our time perspectives on senior living

THE MONTANA STANDARD, BUTTE, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2012

RETIREMENT DESTINATIONSBoomers heading to some unconventional locations

BY CLARKE CANFIELDAssociated Press

AAMMDDEENN, Maine — When Peg Davis was readyto find a retirement community to move to, shelooked north — not south — for a place tospend her later years.

Rather than set her sights on Florida, Arizona orsome other warm-weather locale, she packed up andmoved from Big Flats, N.Y., to the small coastal Mainetown of Camden.

Davis, 73, was in search of the slow pace of a smalltown with natural beauty, cultural opportunities and “a

sense of place.” She hasn’t beendisappointed since arriving in2010.

“I wouldn’t go south ofPennsylvania,” said Davis, whovacationed here for years beforemaking the move. “My mindoperates like a Mainer. It doesn’toperate like people who escape toSouthern comfort.”

The idea of people who uprootand move when they retire con-

jures up images of warm, sunny Florida or Arizona. Butsome of the older members of the baby boom genera-tion, the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and1964, are looking elsewhere, and a number of towns incooler climates from Maine to Washington havebecome popular retirement destinations.

Camden is frequently cited in lists of best places forretirees. Others that have merited mention includeAsheville, N.C.; Ruidoso, N.M.; Durango, Colo.; theSan Juan Islands in Washington’s Puget Sound; St.George, Utah; Medford, Ore.; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho;Kalispell, Mont.; and towns along lakes Superior andMichigan in northern Michigan.

“Boomers and retirees these days are considering amuch wider range of destinations for retirement, oftenchoosing states that don’t commonly come to mind,such as Maine and Montana,” said Mary Lu Abbott,editor of Where to Retire magazine. “Yes, the Sun Beltremains popular, but many people prefer a four-seasonclimate and enjoy the changing of seasons. They seektowns that are safe and have active, appealing down-towns and good hospitals nearby, and increasinglythey’re looking for places with a lower cost of livingand lower overall tax rate.”

Maine doesn’t have a low income tax rate and hous-ing prices are high in Camden. But the town fits the billin most other regards, drawing more and more retireesover the years, many of whom have some previous

connection to the town, spending summers or vacations in the area.

Camden, with a population of 4,850, has a See RETIREMENT, Page 4

A COUPLE STROLLS through a park, above, bythe harbor in Camden,Maine, in this Augustphoto. The small coastaltown is often cited in listsof best retirement placesto move for people inter-ested in cooler climates.

AT LEFT, DAVIDSPOELSTRA canoeswith his dogs acrossFernan Lake near Coeurd’Alene, Idaho. A numberof towns in cooler climatesfrom Maine to Washingtonhave become popularretirement destinations forolder baby boomers.

AP PHOTOS

C

On the coverA number of

areas with cooler climates — like themountains aroundKalispell — arebecoming popularretirement destinations

Retirement ...Continued from Page 3

picturesque harbor that is home to historic windjammers in summer and fall.Nestled at the base of the Camden Hills, the town has its own ski mountain. Thedowntown has stores and restaurants that are locally owned. Crime is low andincomes and education levels are high.

In 1990, about 33 percent of residents were 55 and older, according to the U.S.Census Bureau.

By 2010, nearly half were 55 and over. By last count, Camden has more people intheir 60s than in their 20s and 30s combined.

Camden’s median age is 53, which is old even by Maine standards. The Pine TreeState, with the nation’s oldest residents, has a median age of 42.7 years.

Smaller, far-flung places aren’t for all retirees, of course.They can have long, cold, snowy winters and high housing costs. Many are

remote, even isolated. Public transportation often isn’t available, and doctors can bein short supply in the more rural locales.

Some have a shortage of cultural opportunities, good restaurants and part-timejobs.

GOING NORTH, NOT SOUTHDifferent people have different ideas of retirement, said Leigh Smith, who moved

to a Camden retirement community with her husband, Ron, from the Boston area in2003.

While Smith and her husband moved to Maine for retirement, a cousin of herswasted no time moving away from Maine, to Florida, when he stopped working.

