Never Say Never

Some alums who are retiring from their careers admit it has nothing to do with resting on their laurels. They have more to do, more to give, and they are asking, "What's Next?" 

by ROBERT L. STRAUSS, MBA/MA ’84

WHEN PHIL TRAPP RETIRED as president of TRW Financial Systems, he promised himself he would never again work as a chief executive. The hours were too long. The work too stressful. Traveling all over the world from his base in Virginia, he missed seeing his grandchildren, who were growing up in the Bay Area. After more than 30 years of work, Trapp, SEP ’73, had enough “go to hell” money to walk away forever. Yet it took an agonizing case of shingles for him to slow down and assess his life.

“I was hurting so bad I could hardly move,” Trapp recalls. “I started thinking that what’s important to me is family, friends, and community, and I realized I was living life backward from how I wanted to live.” Trapp left TRW in 1998 and moved back to the Bay Area. He now lives 20 minutes from his grandchildren.

But retirement in the old-fashioned sense of kicking back and watching the minutes tick by on a gold watch from the company store wasn’t in Trapp’s blood. To stay intellectually engaged, he spent a couple of years consulting. And when one of his clients, a third- generation knowledge navigation company called ZNOW, asked him to become CEO, Trapp quickly forgot his earlier pledge. Within weeks, he was working 80 hours a week as the start-up firm’s CEO, CFO, and head of sales and marketing.

Not many years ago, “retirement” was understood to be the well-deserved reward at the end of a long rainbow of work. Today, the concept of retirement no longer implies a uniform path into old age and may be an “antiquated notion,” Stanford psychology professor Laura Carstensen, an expert on adult development stages, said at a recent campus conference. Other panelists agreed that with the potential of so many years remaining after the age of 65, policies should encourage a more flexible system of work and breaks. For some GSB alums who are making their own flexibility, retirement has nothing to do with retiring at all. 

Mike Gibson, MBA '72, in Alamoso, CO Photograph by Doug Merriam

Take, for example, Mike Gibson. After a 30-year career in natural resource development, Gibson, MBA ’72, retired, not knowing what he was going to do other than catch up on some reading. But days after he retired from Colowyo Coal Company in northwest Colorado, he was told that The Nature Conservancy needed a director of its San Luis Valley Program, which includes operation of the Medano-Zapata Ranch, a 100,000-acre parcel that hosts 1,200 bison, ancient Paleo-Indian sites, and a number of rare and endemic species. Years earlier, Gibson had been impressed by The Nature Conservancy when he was working for Kerr-McGee. He says he almost told them he’d do the San Luis job for free but is glad he didn’t, because his modest salary gives him “a greater sense of commitment” and prevents him from going skiing instead of to the office.

Some might argue that the view from Gibson’s “retirement” executive office window is better than that from any CEO’s. He looks out over a spectacular western landscape that includes three 14,000-foot peaks. Then it’s back to the business of conserving natural diversity, which includes monitoring the fluctuations in the price of hay and bison.

Jim Farrin, MBA ’60, claims to have flunked retirement. Like Phil Trapp, he retired from a high-level position (president of the international division of Mennen) only to find himself drawn back by consulting gigs and start-up opportunities. While recognizing that he is a “prototype workaholic in denial” and that he had been “going like a threshing machine” to put his five children (and wife) through college and grad school, Farrin has no interest in slowing down. He’s now chief operating officer of WorldWater, a small startup that manufactures and distributes proprietary, solar-powered water systems in developing countries.

James Farrin, MBA '60, in New York, NY Photograph by Beth Perkins

More unusual than his employment is Farrin’s work as a stand-up comedian. “I have this theory that you should challenge your fears when you’re in your sixties,” Farrin, 65, says. Tired of hearing his kids say that he had a terrible sense of humor, he took a comedy class. The final exam required doing a routine in a club. After several successful appearances, Farrin was about to do his routine again when he learned that he had colon cancer. Three days before his surgery, he was on stage performing—before a really tough crowd. “It was terrible,” he remembers. “No one was laughing.” But Farrin hasn’t let that crowd or the cancer slow him down. As he left the hospital, he told his doctor that he intended to run the New York Marathon. A year and a half later, he did.

