Old Men Who Kept Going
I see no reason to retire. I agree with Ray Charles. He was interviewed by a young reporter. "Do you plan to retire?" the man asked. Charles answered with a question: "And do what?"
Of all the old men in my field who kept going, the master was Jacques Barzun. In 2000, Harper/Collins published his magnum opus: From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life: 1500 to the Present. It is 840 pages, plus a 49-page index. It is coherent. It is comprehensive. It is filled with unique insights. He was 92 when it was published. He died a few weeks before he turned 104.
His first book was 1927 Samplings and Chronicles: Being the Continuation of the Philolexian Society History, with Literary Selections From 1912 to 1927 (editor). Then came The French Race: Theories of Its Origins and Their Social and Political Implications (1932), Race: A Study in Modern Superstition (1937), and Of Human Freedom, (1939). Then came the book that established his reputation: Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (1941). That was 59 years before From Dawn to Decadence.
R. H. Coase won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1991. He wrote his first major article, "The Nature of the Firm," in 1937. He co-authored his final book at the age of 101: How China Became Capitalist (2012). He died in 2013.
Ludwig von Mises retired from teaching in 1966. He was 85 years old.
F. A. Hayek finished the manuscript for The Fatal Conceit when he was 86. I interviewed him that summer: 1985.
Peter Drucker was known as the father of modern management theory. His first book was The End of Economic Man (1939). He died at the age of 95 in 2005. His final book was The Five Most Important Questions (2008).
Chick Hearn was the greatest basketball sportscaster ever. He was the voice of the Lakers. Before that, he had been the voice of the University of Southern California's basketball team. He spoke so fast that people in the Lakers' high seats would bring portable radios to hear Hearn tell them the significance of what they were seeing. He coined the phrases, "slam dunk," "no harm--no foul," and "faked him into the popcorn machine." He died at the age of 85. In 2002, I wrote this:
From 1965 to 2001, Hearn broadcast 3,338 games in a row. It took a heart attack to stop him, briefly. He came back for another year of broadcasting. Think about that. He was 85 when he died. So, he never missed a day on the job from age 49 to age 84. He had intended to retire after one more season. He slipped, fell, and injured his head. That's not a bad way to go.
Vin Scully of the L. A. Dodgers beat him. He started announcing for the Dodgers in 1950. He retired in 2016 at the age of 88.
Stan Chambers started out as a reporter for KTLA TV in 1947, when the total number of TV sets in Los Angeles was about 300. In 2005, I wrote about him here.
There is something emotionally comforting about his career. We rarely see stability like this. We do not see a man hone his skills, doing the same job, decade after decade. TV celebrities come and go. Tom Brokaw was a TV anchorman in Los Angeles in 1977. He is now retired. Stan Chambers was on-screen three decades before Brokaw. He is still on-screen.He outlasted Huntley and Brinkley. He outlasted Walter Cronkite and Cronkite's replacement. He outlasted everyone.
He retired on his 87th birthday 2010. He died at 91 in 2015.
I see no reason to quit doing whatever it is you do well until you have something better to do. But what might that be?
The longer you keep at it, the more likely your legacy will compound and therefore survive. Not many men make their major contribution at age 92, but it can be done. Barzun did it.
If you are in a field in which there is a possibility of leaving a legacy 25 years after normal retirement age, why retire?