Seventy-six-year-old Vivian B. Snead rides a bus and the subway five days a week (weather permitting) to Johns Hopkins Hospital to volunteer her time nurturing sick babies in the newborn nursery.
Drug-addicted infants flail their arms and legs, making it difficult to treat them. Nurses swaddle them in blankets, and volunteers soothe them with their loving touch.
"Granny's here," says Snead, who has come from her home in West Baltimore. "Be good and don't cry and Granny will take you for a ride," she says, rocking in a chair and singing. Slowly, the child drifts off to sleep.
Snead may be the face of the future. Some 24 million people age 55 and over now volunteer, and those numbers are likely to rise in coming decades.
More than 75 million baby boomers are expected to retire in the next few decades, says Marc Freedman, author of "Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America," (Public Affairs Publishers, $25). Surveys indicate volunteering will be included in "the Third Third" of their lives. According to a recent national survey conducted for Civic Ventures, a nonprofit group that recruits senior volunteers, 65 percent of seniors age 50 to 75 viewed retirement as "a time to begin a new chapter in life by... starting new activities and setting new goals."
Volunteering was listed as the second most popular retirement activity, after traveling.
Baby boomers are not more socially minded than previous generations, they are just living longer, says Harris Wofford, 73, chief executive officer of the Corporation for National Service in Washington. The corporation includes the National Senior Service Corps; AmeriCorps, a kind of domestic Peace Corps; and Learn and Serve America programs for students. "Increasing longevity by 30 years was the foremost achievement of the 20th century," he says. "The challenge now is what to do with that longevity. A lot of people didn't think about retirement 50 years ago, they just kept working until they died."
With people living longer and in good health, attitudes about seniors have changed. "Instead of seeing seniors as a problem, we are thinking of them as a resource to use their talents in a way that will delight them. They want to use their talents, time and energy to make a difference," Wofford says.
Bill Schroeder, 66, of Timonium, is among them. He began volunteering for the Chesapeake Habitat for Humanity three years ago. With limited knowledge of home construction, he learned under the tutelage of a professional construction crew employed by Habitat.
