Retirees Go Back To Work Trend Expected To Accelerate As Baby Boomers Grow Older

Twenty years ago, the majority of Americans viewed retirement as an end to the tedium and daily pressures of a 9-to-5 job or high-powered career. But in the ‘90s, more and more men and women age 55 and older are choosing to work after “retirement.”

Many people today in their mid-50s to late-70s “retire and become miserable,” says Robert Hudson, a professor of social policy at Boston University who studies aging. “So, we are also seeing a shift in which some are returning to the work force.”

Franklin Wyman Jr. and his associates at O’Conor, Wright Wyman, a consulting firm in downtown Boston, are all members of this group.

Wyman was hardly prepared when, in 1983, he sold Bailey’s of Boston, the city’s oldest ice cream and refreshment shop, and then retired after helping the firm’s new buyer make the transition to owner.

Wyman was 62: still young enough to miss the daily demands of the restaurant chain he had grown to love, yet old enough to be branded unemployable.

“I played golf and tennis, read books and even took a trip with my wife,” recalls Wyman, now 76. “But it wasn’t enough. I felt as if I had lost one of my children. I was going through the emotions of changing a career before starting another. It was a horrible experience. It was as though I was having a nervous breakdown.”

So, Wyman started looking for work. Over the next six months, he had 102 interviews and no job offers.

Then, his luck changed. A Boston consultant, 70-year-old Charles O’Conor, hired Wyman to assist in handling mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. When O’Conor died a year later, Wyman and an associate, John Wright, bought the firm.

After purchasing the consultancy, Wright and Wyman did what many U.S. companies shy away from: They sought out older executives, down-sized managers, and former business owners age 55 and up, after noticing that many of their corporate clients seemed to equate expertise with wrinkles and gray hair. Today, six of the consultancy’s eight associates are older executives and, for each, the company is a second career.

In the future, labor specialists say, firms made up of older workers will likely grow more common.

A December 1996 report by the National Retired Teachers Association states that while the proportion of U.S. workers who are 65 and up is still small - only 3.8 million of the nation’s 125 million-member work force - their numbers have grown 31 percent since 1985. And, specialists say, the trend is likely to increase as baby boomers age.

Said Joseph Quinn, an economist at Boston College who studies retirement patterns: “What we are now seeing is that the actual labor force participation rates of older men and women are now above the long-term trend that existed right up to the mid-1980s, when people were retiring earlier and earlier.

“Unambiguously, the early retirement trend in America has come to a halt. People are definitely working longer than we would have assumed earlier.”

Take William A. Whittemore, for example. Whittemore was 64 when he was hired at O’Conor, Wright Wyman four years ago. Whittemore, a merger and acquisition specialist, said he joined the company after his partner retired.

“We’re especially interested in older people who are still hungry, people who want to make a lot of money, and are willing to roll up their sleeves,” said Wright, 57. “These people bring a network of contacts and a sense of experience that is well-suited for dealing with potential corporate clients who have owned and run a business for many, many years.

Seated in an office at 211 Congress St., Wyman and Wright acknowledged that the firm has had to turn down job applicants. One, a former chief executive in his 60s, wanted a position that would allow him to take two months off each summer to play golf.

For the most part, Wright and Wyman’s philosophy appears to be paying off. In the 12 years since they took over, sales have increased to $2 million from $300,000. And the number of associates has grown to eight from four.

Among the company’s transactions: The 1997 acquisition of Mattison Machine Co. in Rockford, Ill., by Devlieg-Bullard Inc., a publicly traded machine tool manufacturing company in Westport, Conn., and the sale of White-Out Inc., the correction fluid company, to Connecticut-based Bic Corp., the pen manufacturer.

“If this opportunity to work with this firm had not come along, I would have probably … would have gone to pieces. After so many years of doing something I enjoyed, I wasn’t ready to stop.”