Yes, I took my world trip to mark my 75th birthday, so you can safely call me a senior citizen. I am proud of this privileged status, of course. How good it is to be able to do what I want when I want to. I hope you'll have this good luck someday, if you're not yet a senior.
I'm a New Englander. I was born in Rhode Island, spent my working years in Massachusetts, and now live in Connecticut. It's a beautiful corner of the world. Now in the winter I escape the cold and the snow by heading for southern California.
My parents were immigrants from Quebec, and French was my first language, learned on the laps of my my mother and father and at parochial school. I spent all my years until retirement there and in adjoining Massachusetts and Connecticut.
I trained to be a journalist. After college in Worcester, Mass. (more about this in a minute), I knew I wanted to be a newspaperman (that was the word then) and felt I should get to know more about what makes the world tick. I felt such training would be important. I went to Brown University to study economics and political science. It was convenient because just half an hour from home. Then I went on to Boston University. That was a two-hour commute by train five days a week. That ride with all its regulars was always a pleasant part of my day.
I enjoyed B.U. much more than Brown. I felt right at home there -- all the professors were or had been working journalists -- and I had fun getting through the program and leaving with a master's degree. I worked on a couple of weekly newspapers and then switched to a mid-size daily, the Worcester Telegram back in Worcester.
I knew the city, of course. An unusual city. You will be surprised, I know, that it's the second largest city in New England, though by just a hair. It's lesser known than its runners-up, Providence and Hartford, because these, of course, are capital cities. But Worcester was and is a powerhouse. It is a big industrial city and the home to some big companies, and an impressive educational center, with 10 colleges and universities within the city or just outside.
First, a bit about Assumption College. It was an ethnic school, and Catholic, founded in 1904 by priests from France. They had chosen Worcester to take up the work of educating the sons of French-Canadian families like me. New England has a substantial population of Quebecois, who came south across the border in search of a better life. The typical immigrant story.
Assumption was an eight-year school, extending through high school and college. Half the courses were taught in English and half in French. Ever hear of a school like that? I wasn't much interested in French then, but so grateful today for all that emphasis back then.
We graduated with a B.A. degree. We went to Assumption to become a priest, a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure. Well, that was the joke back then. Assumption had very few failures. Its grads went on to do well in numerous fields, though the preponderance targeted the priesthood, medicine, or the law. I believe I was only the second to jump into journalism. I heard of a predecessor but never learned much about him.
That interest developed when I editor of our minuscule school newspaper, the Greyhound. It was very tiny. Just eight pages published erratically. Well, the school was tiny. There were only 33 of us in our graduating class! Maybe we were 37.
Once out in the real world, I started as a reporter and then became a bureau chief, in charge of news gathering in an area of nearby towns. Then I became a feature writer, on the paper’s Sunday magazine. I loved that most of all. The best job of all. I wrote one major feature a week, and I could choose it most of the time. Usually a personality piece, about a scientist or a beauty queen or someone else people would be fascinated to read about. I also traveled afield. To Hyannisport on Cape Cod to report on how the folks there felt about having the Kennedys summering there and attracting the hordes of tourists. To Block Island off Rhode Island for a story about its evolution as it prepared for its 350th anniversary. To Greenwich Village in Manhattan for a profile of a young Worcester woman launching a play there.
I also had some editing chores, tweaking free-lance contributions for our magazine and doing copy-editing. Then I became editor of the magazine. I loved that also, so stimulating. The creative challenge, the management responsibility, and the interesting people I worked with, and the many I chose to feature in our pages. That promotion also put me on the executive payroll. No objection to that. The basic difference was that suddenly I was being paid once a month in advance rather than every week at its close. I came to realize that was because it made it more difficult to leave with short notice.
On the side I began writing a column, "On Camps and Camping". Family camping was becoming a big thing. People had a bit more time and money. Tents and gear were becoming better. There was a newfangled thing called a tent trailer, and more people were buying alumni-clad and fully-convenienced travel trailer (with a bathroom just like the one at home, though smaller). And private campgrounds were springing up to provide a choice beyond the state parks. I found all that out when I began camping with my young family. We went camping as often as we could in the short warm season and I wrote that column for 10 years without missing a Sunday. I’m proud of that. Once I wrote it from my hospital bed after a gall bladder operation. Did vacation camping all those years. A lot of fun for me and my family.
I was married by then. I had married Pauline, my college sweetheart. We had built a home in nearby Auburn. We worked hard, I at the newspaper and she as a teacher. And we had started a family. Three wonderful children came along, Arthur and then Monique and then Mark. All went well for many years, but then, sad to tell you, after two decades the marriage fizzled. I got caught in the spin of a classic mid-life crisis, I speculate. Pauline was and is a very fine person. I am pleased to say that we have maintained a cordial relationship.
After a dozen years on the newspaper, I was offered a job as public relations director at my old school, Assumption. I made the move because it paid better, offered more time off and other perks, and I was intrigued by PR. I had met many public relations people who came to the paper in the course of their work, and I saw that it was important work and interesting in its own right.
I loved Assumption, though it was losing its original mandate and opening its doors to one and all – an inevitable evolution in our pluralistic and democratic society. In fact, I had been teaching evening courses there on the side. I felt right at home at Assumption. I knew many of the priests and understood its history and traditions and strengths. I edited the quarterly magazine, designed and wrote pamphlets and brochures and reports, and attended to media relations, luring reporters to come write stories and sending news releases to them. Assumption was growing…changing…opening its doors wider…launching graduate programs...going coed!
So exciting. I began learning a new craft, “institutional development.” That’s a fancy euphemism, as all euphemisms are, for fund-raising mostly. Enormously important to all non-profits. I started getting good at it. I had a title change to director of public affairs, which reflected my widening responsibilities. And the money was better. Journalism is a modest-paying profession, sad to say. The poorest of the professions, some say, and it hurts to say so. Because it's so much fun, I believe. And is unlicensed, by the deliberate choice of journalists. The only profession not licensed. Whoever would do the licensing would have the power to deny someone admission, and that could happen for reasons other than a lack of credentials. Journalists are concerned about the implications of that. We all know how often the news deals with sensitive subjects which some people would do anything not to see reported.
So with no licensing, it's easy to call yourself a journalist. There's always a large pool of candidates. We know what happens when there's a large supply and a lesser demand. By-lines are good for the ego but don't go far in helping you make your mortgage payments. Shameful that journalism doesn't pay better for the rank and file, especially when you reflect on how important journalism is and what talents it requires to do it well. I’ll drop this right now, though I could go on and on.
I left Assumption after four and a half years. A fine place but I wanted to do my own thing. Which was running a PR shop of my own. I did that, starting alone at home, and then built it up. I developed a full slate of clients. They were hospitals and schools and other non-profits as well as a few for-profits, such as an up-and-coming insurance agency. They were all places which did not have a formal public relations program. Typically I would launch their program on a part-time basis. In time they would see that it worked well and was worth doing and they would develop an office of their own. Then they would send me a letter thanking me for my services and wishing me well. That was the typical cycle.
I developed a small staff – we were five at the end – and things went on fairly well. I quickly learned that running a small business meant solving one problem after another. Some of my clients were slow in paying (so what else is new) and I had to tread carefully. I didn’t want to win the battle (by insisting on payment right now) and lose the war (by being told my services were no longer needed). I ran the business for 16 years.
During those years I developed a second business on the side, in real estate. I bought a small apartment house, then another and another, managing them as income properties. I bought an old building and fixed it up as a condominium and sold the units. I remodeled a couple of other buildings. Stimulating and exciting work. Property-management isn't easy but I was happy to be doing it. No business that I know of is easy. Running any business successfully is a challenge. It's fun during the honeymoon stage, when everything is new and you can't wait to get to work in the morning. What you find out fast is that staying in business and making the business prosper means solving one problem after another. Sixteen years at the helm of my public relations business was enough. I looked forward to a relaxed retirement. I found a buyer a year after turning 60. And gradually I sold the income properties, though I still have one.
So I retired, but not really. All the unaccustomed leisure quickly palled and I looked for stimulus. What happened is that I went to an Episcopal conference center in nearby Connecticut whose main program was weekend retreats. But not for a weekend conference. I am not an Episcopalian, though I admire and like Episcopalians greatly. I went to attend a week-long educational and recreational summer program for seniors. I was barely a senior then but was welcomed warmly.
The center was large and ran nine different programs. A small one was run by a young priest. Its name was Vacation Lodge. It featured informal courses in the morning, then in the afternoon you'd go for a swim in the beautiful tree-lined lake at the foot of the hill. Or take out a canoe or a Sunfish sailboat. Or hike one of the several trails through the surrounding forest.
The meals and the accommodations were quite plain but it was so interesting to meet the other guests. Active people. We'd get to know one another and have nice talks. After dinner there would be a simple but surprisingly satisfying chapel service, not compulsory, and afterward people would assemble for square dancing or a talk by somebody, and on Friday evening, the final evening, everyone would gather for a farewell party.
I loved the program. I met and was impressed by the director. And I liked the young priest who led our summer program. To my surprise I found myself working there. The young priest told me he was leaving to take further studies. Back home I found myself bored. I got an idea. I called the director and asked if the young priest had left. Soon, he said. I asked for the job. He was taken aback and explained that he recruited a young priest or a seminarian to handle it. I was neither. But I was cheap. I'd be a volunteer...just room and board. "Well, let's give it a try," he said.
A wonderful experience. In the morning I and another volunteer taught informal courses. One which I taught was Pencil Portraiture, a hobby of mine. A couple of times I taught Canoeing, another interest.