“You think, my goodness, why would you retire to Maine? It’s snowy, icy,” shesaid. “But the winters here, I have found, are better and milder than Boston.”

The idea of going to Florida didn’t appeal to the 66-year-old Smith because ofthe humidity, crowds and hurricanes. She likes that life here has a slower pace butthat there’s still plenty to do.

“It’s like the 1950s here,” she said. “People trust each other. People don’t locktheir homes or cars, although we do because we’re from Boston and it’s ingrained.”

She and her husband like that they can walk to downtown, that performance centers and museums are nearby, and that people are active around here — be it walking, biking, kayaking, boating, hiking or volunteering their time for communitygroups.

It’s also important that a hospital is located nearby and there’s bus service fromtown when they want to go to Portland, Boston or New York.

“When we first visited Camden, neither of us had heard of the town,” said RonSmith, 70. “But when we were shown the area, we were sold on it pretty quickly.”

RETIREMENT MORE ACTIVEWith baby boomers now reaching retirement age, they’re looking for places that

are walkable with good restaurants, volunteer opportunities and perhaps collegecourses they might be able to take, said David Savageau, author of “RetirementPlaces Rated,” now in its seventh printing.

They’re also looking for places with familiarity, where they’ve visited on vacationor perhaps spent summers as a child.

For many retirees nowadays, the idea of a “golf kind of idle recreation” retirementassociated with Florida isn’t appealing, he said.

“That’s the old view of retirement,” Savageau said. “And it’s kind of dying out,the desert Southwest and South Florida. That was for our parents; for us it might besomewhere closer to home, a college town, a ski resort or a historical area that getssome kind of tourism in season.”


AP PHOTO

A RAINBOW FORMS over the City Hall building in Asheville, N.C., one place that hasbecome a popular retirement destination.


Making room for petsBY ALEXIA ELEJALDE-RUIZ

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO (MCT) — Shirley Skirvin’sretirement community has its share ofgrumblings about aches and pains. ButSkirvin, 78, who lives with her husband,Sid, in an independent living facility, hasfound a reliable if unintentional way to coaxher neighbors out of their gloom: walkingthe grounds with her 6-pound toy poodle,Spunky.

“Dogs keep you from being so self-absorbed,” said Skirvin, who broughtSpunky with her when she moved intoVillage at Skyline in Colorado Springs,Colo., almost three years ago. “They remindyou constantly of other qualities of life.”

As pets prove to lift the spirits and, someresearch shows, health prospects of elderlypeople, many senior living facilities aremaking it a point to incorporate pets intoseniors’ lives, either through pet visits,having animals as permanent residents orallowing seniors to bring their own.

The number of senior living communi-

ties that permit residents to bring their petshas increased substantially in the past fiveto 10 years as more families request it, saidTami Cumings, senior vice president at APlace for Mom, the nation’s largest senior-living referral service.

With about 40 percent of adult childreninquiring about pet-friendly homes fortheir parents, the agency has compiled aguide to pet-friendly senior communitiesthat its advisers use when placing clients.About half of the 18,000 programs in theagency’s network are pet-friendly.

“Many times we talk to families that havehad a loss of a spouse, and they say, ‘I can’ttake the dog away,’” Cumings said. Peoplewith allergies or who would prefer not tolive among pets still have plenty of pet-freecommunities to choose from, she noted.

While dogs are most common, many dif-ferent types of animals bring cheer to seniorcommunities. At Pet Partners, a Bellevue,Wash.-based nonprofit agency that trainsand screens volunteers to take their pets on

See PETS, Page 6

CHICAGO TRIBUNE / MCT

ELEASE TRAVIS, right, pets Woody, a therapy dog, at an adult day care facility inMelrose Park, Ill.

More senior living facilitiesallowing animal companions


Pets ...Continued from Page 5

visits to senior centers, hospitals and schools, registered animals include birds,llamas, chickens, guinea pigs and miniature horses.

A 2002 study found having fish tanks in Alzheimer’s units, where patients spentlong stretches pacing and suffered weight loss, improved residents’ food intake andencouraged modest weight gain.

