Years Or The Greatest Generation?

When told about the study, neither Mingacci, Van Wie nor Plank disagreed with the conclusion; they were happy, and they thought their peers were happier than the generations younger than them.

So would the younger people be in their shoes once they reach their ages?

Van Wie thought so. She was much happier when she retired, and she thought it would work out the same way for anyone else once they could stop working.

"We've been through it and now it's our time to relax and enjoy life," she said. "We're just kind of mellowing it out and enjoying life."

Mingacci and Plank didn't think it was that simple.

Mingacci thought his younger counterparts were less content because of their social stability, and he pointed to their marriages in particular.

"You don't find too many people living together for all these years," he said. "They keep getting divorced, divorced, divorced, it's ridiculous."

Plank blamed the differences on the economy, but also suggested that kids are overprotected and kept indoors too often.

"They're all pretty successful but they have debt from college," he said of his children, whose ages ranged from 32 to 39. "If you have that staring you in the face all the time, it's understandable why they're not totally happy."

Content from the Associated Press was used for this report.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT