Redefining Retirement: Gathering No Moss

Nineteen years ago this week, Glenn Anderson left his teaching job at Taft High School, unsure of what came next. Several friends and colleagues who had retired moved south and just sort of faded away, and at a spry 56 years old, with his mind and body still relatively intact, Glenn decided that wasn’t the life for him, and regarded the end of his teaching career not as retirement, but “leaving with a pension.”

Since then, life has been anything but quiet for Glenn. Having always been handy and enjoying working with his hands, he had a small welding and blacksmith shop that leaving teaching allowed him to expand. Married to an avid gardener and living in a house over 100 years old, there are consistently tractors, rototillers, and other appliances needing attention and maintenance, so his mechanical skills are put to good use both in and outside of his welding shop.

Not satisfied to be constrained to just one set of skills, Glenn decided to help out a friend who took over the operation of a local café by cooking breakfast for its patrons five days a week for a while. Also a lifelong musician, he has found creative release in playing banjo with multiple Dixieland bands in the area of Wilmot, WI.

Redefining Retirement: Art Helps Heal

After teaching art at Walt Disney Magnet School for more than 30 years, Anne Hollenbeck quickly sought out a new artistic outlet when she retired in 2010, and began volunteering at Lurie Children’s Hospital.

[image:551, image right]While developing arts and crafts projects for the patients at Lurie Children’s, Anne noticed that only the younger children were interested in participating. Additionally, the generous donations the hospital received primarily consisted of toys, crayons, and games that weren’t exactly enticing to the older kids and teenagers there.

Inspired, Anne teamed up with fellow retired teacher Shirley Forpe to develop an art program for hospitalized teens who are long-term in-patients, and Art Helps Heal was born.

Redefining Retirement: Going Wild

A popular answer when asking a new retiree what they plan to do with their time is “travel.” But Kathy Konopasek has taken the concept of traveling when retired to a whole new level.

[image:549, image right]After a 30-year career with CPS where she took on many roles—teacher, librarian, assistant principal, principal—Kathy was saddened at the thought of retiring and found herself in tears when signing her retirement paperwork in Winter 2016. She immediately signed up to substitute teach in order to ease the transition out of working full-time, and a winter trip to Mexico with a fellow CPS retiree certainly helped to ease the pain, too!

An avid traveler when she was in college and teaching abroad in her early career, Kathy has always been an explorer, but the time commitment required for the CPS leadership roles she eventually took on made extensive travel a bit trickier. Bitten by the travel bug once again following her Mexico getaway, Kathy decided to make her next adventure a big one, and went to South Africa and Zimbabwe for 19 days.

Redefining Retirement with Dianne Yonkers

As a school psychologist and special education administrator with 35 years of experience mostly on the West Side, Dianne Yonkers knows better than most the difficulty that life transitions can cause. She has helped countless students transition from elementary to high school and beyond, and well understood the importance of planning and organizing her post-retirement life.

[image:569, image right]A 2006 retiree, she knew that after a busy career, she wouldn’t be happy with a leisurely retirement. Instead, she has made a second career out of volunteer and community service work. She currently holds a position as a Director at the Retired Teachers Association of Chicago, volunteers at West Side high school and at her church. She is an officer in her Delta Kappa Gamma chapter and recently has become active in Exodus World Services, an organization that helps refugees make the transition from their native lands to the USA.

“Exodus works with other agencies and helps fill in the gaps in the transition period for new refugees,” she explains. “Exodus finds and furnishes apartments for refugees and provide six months’ worth of household goods. In addition, Exodus volunteers serve as a social safety net, helping refugees learn what it means to be an American. We help get their children enrolled in schools, find doctors, provide practice speaking English, and provide support and networking to help the new Americans navigate the transition to an entirely different culture. We help families understand what it really means to pursue the American Dream.”

Don’t Make Costly Mistakes: Enrolling in an Outside Plan or an Additional Plan