To retire, or not to retire: Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez addresses the challenges of aging and MEGO

by Kevin Cody

Four years ago, when Steve Lopez was approaching his fifth decade as a newspaper reporter and columnist, he confronted a question that continues to confound him. Quit, or keep working? To answer the question, he spent that year, 2021, writing “Independence Day: What I learned about retirement from some who’ve done it, and some who never will.” 

“I’m still here,” Lopez said in answer to the question during his talk at the annual Peninsula Verdes Peninsula Village luncheon at the Palos Verdes Country Club on September 30. 

“For now,” he added.

Lopez’s ambivalence about retirement is both professional and personal, he disclosed during the luncheon, where he was joined at the podium by fellow columnist, and Village co-founder Helen Dennis. Her column, “Successful Aging,” appears in the Southern California News Group newspapers, including the Daily Breeze.

After “Independence Day’s” publication in 2022, Lopez moved the Los Angeles Times column he has written since 2001, from the general assignment beat to the aging population beat. 

“I’m turning 70 this year, and as of today, my column will focus on aging,” he wrote in his  January 12, 2023 column. His “Points West” column was renamed “Golden State.”  

The decision was both noble and selfless, notwithstanding Lopez’s age.

“Population aging is the second most important phenomenon humanity will have to … address in the 21st century,” Paul Irving, founding chair of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, has written. (Climate change is the most important, Irving argued.)

But like climate change, population aging is what newspaper editors call a MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) story.

New York Times “On Language” columnist William Safire wrote of MEGO, “It is the unanswerable criticism…It is an article written about a subject of great importance which resists reader interest…even when given some zing, [it] soon lies there without a quiver of life.”

But if anyone can put zing into stories about population aging, it’s Lopez.

Peers have honored him with the H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Ernie Pyle awards, all named for great newspaper columnists. The Wall Street Journal named “Independence Day” one of 2022’s “best books on aging and retirement.”

His 2008 book, “The Soloist,” about a violin virtuoso Lopez discovered on Skid Row, won the PEN USA award for literary non-fiction. It was turned into a movie in 2009, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez.

Lopez alluded to the MEGO challenge when he told his Peninsula audience, “I try not to use the term ‘senior citizen,’ though I get tired of writing ‘older adults.’ In his first Golden State column he wrote, “I’ve not used the words ‘senior,’ or ‘elderly,’ …the preferred language [is] ‘older,’ or ‘aging.’”

Holding young readers in stories about population aging is even more challenging because of the stigma attached to older adults. 

“The stigma is, ‘Shove them aside. They’ve ruined the world we live in. …Get them the hell out of the way,’” Lopez said.

Lopez said he began thinking about retirement 13 years ago when he underwent a knee replacement and went into cardiac arrest. 

“I thought, ‘Is that a sign?’” 

“We don’t know how long we have. What about all those things I’ve wanted to try.…Am I going to be one of those people who retires on Friday and drops dead on Monday?” he recalled thinking.

He began writing about the aging population two years later, in 2014, when both of his parents entered hospice care.  

“My father fell trying to walk to the bathroom at night and couldn’t get up. He refused another trip to the hospital, so my mother got down next to him, pulled up a blanket, and they went to sleep together on the floor until help arrived in the morning. 

“I was struck by the cruel irony that at the time in life when you’re least able to fight, you have to be at your strongest,” he wrote in a column about caring for his parents.

The experience brought home to him what experts say are the three biggest challenges facing the aging population.

About 10,000 people turn 65 each day in the United States. By 2035, people 65 and older will outnumber those under 18. In California, a quarter of the population will be 60 or older by 2030.

The first problem is housing for the aging population. 

The second problem is who will pay for the aging baby boomers’ long term care.

Lopez spoke admiringly of a friend who lived to be 110. But only because he could afford $16,000 a month for long term care.

Washington state has long term care insurance, but it only pays a maximum of $60,000, Lopez noted.