“Nothing holds their attention except fish tanks,” said study author Alan Beck,director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University in WestLafayette, Ind. “I think our attraction to nature even survives our dementia.”

Even robotic animals, an alternative in places where having a live animal might betoo difficult or risky, can elicit positive responses from the elderly. A Canadian studyof dementia patients interacting with Paro, a cute robotic baby harp seal, foundmany showed improved mood. Beck is in the midst of a study of how healthy elderlyadults interact with a robotic dog called Aibo, and has found they talk to and confidein it as if it were a live dog _ even though it’s hard and looks like a machine.

“You’re already suspending disbelief when you talk to your real dog; you’re justgoing one step more when you talk to the electronic animal,” Beck said.

The reasons for pets’ palliative powers are varied. Touching, petting, even theway people talk to a pet are calming influences (for the pet as well as the human),Beck said. In the case of dogs, people are encouraged to walk. And pets demandattention.

“Pet care is one of the few opportunities for people to be a nurturer again,” Becksaid.

Research dating back several decades has shown that being around animalsreduces blood pressure, improves morale and relieves depression. One landmarkstudy, published in 1980, found people who had had heart attacks were more likelyto still be alive a year later if they owned pets than if they didn’t. Another, publishedin 1990, found elderly Medicare enrollees who owned dogs went to the doctor less

often than those who did not, and were less likely to reach out to a doctor after astressful life event.

Pets can provide comfort and companionship to a population at high risk of socialdeprivation, sometimes more than people can. In a 2006 study, geriatricians fromSaint Louis University found nursing home residents who scored high on a loneli-ness scale felt less lonely when they spent one-on-one time with a visiting dog thanif they visited with the dog and their peers.

Tania Prystash, a volunteer manager at VITAS, the nation’s largest hospiceprovider, said patients who can no longer relate to people often still can bond with apet. VITAS has a program called Paw Pals that brings volunteer owners and theirpets, mostly dogs, to visit hospice patients in their homes or assisted living facilities.

Prystash remembers a patient in a dementia unit who was withdrawn and hadn’tspoken for days, no matter what people tried, but when a Paw Pals member arrivedshe lit up and started talking about dogs she had as a child.

“There’s something magical that happens with pets,” Prystash said, more thanwith other tools like music.

When Jeanine Young was seeking an assisted living facility for her 94-year-olduncle, Merritt Ziolkowski, a big reason she chose Sunrise Senior Living inSchaumburg, Ill., outside Chicago, was the friendly golden retriever, Molly.

“I think it made him feel more at home” during the difficult transition, saidYoung, who lives in Frederick, Md. He had an instant friend and “something to talkabout,” she said.

In addition to Molly, who often does the rounds with the caregivers and is avail-able for residents to take out for walks, Sunrise has a bunny named Little Elvis in theactivity room, birds named Romeo and Juliet in the foyer and Murray the cat hang-ing out in the memory care unit, said Executive Director Lisa Lauer. Visiting withthe animals is nurturing for residents, who sometimes don’t see their families forseveral weeks, she said.

They comfort the families too.“Molly makes me feel better about him being there,” Young said.


GIVING UP THE KEYSFamilies key butdocs have role inwrenching decision

BY LAURAN NEERGAARDAP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON — Families may haveto watch for dings in the car and pleadwith an older driver to give up the keys— but there’s new evidence that doctorscould have more of an influence on oneof the most wrenching decisions facing arapidly aging population.

A large study from Canada found thatwhen doctors warn patients, and telldriving authorities, that the older folksmay be medically unfit to be on the road,there’s a drop in serious crash injuriesamong those drivers.

The study, in Thursday’s NewEngland Journal of Medicine, couldn’ttell if the improvement was becausethose patients drove less, or drove morecarefully once the doctors pointed outthe risk.

But as the number of older driverssurges, it raises the question of howfamilies and doctors could be workingtogether to determine if and when age-related health problems — from arthritisto frailty to Alzheimer’s disease — arebad enough to impair driving.

Often, families are making that toughchoice between safety and independ-ence on their own.

