How Work Can Add Years to Your Life

We're all living longer and many people are now staying on the job well past what used to be considered retirement age.

Theres living proof that working longer may keep you healthier longer.

Dean Walls is the publisher and only full-time employee of the White River Journal. She's been getting out Des Arc's weekly paper since the end of World War Two, and it's still a 60 hours a week job. She barely has time to think about her birthday. She'll turn 87 tomorrow.

"I don't know what people my age do now. A lot of them go to the nursing home," says Dean.

Retirement just isn't something she's interested in.

"I take a lot of pride in being able to work and keep up and know things," she says.

Staying engaged in what's happening in her community and in the larger world no doubt helps keeps her so vital, mentally and physically.

"Well, I've never been sick. I've had good health. I've never had surgery," says Dean.

Still, you'd expect her to pace herself after publishing well over three thousand editions of the journal, maybe a short vacation?

"No, never had a vacation. You don't ever take a vacation from this business," she says.

Americans are living longer and free to work as hard as they'd like, well past what we used to consider retirement age.

Here's the headline you need to remember. The right kind of work, paid or volunteer isn't wearing you down, it's keeping you young.

"I think that I'd get to where I couldn't go if I went home and stayed at home," Dean says.

Des Arc is lucky Dean Walls will be back at work Monday morning, showing all of us that as long as we're able, no career should ever have a deadline.
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