Life After
Patrick Fina
Edward Wylie is a retired man. He enjoys playing the piano and practices everyday, so none of his hard earned progress goes to waste. One of his interests includes his passion for war history. For many years he collected books related to this topic and eventually had a whole library of nationalist war related material, including many on The Korean War, the Vietnam War, and both the World Wars. He was stationed in Germany following WWII, which was a time involving much political unrest and international tensions. Ed literally saw the world change in front of his eyes. Edward has had employment ranging through all different parts of the job market which has occupied him for more than 50 years. During that time, he worked for the United States Air Force and was stationed in Germany for two to three consecutive years. After being honorably discharged, he retired back to the states and seeked employment for the department store chain “Macy’s” and for the high tech company “Siemens”. Edward is now 83 years old and is still able to function and take care of himself without having to relocate to a retirement home. He puts much emphasis on the point that he still is able to work a 40 hour job, if he had to. Curently he enjoys the free time retirement provides him by listening to good music and watching classic movies. There is much more to a smooth retirement that involves much more than just not working anymore. According to careerbuilder.com, 60 percent of people over the age of 60 want to get a new job or volunteer. According to many psychologists, finding an alternative form of work is one way to avoid depression. Edward finds work to do every day thereby creating a new form of occupation, which according to him is not a problem. * Chronology: Edward’s life has been filled with many different forms of rewarding work experience. Since he went to college at the University of Miami in Florida, he paid his dues by utilizing the benefits given by the “G.I. Bill” by serving in the military for 2 - 3 years. He was stationed in Germany in the late 1950s, working in a very strategic hot spot in central Europe. He worked in security services and was responsible for processing information that was received from field sources (agents) forwarding this classified info on to headquarters. His job was in the intelligence group of the military with 3 to 4 other people present, processing these intelligence documents, sorting them, and sending them to the various other sections in the operations building. Later, Edward was employed by Macy’s for 13 years until he decided to try out something new and began working for a few other corporations until he found something that he enjoyed. In the 1990’s, Edward started a new full time employment position at Siemens in their medical division. He worked in the documentation center, when Edward began his career at Siemens. At this time there were only 3 other people including him stationed in that department. These employees worked in this center taking care of all the corporations documents that represented both current and downed revisions of procedures, drawings, and classified company information. As the years went by, two of Ed-
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ward’s coworkers left the company. He then became the sole proprietor of the documentation center and enjoyed it thoroughly. Some engineers would request blueprints of both current and downed revisions of certain drawing parts that they were going to submit for new revision. Very often he was in charge of printing technical service bulletins, which he sent out at the request of the manager in the logistics department, who took care of the field operations. In 2004, the company decided to start sorting all of their files and drawing digitally and no longer file them using paper copies. The man task for Edward was to sort these paper files and drawings and with that gone abolished, his services were no longer needed. Due to this dilemma brought upon by this technological advancement the corporation then had to let him go. This came as quite a surprise to Ed since he had been working at Siemens for more than 17 years. After that, he decided he would retire because he was 70 years old and it was unlikely someone would hire him at that age. One day, after I completed an interview with Ed, he showed me his war library with all the books he had collected over the years. It took several decades for him to accumulate the many shelves of historical books and memoirs in German and in English. He showed me different kinds of books, such as historical or fictional novels. Some of his books weren’t even published in the U.S. They came from Germany. He showed me some material on war history, weaponry and some patriotic war books, all generally focused around nationalism. Most of these books were from The Korean War, Vietnam War, and both WWI and WWII. He is very interested in reading and studying these. Edward consideres himself to be a enthusiast. In correlation with this he had surprisingly many books regarding the different types of weaponry and guns used during the various wars. From to his extensive past military experience one could draw that this is reason for him to show this amount of interest and passion for his war library of old books. Edward can keep a balanced retired life, because he finds things that keep him busy. One day, I decided
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to go to garage sales with my mom and Edward. He visits them most weekends to see if they have anything he likes or needs. I wanted to see what they were like and maybe get something for myself. He goes to them frequently, since he has a lot of free time on his hands. Upon arrival at each garage sale, I would often observe him looking around at things like old books or movies. After I was done with looking for things for myself, I wanted to leave, but Edward was almost never done looking around. He often likes to take his time looking through everything. He was in never in a rush to leave. Since he is retired now, he takes his time on everything, because he is never in a rush to be somewhere. Later on that day, we went to a book sale, which I thought was really boring, because I didn’t like books at my age. When we got there, I saw many people there looking at books. I did not know that that many old people went to book sales. He was very interested in just looking at all these books and taking his time to do so. He bought a few books he liked for a few dollars because most of these books were pretty cheap. I didn’t know we were going to be there so long, but since edward likes to take his time looking, I was not able to leave earlier. Edward’s secret to success in having a perfect retirement for himself is just him living like a normal person. He would rather be in his own home, cooking his own meals, making his own bed and cleaning his house when necessary. So, he is trying to live like a normal individual and not like a retired individual who is “helpless” living in a retirement home.
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Edward’s secret to success in having a perfect retirement for himself is just him living like a normal person. He would rather be in his own home, cooking his own meals, making his own bed and cleaning his house when necessary. So, he is trying to live like a normal individual and not like a retired individual who is “helpless� living in a retirement home.
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Work Cited Chamberlian, James. “Retiring minds want to know.” Monitor on Psychology. January 2014. Accessed April 21, 2017. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/01/retiring-minds.aspx.
Borzykowski, Bryan. “BBC - Capital - Can retirement kill you?” BBC News. August 14, 2013. Accessed April 21, 2017. http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20130813-the-dark-side-of-the-golden-years.
Oremus, Will. “Are People Who Retire More Likely to Die?” Slate Magazine. January 23, 2012. Accessed April 21, 2017. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/01/joe_paterno_are_people_who_retire_more_likely_to_die_.html.
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About the author Patrick Fina is a 17 year old teenager living in Los Altos, California. He goes to the Freestyle Academy, studying Digital Media. He grew up in Vienna, Austria and moved to Los Altos, California in fourth grade. He can speak German and English. His hobbies are exercising, soccer, skiing and music. His favorite clothing brands are adidas and puma. His goals are to move back to Vienna after high school and attend a University in the area.
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