THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603060030
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines
IN HER daughter's eyes, Elizabeth Downing was an old woman at 50.
She seemed constantly tired, napped ``all the time,'' beat the sun to bed.
``She was so inactive,'' Betty Coleman says. ``She wouldn't walk to the store. She wouldn't walk to the mailbox.
``I'd say to her, `Why don't you walk that letter down to the mailbox?' And she'd say, `Nah. I don't feel like it.'
``My mother was a very old 50-year-old lady.''
Coleman turned 50 herself a generation ago, and later this year her daughter will reach the milestone. But beyond genetics, the women have little in common with Elizabeth Downing.
At 69, Coleman works three days a week at an elementary school, takes dancing lessons, sweats through aerobics. Her daughter, Diane O'Brien, manages the Janaf Shopping Center, exercises, and says she has experienced a ``rebirth.''
These Norfolk women illuminate a phenomenon long recognized by experts on aging: Fifty does not mean what it once did.
No longer is it the gateway to one's ``golden years.''
No longer does it translate into ``over the hill.''
Americans are living longer. They are living more actively into advanced age. And as the span of their productive years lengthens, its midpoint moves - and with it, our definition of middle age.
Diane O'Brien very rarely naps.
Lost in all the ballyhoo about the baby boom's arrival at the half-century mark is the fact that 50 occurs earlier in our lives than it used to.
In 1900, the average American reaching his 50th birthday could expect to live another 21 years, three months and nine
days.
An American today has almost half again as long to live - 29.2 years - and American women have seen their life expectancy expand by a full decade.
``People live longer,'' says Robert Friedland, director of the National Academy on Aging in Washington, D.C. ``More of us are approaching the maximum possible lifespan.''
This isn't a product of improvements in the body's engineering: We are using essentially the same equipment as did our forefathers, and our physical capacity to live long lives has not much changed - the Bible, for instance, pegs life expectancy as ``three score and 10'' years.
What has changed over the centuries is that we're not so thrashed by our lives on the way to achieving old age, and consequently, more of us succeed in reaching it.
``There have always been people living into their 70s and 80s,'' says David Swain, director of Old Dominion University's Wellness Center. ``They may not have been as plentiful, but they were around. It's just that it's much more common now.''
And how. Since 1900, the percentage of Americans age 65 and older has more than tripled. At the same time, the actual number of older Americans has jumped from 3.1 million to 33.2 million - almost an 11-fold increase.
The fastest-growing segment of society is the very old - those age 85 and over, whose numbers are 28 times larger than they were at the turn of the century.
A quarter of the population is now age 50 and over. By the year 2020, more than a third will be.
``There are something like 54,000 centenarians out there, and it's projected to be 100,000 centenarians by the year 2000,'' says Tom Otwell, a spokesman for the American Association of Retired Persons. ``Willard Scott is gonna have his hands full.
``The bottom line is that we're aging as a society. And as we age as a society, 50 becomes almost the midpoint.''
Fifty is already the midpoint of our adult lives, up from about 45 at the century's turn.
Age is more than a measure of chronology, however. Those reaching 50 today have racked up, on the average, far lower mileage than their counterparts of yesteryear.
``Fifty now is not what 50 was,'' Friedland says. ``Back then you were old, earlier, for a lot of reasons. You were older because of harder labor over your lifetime. Medical care wasn't as good.
``And clearly, a large factor at the turn of the century was general public health - water, sewers, hygiene.''
Lifestyle plays a role, as well. We eat better. We exercise more. Our freewheeling years likely last longer. We have children, and take other steps toward settling down, later in life.
As Colette Dowling, author of ``Red Hot Mamas: Coming Into Our Own at 50'' observed: ``The way our parents went through their forties, fifties and sixties will have little bearing on the way we do.''
``I think it makes sense that we'll hear, 10 years from now, people say that life begins at 50,'' the AARP's Otwell says. ``I don't know where expressions like `Life begins at 40' come from, exactly, but as people live longer and better, it wouldn't be surprising to me were it pushed out.''
Years ago, a reporter told feminist author and editor Gloria Steinem that she didn't look 50.
She responded: ``This is what 50 looks like.''
As the years pass, and still more of us live longer, odds are that 50 will continue to look ever younger, to be seen as younger, and to feel younger to those reaching it.
``You know how you look at your parents, and at some point you realize they look old?'' Diane O'Brien asks. ``Well, I can remember thinking that. And my mom, when I thought that, was about 47.
``I did consider 50 to be old, at that point,'' she says. ``But now that I'm there, I definitely feel younger than I thought I would.
``I have all this wisdom behind me now that I didn't have during the first 50 years, and I'm just looking forward to applying that wisdom now, and being productive and happy.
``I wouldn't want to be 24 again,'' says O'Brien, who turns 50 in November, ``unless I knew then what I know now.''
Her mom shares O'Brien's attitude. ``We did things just the opposite from my mother,'' Betty Coleman says. ``I think just seeing her turned a light on in me, that this was not going to happen to me. That I didn't like this - that it's so much better to feel good than to sit in a chair and wish that you could feel good.''
And, just as Coleman's 50th birthday found her more youthful than her mother, O'Brien's promises to find her more youthful than Coleman.
``She takes real good care of herself,'' Coleman says.
``She's a fine young lady.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Years ago, a reporter told feminist author and editor Gloria
Steinhem[sic] that she didn't look 50. She responded: ``This is what
50 looks like.''
Color photo
``I did consider 50 to be old,'' says Diane O'Brien of Norfolk.
``But now that I'm there, I definitely feel younger than I thought I
would.''
by CNB