“Sometimes I wish I could be reincarnated and rest under a tree,” Farrin says. “But I think that’s not my style. I won’t retire until I’m no longer on this Earth. Joy for me is doing a lot of projects.” Farrin is now thinking about taking up cycling or pursuing a PhD in organizational design. “There’s no reason to slow down,” he says. “You should speed up, because life is linear.”

That’s a philosophy John Wilen, MBA ’84, rejects. For years he watched his father commute four hours a day to demanding executive jobs. Wilen was determined not to follow those footsteps. So as a 20-year-old fresh out of Dartmouth College, he planned to retire by 40. He didn’t know how he would do it, he only knew he would. “Give a guy who has spent his whole career meeting deadlines 20 years to do anything, and the odds are pretty good for success,” Wilen says. In 1998, at age 38, Wilen retired, two years ahead of plan.

To achieve his goal, Wilen “compressed time” by putting in long hours, accelerating his career path whenever the right opportunity presented itself, and making sure that each of his investment decisions served his long-range goal. In each of the four years before he retired, Wilen, by then a senior vice president with PepsiCo, deferred all his salary and bonus, a plan that fortuitously coincided with the explosion of the stock market. “There was a lot of compounding,” Wilen says. An avid golfer, he now lives on the grounds of his Dallas area country club, where he plays at least two times a week.

“After racing—better, faster than everybody else—to stop was tough,” Wilen says. Whenever he saw former colleagues, such as Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, mentioned in the press, he found himself wondering if he, too, might not have been able to reach the pinnacle of corporate success. But he didn’t wonder long. He and his wife (also retired) now focus their energies on their 2-year-old son, Dustin. “I know freedom is the best perk there is,” Wilen says.

During his career, Wilen accumulated an astonishing 5 million frequent flyer miles while working 70-hour weeks. Now, he’s able to catch up with friends. “I was never there,” he admits. Would he go back? “To work?” he asks incredulously. “There are so many things I’d rather do. It was absolutely beautiful today. I was on the golf course [where he shot a 37 on the back nine] thinking, ‘Everybody wishes they were here.’”

At about the same age that John Wilen began his retirement endgame, Sue Lodgen, MBA ’75, was getting ready to resume her working career. Lodgen had worked as a teacher, researcher, and editor before entering the Business School. While at Stanford, she took courses across the street at the Food Research Institute, an experience that focused her business career on agribusiness.

After six years in finance with two large agribusiness concerns, Lodgen’s impending 40th birthday got her thinking about what she really wanted to do. She had loved teaching (despite never having made more than $7,000 a year) and wanted to return to the field. A chance coincidence got her reacquainted with Harbridge House, one of her earlier employers. They needed someone with a background in finance interested in training. Lodgen signed on.

Twenty years and a number of mergers later, Lodgen was again facing an age-driven milestone, this time at Price-Waterhouse Coopers, where the firm had a rule that partners had to retire at 60. With that prospect looming, Lodgen began wondering, “Why am I not retiring now?” As a partner, she no longer was spending the bulk of her time doing what she loved: training and teaching. She retired at 58 in the spring of 1999 and returned to work on a project, which she did not enjoy.

After retiring for good, Lodgen took a class in ceramics at her local junior college. “I was surprised to find that even at the beginning I felt balanced while doing ceramics.” Outside of her working career, she says, “it’s the first time I’ve really embarked on a creative process in my life. I can’t tell you I’m great at it, but it is profoundly satisfying.” When her class ended, Lodgen found it “bewildering, because suddenly everything felt unbalanced.” She’s since gone on to take courses at Chicago’s Art Institute and uses her business skills for church and art organization projects.

Reflecting on her career, Lodgen says, “For basically 20 years I was reasonably placed, though I can’t ever say I loved it the way I loved teaching.” Now, in retirement, she has found a new passion. “Doing what feels profoundly right is important in life. It’s way more important than money.”

For many, retirement becomes an option only when they are hit with a bout of ill health or the realization that they “have enough” and no longer need work to make ends meet. Grant Munro, SEP ’90, had a heart attack when he was 42. He “recovered from that very nicely” and two years later thought he was ready to retire from his position as a VP at forest products giant Rayonier. “I was tired,” he says. “I went to work and worked to work. I was expecting that I’d be able to enjoy the time off.” But he was wrong.