“It’s very scary,” said Pat Sneller ofFlower Mound, Texas, who talked herhusband, Lee, into quitting about a year

after he was diagnosed with early-stageAlzheimer’s disease.

The couple had recently moved fromCalifornia, one of the few U.S. statesthat require doctors to report driverswith worrisome health conditions tolicensing authorities. Pat Sneller wasstunned to learn Texas doesn’t requirethat doctor involvement, and healthworkers advised her to ride with her husband and judge his abilities

for herself.Eventually her husband called home

in a panic, lost while driving in unfamil-iar Dallas for volunteer work. A longscrape on the car that he couldn’texplain was the final straw. In 2010, shepersuaded him to quit driving, althoughthe now-72-year-old’s license remainsgood until 2014.

“He still says occasionally, ‘I can stilldrive, you know,”‘ Pat Sneller said.

By one U.S. estimate, about 600,000older drivers a year quit because ofhealth conditions. The problem: Thereare no clear-cut guidelines to tell whoreally needs to — and given the lack oftransportation options in much of thecountry, quitting too soon can be detri-mental for someone who might havefunctioned well for several more years.

It’s never an easy discussion.“It did not go over so well,” Benjamin

Benson recalls of the time when his sonstold the 87-year-old they feared hisreflexes had slowed too much for safedriving.

“I’ve never had an accident,” thePeabody, Mass., man said. His family’sresponse: “Well, do you want to wait forthe first one?”

The retired accountant wasn’t readyto quit then, but he quietly began toanalyze what would happen to him andhis wife, who doesn’t drive, if he did.

His longtime doctor wouldn’t adviseone way or the other. So over a fewmonths, the couple tried online groceryshopping. They took a taxi to the den-tist, not cheap at $38 round-trip. ButBenson calculated that maintaining andinsuring the car was expensive, too,when he drove only 3,000 miles a year.

A few weeks ago, Benson surprisedhis family by giving away the car, and hesays he’s faring fine so far.

“Most people in our age group knowthat it’s inevitable and play around withthe idea that it’s going to come and theonly question is when,” Benson said. “Ididn’t want to be pushed into it.”

Unlike in most of the U.S., doctors inmuch of Canada are supposed to report

See KEYS, Page 9

AP PHOTO

BENJAMIN BENSON poses in the parking lot outside his residence at a senior commu-nity in Peabody, Mass., recently. Families may have to watch for dings in the car and pleadwith an older driver to give up the keys — but there's new evidence that doctors couldbecome more of an influence on one of the most wrenching decisions facing a rapidlyaging population.


Retirement roadblocksmount for many seniors

BY DAVID MARKIEWICZThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution

ATLANTA (MCT) — A decade ago, Denise McColister envisioned a comfortableretirement around the time she turned 62.

“At 45, I felt really secure,” the Dallas resident, now 55, recalled. Back then, herhusband made good money, and their house was paid for.

Then he became disabled and their house, which they had borrowed against,plummeted in value. Now, instead of padding her financial cushion, she’s working apart-time call center job while hoping for a better position. There’s no retirement insight.

“I’ll probably be working until I’m called home,” she said.Many Americans have had to adjust their retirement dreams since the recession

and housing bust. For some, like McColister, the question is whether they can everretire.

A study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute determined that 1 in 3 house-holds headed by people now age 55 to 64 won’t be finan-cially prepared to retire even by age 70. Lower-incomepeople face the biggest problem.

It’s generally accepted that the effects of career-interrupting layoffs, flatlined pay, declining propertyvalues and a turbulent stock market have eroded wealthto the point where many can no longer expect to stopworking when they’re 65 _ let alone earlier.

The demise of traditional pension plans and spottyparticipation in 401(k) plans or other savings vehiclesalso has undercut retirement readiness.

Still, the conventional wisdom _ bolstered by otherstudies _ is that retirement should still be feasible atleast by age 70, thanks to higher Social Security payouts,

the accumulation of more savings, and the shortened post-retirement lifespan. Eventhat extra time on the job may not be enough when potential long-term care andmedical costs are factored in to the equation, as in the EBRI study.

