Retirees find new life, purpose in singing
Noah Weiland WASHINGTON — When retirees settle into life after work, an inevitable question arises: What kinds of commitments can still be made to friends, neighbors and organizations?
In the nation’s capital, more than 1,000 retirees have found a convincing answer: singing.
The nonprofit Encore Creativity for Older Adults chorale program is the largest in the country for people over 55, with more than 1,100 singers and 21 choral groups in the Washington metro area and more than 700 singers in five other states (two new programs will open in New York in March).
What started in 2007 as three choruses has blossomed into hundreds of singers ringing the District, belting out music from Broadway and the Great American Songbook. This year, the D.C.area groups will combine to perform at the Kennedy Center’s concert hall the day after Christmas.
Its founder and director, Jeanne Kelly, a former classical singer, led a three-year study conducted by George Washington University that observed 150 singers older than 55. She found that participants in professionally led choral programs take fewer medica- tions, experience less depression and make fewer visits to doctors.
“You’ve given so much of yourself,” said Debbie DeLone, a retiree in Encore’s downtown Washington chorale group. “Now you’re singing, and people are listen- ing to you. You feel like: Wow, here I am.”
Here is a look at four other retirees who have turned to singing to give their lives a new feeling, and meaning:
Howard Smith, 89
Smith is one of the oldest members of Encore. After working as a foreign service officer at the State Department for decades, he retired and moved into Goodwin House, a continuing-care facility in Falls Church, Va. Even while working at the highest levels of diplomacy in Congo, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Mexico, he had a nagging impulse to sing. He remembers being a young boy watching his mother perform on stage, wanting to know how it felt to make people happy with music.
When he retired from the government, he worried that pursuing a career in music was a lost cause. Encore helped renew his enthusiasm.
“Music is life,” he said. “I know
Singers