The third problem is the shortage of long term care workers. The shortage will reach three million workers nationwide by 2040, according to Argentum, a senior care provider trade association.

“I started writing on Independence Day on Independence Day 2021 and finished it on Independence Day a year later.” Lopez said.

“The idea was, when will I be freed from work? But what I learned about retirement, which explains the subtitle, is “some have done it and some never will.” 

“I’ve got to warn you folks, the guy who wrote that book has no idea what he’s talking about. I can’t figure out whether to retire and try something else,” Lopez confessed to his Peninsula audience.

In a column written in May of this year, on the 50th anniversary of his first newspaper job, covering Little League games for the Woodland Daily Democrat, Lopez recalled the advice he received while covering the first Gulf War for the Philadelphia Inquirer from his editor, Ashley Halsey.

“I was reporting from a Kurdish refugee camp in the mountains between Iraq and Turkey. I watched families bury loved ones in a muddy cemetery and was at a loss to convey the enormity of the moment, set against the panorama of geopolitics.

“Halsey told me he didn’t want a panorama. He wanted a snapshot. Count the graves, describe the terrain, talk to survivors. Put readers in the cemetery.”

Lopez said he has followed that advice throughout his career.

For “Independence Day,” to get statistics, and learn about legislation and best practices, he interviewed academicians, elected officials, and senior care administrators.

To “put readers in the cemetery,” he interviewed retired people, people who will never retire, people who want to retire but can’t, and people half retired. 

Lopez was speaking of his Times column, but could have been speaking of Independence Day when he told his Peninsula audience, “What really motivates me is to get out of the office, and go and meet these people. My column is mostly fueled by these experiences… I don’t know from one week to the next where I’m going, or what I’m going to be writing about. Readers suggest something, family, and friends suggest something, it’s like a living organism.”

“The Soloist,” emerged from that  method, or absence of method. 

“One day, I’m wandering around downtown LA and I hear music. There’s a guy playing violin. The violin is missing two strings. He’s standing next to a shopping cart. He has written on the side of the shopping cart, ‘Little Walt Disney Concert Hall.’ The big Walt Disney Concert Hall was just up the hill. I asked him, ‘Are you aware the violin has four strings, not two?’ He said, ‘My whole goal in life is to figure out how to get the other two strings and get back on track.’” 

The homeless man was scratching names on the sidewalk. Lopez asked who they were. The man answered, “Classmates from Juilliard.”

“Mr. Ayres, as I refer to Nathaniel, his career went off the rails when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 20 years old.”

“He was a reminder there are stories all around us, that you have to get out there and talk to people and look past your assumptions about who people are. He became my teacher, and 20 years later, he still is.

“When I told him I was thinking of moving on, he was shocked. He said, Why would you do that? I said, Well, you have this thing you love. You have music. I really envy that. He said you have music too — your stories. Don’t abandon that.”

“Never,” Lopez said an aging Brown University professor answered when asked when he would retire. 

The professor contended men, unlike women, are ill-suited for retirement.

“Women do better in retirement because they’re better at multi-tasking and they have more friends,” Lopez said the professor told. “Men think, it’s nine o’clock. I better go to work. I’m done working. I better go home.”

Lopez recalled his wife’s attitude during COVID when he told her working at home would be a preview for when he retires. She said if this is the preview, I don’t want to see the movie. Your problem, she told me, is you don’t have any friends. Before you retire, you better get some friends because I’m not going to be here to play with you every day.”

Aging experts told Lopez having a purpose is key to a happy retirement.

“You want to matter. It could be you matter to the dog who needs to be walked, to the grandchild who needs to be picked up, or for the mentoring you do,” Lopez said.

“But I also heard from retired people who said, ‘I had to matter my entire adult life. I want to not matter ever again. I don’t want a purpose. I don’t want a plan. I want to get up and do whatever strikes me.”

