Men Still at Work: Professionals Over Sixty and on the Job (7 page)

What if a boy’s father is absent or deceased? Who guides him through young manhood and teaches him about a grown man’s responsibilities? When Paul Fideler’s father, Arthur, a Wall Street bond broker, died of tuberculosis (TB) in Saranac Lake, New York’s Trudeau Sanitarium at age forty-seven, Paul was ten and had few close interactions with his dad. Fearful of spreading the disease to his wife and two children, Arthur confined himself to his room as much as possible when living at home or was completely inaccessible when living in the sanitarium. Nevertheless, Paul was fortunate to rely on his loving mother and older sister and family friends for support and guidance, among them a physician and infectious diseases researcher, Emanuel Wolinsky, himself recovering from TB, and a former US ambassador to Peru and Guinea, James I. Loeb, who published the local newspaper,
The Adirondack Daily Enterprise.
Compelling history and literature teachers in high school and his Catholic faith were additional important early influences on the future professor of history and humanities, as later were generous scholars in his chosen research field of British social welfare history and historiography. Paul also benefited a great deal from his two years of active duty in the US Army as the executive officer of an artillery battery following his graduation from St. Lawrence University in 1958, having majored in history and government. Upon the completion of his military service, he undertook doctoral studies in the History of Ideas program at Brandeis University and embarked on a career in academe. Paul’s profile clearly spells out his reasons for staying on the job.

Profile: Paul A. Fideler

“At this juncture in my seventies, I continue to feel healthy, enjoy my teaching and scholarship, and am challenged by both. I am contributing to the enlightenment of my students and to the knowledge base and integrity of British studies.” So states Paul A. Fideler, professor of history and humanities at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a publishing historian of early modern and modern British social welfare. Yes, he is my septuagenarian husband who recently accepted another multiyear contract from the university. What can I say? As a champion of older men (and women) continuing to work, I can only weigh the pros and cons of retirement with him. The long and often tiring commute, the not infrequent late-night course preparations and manuscript or review deadlines, and so on. However, he has made it clear that the attraction of his work is much stronger than the pull of retirement.

He has many good reasons for his decision. He enjoys interacting with his students and is convinced that his senior status gives him an unusually positive influence on them. He remains interested and involved in shaping the curriculum, particularly the ways the humanities and social sciences are promoted and taught. His wide interdisciplinary interests also give him many opportunities to interact with and mentor younger colleagues across fields.

Paul’s participation in academic culture beyond his university continues to be another lure to keep working. He is a past president of both the New England Historical Association (NEHA) and the North East Conference on British Studies (NECBS). He is a regular book and manuscript reviewer for the prominent journals is his field and continues to present his work at local, national, and international meetings. For example, he assembled a panel on images of the poor across five centuries for the 2014 European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) that will convene in Vienna. The presenters include two historians from Australia, one from Scotland, and two from the United States. He is working on his third book,
Manchester in the Time of Cholera
, in which he explores the efforts of civil society volunteers and the government to remediate the appalling spread of poverty and disease in early Victorian Manchester by combining the emerging sciences of statistics and epidemiology with visiting the poor to encourage their edification.

Paul admits that another reason for continuing to work is financial: he enjoys earning a salary that makes our traveling possible and allows us to help our two children and five grandchildren when necessary. He also admits that he probably spends too much time on his work and claims that he is learning to make more time for family and leisure. For sure, staying fit is part of his daily routine, as are reading, enjoying music, and, in season, pruning and maintaining the superabundant shrubbery on our property. After a lifetime of road running, he has the bad knees to show for it. This one-time Northern Adirondack Water-Skiing Champion has lost some mobility and flexibility; most days he walks or rides his bike—at a moderate pace—and every morning faithfully does stretching and weight lifting.

Ever since his antiwar activism and support for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential bid in the 1960s and 1970s, a continuing interest for Paul has been current events and the probity of the media in covering the news. He and I gravitated toward Unitarianism in the late 1960s in part because ours was a “mixed marriage” (no longer the big deal it was then to our Catholic and Jewish parents), in part because our immediate family grew with the arrivals of our daughter and son, and in part for the affinity we sought with other social activists. During our more than forty-five years of participation in the First Parish Unitarian-Universalist in Framingham, we both have served on the church’s Board of Assessors, and Paul served twice as chair of the Social Concerns Council and was named an “Outstanding Parishioner.”

