When he started at Maryland State College in 1962, Daniel M. Maddox envisioned a career working with young people, preferably in physical education.
But as often happens, life got in the way and Maddox decided he needed a steady paycheck more than a college degree. So at 20, he took a job at General Motors and worked there almost 40 years.
Now that he's retired at 63, Maddox has renewed his interest in helping young people by volunteering during the school year at Tench Tilghman Elementary School as a part of Experience Corps, a Civic Ventures program that places people 55 and older in urban classrooms.
Increasingly, retirees such as Maddox find that after long, successful careers in one arena, the prospect of sitting around and doing nothing - or of spending days babysitting, golfing or finding other leisure activities - has little appeal. Instead, older adults are trying to keep busy in ways that have meaning and value.
Maddox has done so, without giving up a steady income: Experience Corps provides a stipend for the hours he spends mentoring and tutoring.
"The kids bring a lot of issues to school. You can see it in them; you can feel it in them," said Maddox, who lives in Northeast Baltimore. "If you have any love for a child, you can't just sit around and do nothing. You try to help them."
The issue will be increasingly important as the baby boom generation moves into retirement. Currently, 32 million Americans are receiving Social Security retirement benefits, and the population over 65 will reach 63 million by 2025, according to the Michigan Retirement Research Center.
Meanwhile, half of Americans age 50 to 70 still want to do work that assists others and gives them a sense of purpose, according to a 2005 survey by the MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures, a think tank that deals with older workers.
Some years ago, AARP, the nation's largest membership organization for people over the age of 50, dropped the "retired persons" from its own name, because so many of its members continued to work past traditional retirement age.
In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the number of active workers over 65 will increase by more than 80 percent and account for 6.1 percent of the total labor force, compared to just 3.6 percent in 2006.
Many now refer to their post-career years as "rewiring," rather than retiring. The forces behind that change are financial and psychological.