The problem is that working much beyond 65 may not be practical for many. TheEBRI’s retirement confidence survey found that nearly half of all retirees who wereinterviewed said they were forced to retire because of a spouse’s medical condition,their own health or their employer’s choice. In other words, they couldn’t extendtheir careers even if they wanted to.

“It would be comforting from a public policy standpoint to assume that merelyworking to age 70 would be a panacea to the significant challenges of assuring retire-ment income adequacy, but this may be a particularly risky strategy, especially forthe vulnerable group of low-income workers,” said Jack VanDerhei, the study’sauthor.

The EBRI projections are more pessimistic than those from other groups becausethey factor in longevity risk, investment risk and the chance of long-term healthcare costs.

Barbara Wainwright, 66, of Marietta, Ga., recognizes the importance of coveringhealth care costs for a senior.

Like McColister, she works a part-time job in the Georgia Department of Laboroffice in Marietta and is looking for something more. A widowed breast cancer survivor, she looks back now and says, “It was my plan to retire at 65.”

After a career working jobs in fields as diverse as health care, education and security, and after raising four children, she faces having to pay for a mortgage, a car,food and utilities as well as mounting medical bills. Her late husband’s SocialSecurity benefits are not enough.

“I’m working to pay for medication,” she said.See ROADBLOCKS, Page 9

“I do feel I will beable to retire, but itwill be much laterthan I would have

expected when I was 50.”

Janie Walker, 65


Keys ...Continued from Page 7

to licensing authorities patients with certain health conditionsthat may impair driving. Ontario in 2006 began paying doc-tors a small fee to further encourage that step — andresearchers used the payments to track 100,075 patients whoreceived those warnings between April of that year andDecember 2009 (out of the province’s more than 9 millionlicensed drivers).

They compared the group’s overall rate of crashes severeenough to send the driver to the emergency room, before thewarnings began and afterward, and found a 45 percent drop,reported lead researcher Dr. Donald Redelmeier, a Universityof Toronto professor. While the study included adult drivers ofall ages — for conditions ranging from epilepsy to sleep disor-ders, alcoholism to dementia — most were over age 60. Asmall percentage of the province’s licensed drivers havereceived warnings, Redelmeier stressed, and licenses are sus-pended by authorities between 10 percent and 30 percent ofthe time.

His study highlighted one reason physicians don’t like toget involved: About 1 in 5 of the patients who were warned changed doctors. There also was an uptick in reports of depression.

Doctors aren’t trained to evaluate driving ability, and thestudy couldn’t tell if some drivers were targeted needlessly,noted Dr. Matthew Rizzo of the University of Iowa. Yet hecalled the research valuable.

“The message from this paper is that doctors have somewisdom in knowing when to restrict drivers,” said Rizzo. Hisown research shows some cognitive tests might help thembetter identify who’s at risk, such as by measuring “usefulfield of view,” essentially how much your brain gleans at aglance — important for safety in intersections.

Today, the American Medical Association recommends thatdoctors administer a few simple tests in advising older drivers.Among them:

■ Walk 10 feet down the hallway, turn around and comeback. Taking longer than 9 seconds is linked to driving problems.

■ On a page with the letters A to L and the numbers 1 to 13 randomly arranged, see how quickly and accurately youdraw a line from 1 to A, then to 2, then to B and so on. This so-called trail-making test measures memory, spatial processing and other brain skills, and doing poorly has beenlinked to at-fault crashes.

■ Check if people can turn their necks far enough to changelanes, and have the strength to slam on brakes.

Dr. Gary Kennedy, geriatric psychiatry chief at New York’sMontefiore Medical Center, often adds another question: Arehis patients allowed to drive their grandchildren?

“If the answer to that is no, that’s telling me the people whoknow the patient best have made a decision that they’re notsafe,” said Kennedy, who offers “to be the bad cop” for familiesor primary care physicians having trouble delivering the news.

There are no statistics on how often doctors do these kindsof assessment.