We were well into the interview process when Paul shared his most personal reason for continuing to work: one thing that drives him to keep going is to do what his father did not have a chance to do. When his father died after a long battle with TB, Paul was only ten. “My dad’s family life and his professional life were cut short. Even before he died, I was aware of the desperate struggle my parents were mounting in those pre-antibiotic years to find the right ‘climate cure’ for him, first in Tucson, Arizona, then Waukegan, Illinois, and finally Saranac Lake, New York. Ever since my father’s death, whenever I have faced a seemingly daunting challenge, recalling what he and my mother were facing in those years quickly puts matters in their proper perspective.”

When we return to the retirement conversation, Paul concedes that
my
well-being is a central consideration. But, since I am busy researching and writing books, he feels free to go on with his work. Like many of the older men and women I interviewed, Paul thinks “you should work if you’re feeling healthy and still enjoying it.” He sees the “boundary” between work and retirement evolving into more of a threshold or transition. Individuals are defining their own life cycles, subject to changing expectations and conditions, for example, health and the economy. “Retirement is no longer an automatic next stage toward which we march in lock step. Of course, this applies to people who are fortunate enough to have a choice in the matter.”

What if a man doesn’t know how to parent? (Sorry about using a noun as a verb, but that is the correct term.) Educator and author Allan Shedlin has dedicated his life’s work to researching and writing about parenting and developing programs to foster positive engagement between fathers and their children. He is especially grateful to two men who helped him develop his own special gift for working with children. Now seventy-one, he wouldn’t dream of retiring because he loves his work and “So much still needs to get done.”

Profile: Allan Shedlin

In the belief that “A father is not something you are, but something you do,” Allan Shedlin coined the term “daddying” in 1994 to connote where fatherhood and nurturing merge. At the time, many people told him that the term was too wimpy and that men would never speak it; however, some dozen or so years later, “daddying” began to appear (unattributed) on Hallmark cards. Allan’s friends and colleagues suggested he sue Hallmark, but he was delighted to see the word gaining wider usage. In 2003 he founded DADS Unlimited as a vehicle for strengthening men’s parenting skills. In 2008 Allan invited two colleagues to join him—a documentary filmmaker and a clinical social worker/narrative therapist—to create REEL FATHERS, an initiative that “inspires and supports men to build loving, committed relationships with their children by using film as a touchstone for reflective dialogue, by teaching key skills, and by elevating the cultural perception of fathers.”

Through his commentaries in the popular press, by 2009–10 Allan attracted the attention of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. This office invited Allan to offer the new administration suggestions on how the president could lead a fatherhood movement. After many years of researching and writing about parenting and developing programs to foster positive engagement between fathers and their children, Allan was excited about this possibility. After hearing what the White House was already planning, he offered two specific suggestions: first, raising the bar of expectations and signaling that by replacing the tired phrase of “encouraging responsible fatherhood” with something more compelling, the president would encourage fathers to reach higher. Suspecting that the administration might not embrace calling for “exuberant daddying,” he was willing to settle for “vibrant father engagement.”

His second suggestion was that the White House sponsor one of its three planned 2010 “Fatherhood Forums” in New Mexico where REEL FATHERS conducted its programs. He pointed out that the state’s demographics foretold future changes in the rest of the country and that New Mexico was chronically one of the bottom three states on almost every measure of social well-being. Allan then led a mobilization of forces in the state to create the New Mexico Alliance for Fathers and Families (NMAFF), which successfully persuaded the White House to cosponsor with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and NMAFF a Fatherhood Forum in August 2010. NMAFF’s comprehensive report to the cosponsors (the only forum to issue a report) secured participation by the White House and USDA in another Fatherhood Forum two years later. New Mexico was the only state to hold a second forum.

Using a combination of film and video, expressive arts projects, and facilitated dialogue, between 2009 and 2012 REEL FATHERS provided thirty-seven programs for New Mexico organizations directly serving fathers. Partners included Head Start centers, public schools, Big Brother/Big Sister, Gear Up, the State Corrections Department, and various parenting, youth development, violence prevention, and family services organizations.

Allan’s background includes a master’s degree in elementary and special education from Columbia University’s Teachers College and ten years of experience teaching special education and regular education classes. He went on to become an elementary school principal, the founding executive director of the National Elementary School Center, an advisor to a US Secretary of Education, an education writer, and a parenting consultant.

Two men had a particularly strong influence on Allan’s career choices and the type of man he is. Allan stayed in touch over the years with both of them until they died. One was a fifth grade teacher who, Allan realized only later, presented a different male role model from other men he knew as a kid; and the other was a psychology professor and the director of the summer camp for emotionally disturbed children where Allan, as a high school senior, had his first job working with children. The director highly praised Allan’s ability to work with severely disturbed kids. “Until I realized the gratification of helping these children and was told I had a ‘special gift,’ I thought I was predetermined to go into my father’s business after college. It was the first time I realized I actually had a choice about my life’s work.”