Despite volunteering with the United Way, Chamber of Commerce, and YMCA, Munro didn’t get “the challenge I thought I might.” Four months after retiring, he had just two hours a day of scheduled activity and was left to wonder, “Then what?” “I’m not the kind of person who can sit still,” he admits.

Munro joined a small partnership in the forest products business. But four years later when he was offered his old job back at Rayonier, he took it. Reflecting on his decision to retire early, Munro thinks a better option might have been to ask the company for a six- to twelve-month leave of absence. Now that he’s returned and is mindful of his heart condition, he’s determined to “let the young guys do the heavy lifting.” In another two years he’ll be able to re-retire with all his benefits. Still, he expects to stay on for as many as another seven years. “I think the answer is that I need to keep working,” Munro says. “I love the business, I love the company, and I love my family. I guess what I need to learn is how to balance it all.”

Like Grant Munro, Don Stibich, MBA ’58, spent his entire career in the forest products business. After 40 years with Longview Fibre, he began entertaining thoughts of retirement just as his wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Then, in January 2000, he blacked out at a board of directors meeting. After learning he had meningitis, his first thought was, “Good grief, I’ve got work to do.” But the infection didn’t honor his workload and knocked Stibich off his feet for two months. During this unplanned leave, he began thinking about what he was doing. “I had done it all and I wondered what else there is,” he says. Despite a satisfying career, he felt stuck. “I couldn’t see anything around me. I wasn’t in a rut, I was in a trench.”

With his wife growing increasingly ill, Stibich decided to leave Longview to care for her. She passed away in November of last year, and he has no intention of going back to work. Now he finds himself following in his wife’s footsteps as a volunteer by applying his Spanish-interpreter and business skills to projects for the Hospice of Marin, Marin General Hospital, and the St. Vincent de Paul Society. After 42 years with one company, he says, “suddenly I’m a social worker” and heads off to visit an abused woman with a young baby. “I’m going to see if I can help out.”

Charlie Wood’s epiphany came on an airplane flight. Having been in financial services for nearly 25 years, Wood had enough frequent flyer miles to always be upgraded. He had so many miles that on United he was the first person in first class to be asked by the flight attendant about his meal choice. “It became really important to me that they asked me before anyone else in the cabin,” he says. “When I realized that, I realized my priorities were misaligned.” Wood, MBA ’76, retired from investment banking. He thought he’d finally figured out his ideal retirement job when he “unretired” to become the CFO and director of development at Loyola High School in Los Angeles. It wasn’t meant to be.

“I thought I would be there forever,” Wood says, “but I was moving a bit too quickly for the president. Candidly, I was crushed that it didn’t work out.” Wood regrouped and redirected himself toward a field he considered briefly before enrolling at the GSB: medicine. Last fall he completed training to be an emergency medical technician (EMT) and an emergency care technician (ECT), the latter being a “nurse extender position,” like that played by the character Malik on ER. While still in training at UCLA, 53-year-old Wood had his own ER experience when late one night a young man was brought into Pasadena’s Huntington Hospital Trauma Center with a gunshot to the groin. With blood gushing all over, Wood raced him to the operating room. Most of the time, however, Wood assists with setting up EKGs, chest tubes, suturing, and dealing with “barf and code brown.”

Wood views his work, which pays about $13 an hour, as volunteer service. But, he says, “I get a real feeling that the patients care about what I’m doing.” He contemplated joining the Pasadena Fire Department reserve, but his wife decided that would represent “over-commitment.” For a greater intellectual challenge, he resuscitated CE Peterson, a private financial consulting firm, where he puts in 20 to 25 hours a week. “I don’t ever plan to retire in the old sense. The key is satisfying my intellectual curiosity. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do until I’m 75 or 80.”

And what about Phil Trapp, who said never again when he left TRW back in 1998? He’s cut his workweek at ZNOW back to a more manageable 60 hours a week and has a plan in place to transition out of his CEO role. “Read my lips,” he says. “Never again. Funding an early-stage company is brutal. It’s too much work.” This is his last CEO assignment, he told his wife, Melody. “Of course, sweetie,” she told him. “I’m sure it is.”