ReInventYourself

A happy New Year's day for boomers

Friday, January 2, 2009

Jane Glenn Haas
Our Time
Special to the Register

New Year's Day in Pasadena offered America a picture postcard of a bright and shiny future.

The sun was full and glorious. The 120th Rose Parade was only about 15 minutes late starting its march down Colorado Boulevard. The high-stepping, horn-blaring bands mirrored the nation's broad ethnicities, from Hawaiian hulas to African-American rap.

And, finally, older boomers were tall in the saddle.

Before the parade pace car rounded the corner at the Norton Simon Museum, we saw Stephanie Edwards back in the KTLA anchor booth after two years of banishment to the wilderness of ageism.

Letters and calls of outrage from unhappy viewers finally turned the tide. That — and the attitude of the lady with the signature red hair who never lost her dignity despite an undignified public firing.

Edwards blamed her age — she was then 62 — when she was ousted from the anchor slot in 2006. "It's a pain in the cusp," she told me then. Men don't suffer the same fate, she noted. Her co-host, Bob Eubanks, was then 67 and the father of a 21/2-year-old.

Ah, but management did more than insult women over 60 when it pushed Edwards to the bleachers. The year she sat in the stands doing commentary, it poured in Pasadena. There she was, looking perky as hell, holding a clear plastic umbrella to shield her parade notes. Unflappable.
New Year's Day, 2009, kiss that insult goodbye.

"I think what happened was KTLA hired a management person who was a real change agent," she told me before the parade this year. "Bob had been on longer and was more established. And, of course, he is a man and people are more inclined to keep the man and let the woman go. It really was sexism, not ageism."

OK. I'll buy that assumption. Sounds like a typically thoughtless management move — ousting the personality that for years has drawn viewers to KTLA for Rose Parade commentary. So why bring her back, two years and two co-anchors later? Why team Eubanks and Edwards again?
"We're comfort food for people and that's important in today's times," she said. She has a contract for at least another year in the booth. After that — "Well, after that, who knows what's going to happen?"

Then she paused. "I've learned a lot from this. I've learned if things are going against you, don't give up. Events can turn on a dime. I've been rehired. And I'm 65. How many women get rehired at 65?

"I told my husband, after KTLA called, that hell just froze over. I wish I could transfer and share that with others my age looking for work. I'm just a performer. Others are college educated and have experience at work and they are being let go at a moment's notice. It's criminal and my heart breaks for them."

Sometimes — not often, but sometimes — experience and age are rewarded.

Did you look closely at the faces of the folks riding and marching down Colorado Avenue? More than a few were — gasp! — almost or already drawing Social Security.

People like Anna Boyce of Mission Viejo, who describes herself as a "mature woman of a certain age."

Boyce was among a small group sitting in the front of the Mission Viejo float, the one with the swimming pool that won the Judges Special Award for spectacular showmanship.

"It was awesome, unbelieveable," she told me after the parade. "I'll never forget this. People were yelling at me, like 'Hey, redhead!' and 'Hey, seniors on the float.'"

And how did Boyce get her front row seat? She's an activist, the city's Outstanding Citizen in 2008. She sews with a woman's group, collects eyeglasses with her Lions Club, is a fixture with the Ladies of the Elks, lobbies for senior legislation with the Office on Aging and the Senior Citizen's Advisory Council in Sacramento.

But I like to think she won her chair because she was the significant senior supporting medical marijuana, a cause she adopted after her late husband's painful cancer. Boyce, who is a nurse, views the weed as a pain-killing agent and — largely through her efforts — it is available for compassionate care in California.

On New Year's Day, the sun was shining on a future where people 60-plus are making a difference. That's worthy of a strut down everybody's Main Street.