Stories of “retirement” from seniors in Hampton Roads

June 02--While trying to get a ground-level feel for the experiences of some South Hampton Roads retirees, I spent time talking with a handful of them at PrimePlus, the oldest and largest of the 14 "wellness" centers for seniors in the region, on Newport Avenue in Norfolk.

Below are some vignettes that attempt to tell their stories and what "retirement" has turned out to be for them. In the months to come, I'm planning to come back to this subject occasionally.

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It's all about being with other people

"I come here to be with other people," said Marshall McCorkle, 77, who refers to PrimePlus as her "gym."

She spent 24 years as a Norfolk Public Schools teacher before retiring and considers herself financially secure.

In addition to Social Security, she collects a pension as well as some money from an optional annuity plan in which she invested through the school system.

"I was thinking of the future, of what I would need over time," she said.

"You never know what unexpected expenses you'll face once you retire," she added, citing a new roof, furnace or car as examples.

Not everyone who comes to PrimePlus is as lucky. Most of the people she's come to know are not as comfortable as she is, she said.

Divorced, with four grown children, she owns a home near Northside Middle School.

After getting some classroom experience in Venezuela, she started teaching in Norfolk in 1987 and retired in 2010.

Before her retirement, she began taking tai chi classes at PrimePlus, which she goes to five days a week.

"Now, I'm the teacher," she said, noting that it's on a volunteer basis.

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With health problems, a career can suffer

"I was too sick to work."

That's what Ken Cohen, now 66, said happened to him in 1999, after which his life took a dramatic turn.

He had spent about 40 years in the drapery business, working for small, family-owned companies in Maryland, Connecticut and, eventually, Norfolk.

At the end of the '90s, he got sick for a long time, a period that lasted for about a decade.

While he had a 401(k) retirement plan and other savings -- "I had it all," he said -- whatever money he had accumulated didn't last very long.

"I blew all of that on medical," he said.

That's what happens when you're not working and you don't have health insurance, he added.

When uninsured people are hit with medical bills, including prescription-drug costs, they pay dramatically more out of whatever they have left in their pocket compared with those who are insured, Cohen said. That's why life savings can evaporate so quickly.

Single, with no children, he now depends on Social Security, which he began to collect when he turned 62.

Three days a week he goes to PrimePlus, where he spends a lot of time in the program's wood-working shop.

When he was well enough to go back to work after illness forced him out of the labor market, he got a job at Home Depot, which he said he loved.

"I could help people -- and my hobby is home improvement," he said.

He lives in Norfolk and owns his home, on which he has a reverse mortgage to help pay the bills.

"It's not easy living on Social Security," he said.

He cited rising Medicare premiums, which are deducted from Social Security benefits and often cancel out any benefit increases, as a big part of the problem.

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Giving back

He wasn't at Woodstock, but he's of that vintage and he's got a ponytail.

William Clendenin, who will turn 69 this month, is a survivor.

He volunteers now and then in the wood-working shop at PrimePlus, a building he got to know well during his 12-year stint working with the city of Norfolk, most of it as a project manager. During the early days of his employment with the city, it was where he went to work every day.

Later, he helped Norfolk invest about $3 million worth of renovations to the facility after the city bought the property, the former Jewish Community Center, 13 years ago.

Originally from Illinois, Clendenin has always worked in construction, including a five-year stint as a project manager in Little Rock, Ark., followed by 20 years in the Tampa, Fla., area, where he was a general contractor.

In 2004, he began working for the city.

He retired two years ago.

"I've got my three-legged stool," he said, with income from savings he put away and investments he made over the years through sheer discipline, as well as Social Security and what he calls a "modest" city pension. He's also on Medicare.

"I've got a little money here and a little over there," he said.

Widowed, he has a stepdaughter. He owns his home in Norfolk, is debt-free and considers himself reasonably secure, financially.

Along with volunteering at PrimePlus, he's a member of Norfolk's Commission for Persons with Disabilities.

What continues to draw him back to the senior center is the social engagement it offers, as well as an opportunity to "give back."

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In retirement, she continues a life spent on her feet

Annie Marshall is 65, uses one crutch and works as the kitchen coordinator at PrimePlus, where she makes $8.50 an hour working for four hours, four days a week.

Though she spent nearly 25 years in a series of jobs in North Carolina, with companies that cranked out everything from underwear to chicken to carpeting for cars, Marshall has no retirement plan.

In addition to the money she makes at PrimePlus, she depends on Social Security, which she began collecting at 62, as soon as she was able to get it, along with disability payments she started getting in 2004 because of her bad knees.

She's also on Medicare now.

She's had four knee replacements -- one on her right and three on her left, because of complications from arthritis. That knee can't take any more surgery and she's going to have to live with it, Marshall said.

"I've been on my feet all of my life," she said, acknowledging that the accumulated wear-and-tear probably had a lot to do with her knee history. "All of my jobs were standing up. I can't sit down and work. I like to move around."

Married at the age of 16, she was divorced a year later. She had a daughter, who died 10 years ago, at the age of 33, of a heart attack.

Her only other child -- a 25-year-old son -- works at a restaurant in Virginia Beach, though she does not rely on him for help, preferring that he's independent and doesn't rely on her.

Marshall lives in an apartment near DePaul Hospital and her monthly bills, in addition to utilities and food, include about $800 rent.

She manages to get by.

"You sit down and you budget all of that out and everything's going to be just fine," she said.

There is little, if anything, left over to take trips or to enjoy occasional outings.

"But I don't care for that," she said. "As long as I can be comfortable."

