CHAPTER 34 - RETIREMENT
From Richard's memoirs, recovered from his original WordPerfect files
When I retired from UCLA I told the people there that I felt a man should spend the first 20 years getting a formal education, then work for a living for the next 40 years, and finally spend the last 20 years (plus or minus) doing just as he damned well pleased. I am pretty much on schedule.
I got my AB Degree at Stanford when I was 22 and retired at 63 and as of this year I have 9 years under my belt in retirement. With luck I’ll make the 20.
When it came time for me to retire I had three options how to take my retirement pay. (1) I could take a lump sum, drawing out everything I had put into the fund plus the interest it had made for me. (2) I could take a larger monthly income for the rest of my life, with nothing for DeVonne after my death, and (3) I could take a smaller amount for a monthly income that would continue to be paid to DeVonne until her death should I die before her.
Years ago a man retired from our A&E office at UCLA and took the full amount. He was in good health and thought he could easily outlive his wife. He died of a heart attack within 30 days after retiring and left his wife with only what he had received as a lump sum payment at his retirement. There was nothing she could do to change it. I chose the third option that gives DeVonne the protection she will need if I go first. I could have taken the lump sum option, which in my case would have amounted to about $60,000.00, but in keeping my records for IRS, etc., I found that within three years after I had retired I had used up all the $60,000.00 which is about how long my money would have lasted had I taken option No. 1. Currently I am nearly nine years into my retirement so I am way ahead.
I don’t know what options, if any, Dad had when he retired. I only know that had he gone before Mother she would have only had her Social Security to fall back on. Fortunately, Dad outlived Mother by four months. Dad was nearly six years younger than Mother so he may have felt confident that he would outlive her. To me the risk is too great. One never knows when or how his life may be taken.
Except for Church positions I have been called to since retiring, I have pretty well done just as I please. For a while I played golf at least once a week but I couldn’t coax DeVonne into learning the game and playing with me so I switched over to tennis, which is her game, and we have played together almost since we first moved to Westlake Village. We really got into it when we started playing with Willard and Nadine Tate in 1982. We played three days a week for a few years but DeVonne and I finally cut it down to twice a week. The Tates are a few years younger than us and they continued to play singles on the days we didn’t. When they moved up to Lake Arrowhead in September of 1988 we had a hard time finding anyone else to play with us. Finally, we found Dave and Carolyn Barber who could play for a while as he was out of a job for a couple of months. After he started working again that was the end of that. In January of 1989 we started our work in the California Ventura Mission Office in Ventura and we quit tennis altogether.
In December of 1986 Stewart and Dorothy Burton took us to Santa Barbara for a day’s outing and since then we have gone many places together. Our trips have usually been for a day or even only a few hours; still, we have enjoyed a few overnight trips together. We enjoy their company and all four of us get along very well. We probably will continue to go places with them for some time to come.
I spent six years on the Church’s French Extraction Program starting in 1982 and was released in 1988. I spent an average of one day a week at the Stake Center and put in three to four hours each time I went. I ended with 1040 hours before I finished.
I enjoy going to the Temple and before our mission call I had been averaging going twice a month and doing three endowment session each trip for a total of six for the month. Since January 1989 I had only done one session as of the end of August. However, in September I got in my six sessions again and I hope to be able to continue at that pace until I complete 1000 endowments by the end of 1990.
DeVonne and I have visited many doll shows around the area since I retired. We have gone to several in Santa Barbara and as far east as Pasadena. We have also attended some rock and mineral shows and miniature shows.
We’re not much for going to the movies as there seem to be very few that appeal to us. We usually wait for the shows we want to see to be shown on television. One season we went to several outdoor stage productions put on locally in Thousand Oaks that were quite well performed. We have been to the Moorpark Melodrama theatre a number of times. It is similar to the old “Drunkard” theatre that was in downtown Los Angeles. We have gone to Solvang to their Summerfest outdoor theatre three times and never had a bad performance. Since they have shows appealing to our nature we probably will continue to go to them. We stay overnight after the show and have a nice breakfast before returning home. Solvang is about 100 miles north of Westlake Village. For the 1989-90 season we have tickets to go to the Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera. Showings are at the Lobero Theatre and include “The Sound of Music,” “Man of La Mancha,” “Damn Yankees” and “My Fair Lady.” The Shows will be performed between October 1989 and June 1990. We have four tickets to each performance and will take some of our friends and children to them.
I really like retirement. I have no desire to return to work. I felt the same when I finished school at Stanford. I did not want anymore schooling. Our retirement income is adequate, and I receive an annual increase of at least 2 % each year. We seem to have everything we need or want and if we don’t we go out and buy it. Both DeVonne and my wants have always been conservative. We feel that we can take care of ourselves for some time to come without putting any burden on our children.