Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 228

U0 11 Hi Meet six Chicagoans well past the usual retirement age of 65 but still working and enjoying it. nq By the time a man gets well Into the 70s, his continued existence Is a mere 1 I i I 1 t-vl I 1 i Uf i 'nutawmn 'J miracle. Robert Louis Stevenson New laws are making this possible. In April, President Carter signed a bill, effective Jan. 1, 1979, that will protect most Americans from mandatory retirement until they are 70.

"Raising the retirement age to 70 is just the beginning," says Albert J. Neely, special assistant to the director of the Illinois Department on Aging. "Mandatory retirement itself is on the way out Older workers are a sound economic investment to employers. They do many things better than younger people. They often have unique skills, with which they can enrich younger workers.

If people are still competent, there's no reason they should be discarded just because they've reached a certain milestone in age. In the future I'm sure we'll see more people 70, 80, or even older still doing their thing." Perhaps one day It won't be rare to find people 80 and older still working in their chosen fields. Right now any working octogenarian belongs to a pretty select group. Among them are these Chicagoans who, despite their 80 and more years, are still going strong on their jobs. I'm not old, I'm only 83.

Hell no, I'll never retire. I'd rather die than retire. Joe Liss tty Dennis Fradin What do Michelangelo, Mae West, Agatha Christie, Connie Mack, Mao Tse-tung, and George Burns have in common? Michelangelo created the Rondanini Pieta when he was 89. Mae West at 85 starred in the film "Sextette," and Agatha Christie, also at 85, published her 83d book, When he was 87, Connie Mack managed his Philadelphia Athletics to a 5th-place finish. Chairman Mao at 82 was the leader of one-fifth of the world's population.

And George Burns played God on the screen when he was 81 All "were involved in their life's work well beyond the usual retirement age of 65. As people live longer, there is an increasing number of people who want to continue working beyond the age of 65. 'I Photos by T'. 1 Ill II 7 4r Charles Osgood been robbed twice. So she took up karate.

"We elderly are easy targets," she says. How can someone 95 years old still be up and about, let alone working? "I was lucky in that I came from a family of long-lived people. My father a decorator who died on his 99th birthday, and be had arranged to paper a bouse the very day he died. "A year ago I was in a hospital for a cancer operation. But that didn't stop me.

I was out of the hospital in 11 days. Cancer isn't a dreaded word to me because I took care of mine in time, and I believe I'm cured." Her main advice about life is to take a proper attitude: "Don't even think about getting old, because that's a waste of time. I'm going to keep living and working until somebody says I'm too old. Besides, I still have my book to write." That book will relate her thoughts on bow to live and work to an old age. She is going to write it when she is 100.

"That is why I won't explain everything now. If I told you everything now when I'm only 95 then you might not buy the book when I'm 100." health time she does some catering. She also does volunteer work with the police of the 21st district, going to "beat meetings" to talk to neighborhood teenagers about crime, drugs, and education. "I was born on March 1, 1883," says Hawkins. "My heritage is part African and a good part Indian.

There were Cherokees on my mother's side and Blackhawk Indians on my father's. "Work was a main part of my life ever since I can remember. There were 16 of us in our family, and each week my mother made out a list of chores for everybody." When she was 9, Louise Hawkins got her first paying job. For SO cents a week she washed dishes for a woman mornings before school and evenings after school, a job she continued to do even after she graduated, at age 14, from Joliet Township High School. After working at this job for eight years her pay was raised to a dollar a week.

As an adult Hawkins spent about six years as a teacher's assistant on an Indian reserva tion in Nebraska. Then she worked as a traveling maid for wealthy people. At 29 she got married (and had one daughter who died at eight months) and settled down in Chicago with a permanent job at the Eastwood Beach Hotel. She was a housekeeper there until she was forced to retire at age 72. From that time until she was 92, she did catering and various odd jobs to supplement her Social Security checks.

In 1975, she was offered her present job at the health center. Hawkins comes in contact with a lot of young people both at her job and her volunteer work. She feels there is a close connection between work, crime, and education. "I enjoy young people," she says. "At the schools, they're always asking me about what Chicago looked like 90 years ago and if I had relatives who were slaves, which I did.

But in many ways I'm disappointed in the teen-agers. In my day it was automatic for kids to go to work. What's ruining our country now is that we have people 15, 16 years old who have never done a thing in their lives; everything gets dished out to them." Hawkins, who takes public transportation on her job, has 95 and into Louise B. Hawkins was 10 when she went to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Three years later, she saw William McKinley -pass through Chicago as he campaigned for the presidency.

She vividly remembers seeing the Wright Brothers when they toured Chicago with their flying machine, and she recalls enjoying "stereoptkon views" forerunners of movies at the Crystal Theater in Joliet, her hometown. Hawkins is' talking about these memories at the Claude Holman Neighborhood Health Center at 43d Street and Greenwood Avenue, where she works 20 hours a week as a health educator's assistant. Iost of the time, she is not at her desk but at various Chicago schools, where she helps health educator, Joan Fleming teach students about diet, hygiene, and health. "I'm working in a program funded by the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act," Hawkins says. "I'm only allowed to work 20 hours a week, although I'd like to work more." In her spare -40 Chicago Tribune Maoazine.