“Everyone finds their own way,” Lopez said. “It’s no longer you get your gold watch and have a little send off, and that’s the end of it. There’s a woman in my book who worked as a legal aid at a law firm, a toy patent company, and she couldn’t wait to retire. She had the date marked on her calendar. They gave her a big office party and she was thrilled. On Saturday, she woke up still thrilled. Monday, she woke up and thought, What the hell do I do now? She called her old boss and went back to work for four more years.”

Comedian and filmmaker Mel Brooks was 97 years old when Lopez asked him why he was still working.

“It’s not physical work, like working in a coal mine,” Brooks said. “It’s just using my mind. All I need is my pencil.”

Lopez compared Brooks’ work to his own. “I walk around with pen in pocket, talk to people, and write stories. I don’t know that you could even call it work, especially since I enjoy it so much.” 

When Lopez broached the subject of his own retirement to Brooks, the old comedian told him, “Keep working. Because if you stop, the devil will find a way to occupy your mind.”  

“He suggested I pitch my bosses on a hybrid plan where I work a little less and play a little more.

“‘But always look forward to waking up to something you do well, something you want to do,’” he told me.

A writer friend who lives in Leisure World, but is not retired, told Lopez, “The only people who enjoy retirement are those who have a lot of grandkids, who are able to travel a lot, or who hated their jobs.”

He warned Lopez he would be bored in retirement. 

As an aside, the writer mentioned the worst thing about Leisure World is everyone wants to talk to you “even in the elevator.” 

Fr. Greg Boyle has been a frequent subject of Lopez’s column. The Jesuit priest is assigned to Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights. The parish serves Aliso Village and two public housing projects. Parishioners include eight gangs.  

“I think of Fr. Greg as the Patron Saint of Second Chances,” Lopez said during his Peninsula talk. 

“He founded Homeboy Industries, a bakery run by former gang members. We’re the same age, and when I was thinking of retirement, I wanted to ask what he thought about it. I sensed he was disappointed that I would ask. I said, Don’t you think about it? He said, ‘I’m a Jesuit. We retire in the grave.’”

“He said, ‘If your work has meaning, if your life has purpose, if you are tethered to a loving being, what more is there?’ He said, ‘I feel inspired every day by stories of redemption and people sacrificing and struggling to reinvent themselves. Don’t you find that with your stories? How can you step away?’” 

“Every time I’m thinking, okay, this is the week I’m going to retire, Fr. Greg echos in my head,” Lopez said.

His decision on retirement has been half Mel Brooks, half Fr. Greg.

“I went to my bosses and negotiated a part time schedule with less work, lower pay and more play,” he said.

“If I were to surrender my press pass, which has served as a license to meet strangers, given me a front-seat ticket to a never ending show, and served as student i.d badge in a 50-year long graduate course, who would I be?” he asked in one of his Golden State columns.

“When I’m working I don’t think about time. When I’m not working the clock stands still. I get jittery, and in my head I start rewriting everything I ever wore, or wondering  what story I’ve missed.”

The more Lopez talked about reporting, the more the ambivalence at the top of his talk tilted toward work.

A timeless reporters’ practice for getting at the truth is to ask people not what they think, but what their neighbors, or colleagues think.

In the column Lopez wrote this past May on the anniversary of his 50th year as reporter, Lopez 

turned this practice on himself in recalling a conversation with fellow Times columnist Al Martinez.

The conversation took place in a Times elevator in 2002.

“With a mixture of pride and disbelief, Al shared a milestone. ‘This is it. Fifty years in the business,’” Al told me.

“Martinez was in his early 70s and said he had no intention of slowing down. You’d have needed a tranquilizer gun to keep him from chasing after the next story, and the next, and he was still telling stories until his death in 2015,” Lopez wrote.

Martinez died at 85, of heart failure.

“So yes, 50 years and counting, and in the spirit of Al Martinez, on to the next, and the next.

Send me a story tip or two, will you?” Lopez wrote at the end of his 50th year column. ER