A New Chapter, Later in Life
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At the end of every year, many of us resolve to make small changes in our lives. But what would it take to make a radical change–and can it still be done if you’ve reached retirement age? Today on The Sunday Story, WBUR reporter Anthony Brooks shares stories about people he’s met who’ve done just that.
To hear more of Anthony’s reporting on people who reinvented themselves late in life, check out his series "The Third Act."
This interview originally aired on January 19, 2025.
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To hear more of Anthony’s reporting on people who reinvented themselves late in life, check out his series "The Third Act."
This interview originally aired on January 19, 2025.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is a Sunday story from Up First where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. As we approach the new year, we often think about resolutions. You know, like wanting to exercise more, maybe do some Pilates, some cardio, eating better, drinking more water, saving money, all of those things. Today, we're actually going to focus on life-altering changes, like the choice to go back to school, to pursue a new calling, or pick up an old passion, and specifically making those changes late in life. Now, you've probably heard of a three-act structure in movies or plays. It's sort of like the beginning, middle, and end of a story, where the beginning is to set up, the middle is the big challenges and conflicts, and the end is the resolution. In life, we've assumed that the first act is youth and adolescents, the second is middle age, and the third act is usually retirement. But what if you choose not to rest and retire, but to launch into a whole new era? That's what today's episode is about. People who are rejecting the idea that a productive life ends at a certain age, and who see life in an older age, not as an ending, but a powerful and purposeful new beginning. Anthony Brooks is a former NPR reporter and longtime correspondent at Member Station WBUR in Boston. He's spent the last few years interviewing people about their decision to reimagine and reinvent themselves late in life. His series is called Third Act, and he joins us now to talk about what he's learned. Hi, Anthony. Hey, Aisha, nice to talk to you. Yeah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. So I'm intrigued by the origin story of this project. Did you decide to do this because you were feeling stuck or you wanted to change in your life? I think there's always a bit of that going on with me, but I think where this really started for me was about 16 years ago. I had a bit of a health scare, which thankfully I recovered from. I was also mourning the loss of my dad, and I guess you could say that I was coming to terms with this idea that there's a lot more of my life behind me than ahead of me, and I'm thinking for the first time, what do I really want to do with the time that remains? And I became intrigued with stories of people who found ways to reinvent themselves late in life in interesting and inspirational ways. And just when I was dialing into this idea, Katherine Sealy of The New York Times reported a great story about a man who began this Third Act journey in a really fascinating way. And that story really helped launch this project. Okay, so tell me about the man in that story that drew your attention. Yeah, so his name is Tom Andrew, and he worked a full career as a doctor, including 20 years as the chief medical examiner for New Hampshire, which is where I live. Tom saw it all up close, Aisha, the grim toll of car accidents, of gunshot wounds, poisonings, assaults, and suicides. You name it, he saw it. He said it was a job that gave him a particular appreciation for the fragility of life, and he remained committed to his work until the opioid crisis hit New Hampshire hard. And he told me that he watched too many kids, too many young people die, and that he didn't feel that the state was taking the epidemic seriously enough. And I tried to raise the alarms about this, that at this rate, we will see more drug deaths in a given year in New Hampshire than traffic deaths. Well, sure enough, it came to pass. What was the actual number? If it started out at like 50 a year, there were 500 drug deaths a year. There was this frustration with some folks who perfectly content not to do anything. We live for your die here. I could not reconcile that with what I was seeing and what I was feeling. And eventually, Tom just had enough. And in 2017, at the age of 61, he quit. He'd done the job for 20 years, so he retired. But I'm guessing since we're talking about him, he didn't just stop and retire in a traditional sense. No, not at all. You know, he could have followed that route. He could have retired, put his feet up, cruised into old age. But instead, he goes back to school. He's a man of faith. So he goes to seminary school to become a Methodist deacon, because what he wants to do is work with his local boy scout troop. So here's a bit of what he told me about that. I spent 20 years on the assessment end counting the cost. When I wanted to make my change, I wanted to work with young people and let them see that there's a better way than that pill or that powder or that joint that's offered to them by their erstwhile friend. So he wanted to do good and he wanted to do it at a point when it would matter. Yeah, he really, and this animates a lot of the stories that I found. He wanted to give back
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