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Pay the bills or pursue a passion

Bob Batcher will turn 65 in September.

In June 2017, he set out on a third career, as executive director of PrimePlus, a Norfolk-based nonprofit that's one of 14 "wellness" centers affiliated with Senior Services of Southeastern Virginia. It has about 700 members and serves as many as 200 seniors a day.

His take on retirement?

"What happens is you're not setting the alarm clock, so you get up later and later; you start watching TV, you get distracted," he mused. "The next thing you know the day is over with and you haven't been out of the house. Then all of a sudden, it becomes easier to stay in the house than to get out of the house."

He wanted none of that.

A Virginia Tech grad who is married, with two grown daughters and a mortgage he's scheduled to pay off at the age of 93, Batcher admits that he's spent much of his life living in the moment, not worrying a whole lot about the future.

"I poorly planned, financially," he said.

Before joining PrimePlus, he worked virtually all of four decades -- 20 years each -- at the American Red Cross and Norfolk City Hall, where he was a public-relations manager for the city.

He has pensions from each, as well as money from accompanying savings plans, though he raided them occasionally over the years.

During his 20-year stints with the Red Cross and the city, Batcher and his wife, Juliene, didn't think much about the pensions he had because they didn't have to.

"It just happened," he said.

The couple, he adds, were "living life, not planning their life."

Today, the two pensions generate about $4,000 a month. And Juliene began collecting Social Security at the age of 62.

While Batcher could consider retiring, he plans to wait to collect his Social Security benefits until he's 70.

And to keep working.

There are, when you get down to it, only two reasons for doing that: either to pay the bills and/or to pursue a passion.

In his case, it was not about the money but about being plugged in, connecting with community and helping others to do the same.

"I've got to be busy," he said. "That's why I decided to look at a third career as an alternative to retirement."

Reflecting on his previous career experience, he has no regrets.

"Who else can say that they coordinated mermaids?" he asks.

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"I refuse to let inaction keep me home"

When Lee Hall was still working at the Navy base as a travel consultant, she and her co-workers would talk about retirement now and then.

They'd tell her that because she loved to read so much, she should retire and get a part-time job in a bookstore.

"And I said, 'Hmmm? If you want me to keep working, why would I give up the money I'm making with the government to go work in a bookstore?'

"So that's why I stayed till 69."

Now 75, she retired with 35 years of government service. She's fairly comfortable, probably toward the high end in terms of financial security compared with some of her friends at PrimePlus, where she spends hours in the arts-and-crafts room and loves the social engagement.

Divorced, she has two children, five grown grandchildren and two "greats" -- great-grandchildren. She owns her home, in the Bayview section of Norfolk, and says her three-legged retirement stool made up of Social Security, a government pension and savings from a 401(k)-like program is paying off, more or less.

And, of course, she's on Medicare, too.

"All of my needs are met, and I have discretionary money I can, you know, play with -- 'play money' I call it," she said.

Her only regret is that she didn't save more, taking advantage of the government's offer to match up to a certain percentage of what workers set aside in the 401(k)-type retirement plan -- the "Thrift Savings Plan," as it's known -- made available to them.

While having had access to that kind of plan was great, "nobody ever said it's a third of your retirement," she said.

She put some money into the fund but didn't realize that she was, in effect, leaving money on the table by not participating more.

"I could have done a lot better," she said.

Hall doesn't look to PrimePlus for anything more than companionship and social interaction.

"That's the biggest draw," she said, adding that she's saddened sometimes by how other people her age spend their days.

"I've got a couple of friends that are retired and just sit home," she said. "And they are aging before your eyes. You know, I have one that just doesn't want to get out of the recliner."

She's taken a stand that way: "I refuse to let inaction keep me home."

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"Basically, you didn't think about retirement"

Back in the day, Tom Hewitt went to World Series games at Yankee Stadium for $3 to $5 a ticket.

"We'd sit in the bleachers," he said.

That was at a time when people didn't have 401(k)s, he said.

Today, the ex-New Yorker is 86 and the unofficial ping-pong expert at PrimePlus, where he gives lessons.

"My ping-pong got better when I got here," he said.

Hewitt spent 27 years working in the maintenance department at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York, taking care of subway cars, buses and police systems, among other things. Before that, he spent 13 years selling electronics parts for a radio business in New York.

Ask him for his cell number -- an old flip phone he doesn't use very much -- and he pulls out a small, crinkled address book that looks as though it could have been carried by a soldier in the Civil War.

After a minute or so of looking for his number, sifting through tiny pages streaked with assorted lead markings and ink blots -- he finds it, cautioning not to call him much before 9 p.m.

Because he spent much of his working life on the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift, he remains a night owl.

Hewitt is married, with three daughters, 11 grandkids and two "greats," he said.

In addition to the pension he gets from the MTA, his wife gets a pension, too, from New York Hospital, and they both get Social Security.

He considers their financial situation to be about average -- better than some of the other regulars at PrimePlus -- but he says they didn't save enough.

His wife's name is Omega: "It means the end," she said, laughing.

The Hewitts pay about $900 a month in rent and $600 in utilities, which doesn't leave a lot left over, she added.

"Basically, you didn't think about retirement, what you were going to do, where you were going to go," Tom said. "You had your family and your family was your main responsibility. You were caring for your daughters and seeing that you could provide for them."

Hewitt gets around with the help of a walker -- he survived a stroke that affected the left side of his brain.

But he's still agile and healthy enough to slaughter challengers at the ping-pong table.

Among the secrets to his success: "You don't have to use the slam shot all the time."

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