Every afternoon after classes, I'd put on my skipper's cap with the gold braid and become captain of our Love Boat. It - excuse me, she -was just a crude 16-footer. A platform bolted onto catamaran hulls. She was powered by two tiny trolling motors, electric, which at full power would get us up to two miles an hour if we weren't fighting a wind. I'd load a dozen people on board, mostly ladies. They would sit facing one another on long benches along the port and starboard sides. We'd glide up and down the lovely lake, singing old favorites, enjoying the sunshine the breeze, and watching the summer-camp kids frolicking in the water as we cruised by their part of the lake.
Now the further surprise for me: the center also had an Elderhostel program, very successful, one of the biggest in New England, with seniors arriving every Sunday for five or six-day programs, depending on the season. I became the director of that program, which ran virtually every week for 26 weeks, from spring into autumn. Such interesting work. I was the host for the week, presiding at opening night, at all the meals, and at other functions. I developed new courses and recruited teachers. I took care of any problems, such as taking a lady with chest pain to a hospital in the night, or an old man whose aggressive flirting was deemed offensive. And I was having fun myself. I went swimming every afternoon, canoed or rowed often, walked the trails in my off time, made many new friends. And now I was getting paid a small salary. And in my winters off, I traveled a lot.
I had a wonderful little VW Westfalia. That's the small camper. I took a trip down along the Ohio River to the Mississippi, and the Mississippi to New Orleans. Alone. I made a four-week trip through Mexico, and a seven-week one there the following year. All the way down to Acapulco, and across the mountains through Guadalajara and the other colonial cities to the Gulf of Mexico, then up to Texas and home. Another year I made a complete circle of the United States. Again, all alone. And I was writing again. I wrote many articles for my old paper, the Sunday Telegram, in Worcester. I was having a grand retirement.
When I started at the center, I thought it would be for just a year, maybe two. I remained for eight years, till I approached 70. I felt it was time to quit, if I was going to have a true retirement. I was a wonderful chapter in my life.
Oh, two other things. It's in my third year there that I met milady Annabelle. She had come all the way from California for an Elderhostel week. It was her first Elderhostel and of course she had doubts. She had chosen our place because her son Jim, a medical doctor, lived nearby. If she didn't like it, she'd call Jim and ask him to pick her up. We met when I was looking for someone to play ping pong with. We've been together ever since.
Annabelle had been a travel agent. We took a trip to Europe. We got the idea of organizing groups of seniors and accompanying them on package tours through Europe. We called our little business "Off We Go with John and Annabelle." We did well, taking groups to various countries. Lots of fun. But then came the enormous shock of 9 /11. That put an end to our little enterprise. People didn't want to go abroad. And certificates of deposit, so important to so many seniors, were paying much lower rates of interest. Anyway, it was time for us to quit. We remain in touch with some of our old friends.
One other thing. Shortly after I started at the Episcopal center, I began writing feature stories for the Main Street News, a nice little weekly serving that area. I was doing again the work that I had done as a young man. My stories were all straight-forward pieces about good people doing interesting things. Nothing controversial. Just wholesome and interesting stories which some felt inspiring. A man who spends three years rebuilding a classic sailboat. A [popular woman minister who longs for a child and finally goes to China to adopt a little girl. A black librarian who discovers she is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson. A man in my town who is a regular contributor to National Geographic magazine. I've written scores of such stories. I have enjoyed writing just about each and every one.
A couple of years ago, I started an occasional column, "Senior Moments." No, it's not about losing my glasses and finally finding them...perched on my nose. I picked it as a playful title. I've been able to vent on a number of subjects, and people have enjoyed it, or so they tell me. It ran a prize two years a row in the annual contests of the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists. When I got on the plane for Tokyo as the first stop on my global trip, the column began the natural home for my regular reports back.
Also unexpected was how I got to enjoy this corner of Connecticut. We call it the Connecticut Estuary. It's where the unusually beautiful Connecticut River slides into Long Island Sound, which an arm of the Atlantic, of course. Unusually beautiful because it is still natural -- not lined by the petroleum tanks and warehouses and industries which are usual along big waterways. This happened because the Connecticut is too shallow for deep-draft ships.
It is a quiet area of small and attractive towns and villages. I became familiar with it through my work. Every week I led our Elderhostelers on a tour of the area, which they loved. And my newspaper interviews led me to sections I never would have gotten to explore otherwise, often beautiful and interesting. I felt at home here. I threw out an anchor and bought a condo apartment in what used to be an old piano factory, would you believe? A townhouse, really. It's quiet and charming, with a view of the peaceful grounds, and it's only a 10-minute walk from the center of our village. How lucky I have been.
Annabelle has a beautiful condo of her own in her home state of California, in the beautiful coastal city of Newport Beach, south of Los Angeles. So we go back and forth in spring and fall, enjoying our seasons on both coasts.
Life has been hectic lately...my months of traveling around the world and sending back detailed newspaper accounts, the many more months of writing my book and publishing it, and now the new challenge of bringing it to an appreciative audience. All while catching up with the many demands of busy everyday life. Not complaining. All of it has been of my choosing and doing.
As I say on page 1 of my book, "If you're not making your life an adventure, you're short-changing yourself." I truly believe that. And practice it.
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