“It’s this touchy subject that nobody wants to talk about,”said Dr. Marian Betz of the University of Colorado, whose surveys show most senior drivers don’t think their doctorsknow whether they drive. She is testing if an advance directive would help get older adults talking with their doctorsabout how to keep watch on their driving fitness before

trouble arises.More objective measures are needed — and to help find

them, hundreds of older drivers are letting scientists installvideo cameras, GPS systems and other gadgets in their cars aspart of massive studies of everyday driving behavior.

Identifying who needs to quit should be a last resort, saidJon Antin of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Hehelps oversee data collection for a study that’s enrolling 3,000participants, including hundreds of seniors, in Florida,Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania andWashington. The drivers undergo a battery of medical checksbefore their driving patterns are recorded for 12 to 24 months.

“If you identify people at risk, maybe you can intervene toprolong the safe driving period,” agreed Dr. Shawn Marshall ofthe Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He helps leadCanada’s CanDrive II, a project that’s tracking 928 drivers intheir 70s for five years, to see how their driving changes asthey get older.

For now, advocacy groups like the Alzheimer’s Associationand AARP offer programs to help families spot signs of drivingproblems and determine how to talk about it.

“I would like to think that my husband would say, ‘Youreally shouldn’t be driving anymore’ and I wouldn’t get mad athim,” said Sally Harris, 75, of Crystal Lake, Ill., who tookAARP’s “We Need to Talk” program in hopes of broaching thesubject with a 90-year-old friend who’s having driving prob-lems.

Others turn to driver rehabilitation specialists, occupation-al therapists who can spend up to four hours evaluating anolder driver’s vision, memory, cognition and other abilitiesbefore giving him a behind-the-wheel driving test. Some doc-tors and state licensing authorities order those evaluations,but programs can be hard to find, often have waiting lists andcost several hundred dollars that insurance may not cover.

Having a professional involved can keep family relation-ships intact, said Pam Bartle, a driver rehab specialist atMarianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton, Ill.

Still, “you could have the sweetest, nicest little old lady andshe’ll turn on you on a dime if you tell her she can’t drive,”Bartle said. “It’s a desperate thing for people. They can’timagine how they’ll manage without driving.”

Roadblocks ...Continued from Page 8

Because of her health, she’s not surehow long she will be able to work, butsaid, “You may give out, but you don’thave to give up.”

Janie Walker, 65, has no plans to giveup her job for a while. Associate state director for community outreach at AARPof Georgia, she expects to work to like 71 or 72,” for financial reasons.

“I do feel I will be able to retire, but itwill be much later than I would haveexpected when I was 50,” she said.

Walker’s well-laid financial plans wentsideways when a corporate restructuringand the recession led to layoffs.

“When you get laid off in bad econom-ic times, it takes a long time to find a job,”she said. “You go through your savings and it takes a long time to recoverfrom that.”

Now, she wants to work long enough tohelp pay for her grown daughter’s special-ized music study and her mortgage.Working until 70 will allow her to collect the maximum Social Security ben-efit, which increases annually until then.

That’s one of the key reasons to workthat long, according to The NationalRetirement Risk Index, done by the Centerfor Retirement Research at Boston College.The NRRI takes a more optimistic view ofAmericans’ retirement readiness, andworking to 70 is a key reason why. TheNRRI determined that 85 percent ofhouseholds would be ready to retire if theyworked until age 70.

By contrast, it said, 51 percent of workers are “at risk” of not havingenough money to maintain their livingstandard if they retire at 65. When healthcare and long-term care costs are factoredin, the number rises to 65 percent.

“The one piece of advice that’s rele-vant to those with a good job and goodhealth is that work is a powerful antidoteto not having saved enough for a comfort-able retirement,” said Anthony Webb, oneof the authors of the work, which is subtitled, “How Much Longer Do WeNeed to Work?”

Webb acknowledged that working to70 (or beyond) may not be “appropriate”for people who’ve worked in physicallydemanding jobs, or for those who don’thave a job or can’t hold on to one. Studieshave shown that while older Americansare less likely to lose their jobs, they have aharder time finding a new one when theydo. Webb also called paying for healthcare “the big wild card,” as its costs are sodifficult to project.

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