"There are no second acts in American lives," F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. But Fitzgerald died at 44, so what the hell did he know about the subject?
Ethel Merman was a stenographer before she got rhythm, Jackie Mason a rabbi before he was a comedian. Before their presidencies, Woodrow Wilson was an academic, Harry S. Truman a haberdasher. Like a Shakespeare play, Richard Nixon's life had five acts -- rising star, has-been, president, pariah, eminence.
The simple fact is that radical life transformations are as peculiarly American as a ham sandwich on a bagel. And that's true now, more than ever, as the concept of corporate loyalty recedes into history and technology requires constantly evolving skill sets. Fortunately, a heartening number of second actors find their next stage a great improvement over the first one.
Nurse Bob
Bob Seymore was shocked. You'd be shocked, too, if you'd worked for the same medical-equipment company for more than two decades and suddenly found your whole department the victim of a re-org -- the preferred euphemism for a sudden mass firing.
"I was 55 and out of a job," Bob says. He'd just finished renovating the kitchen in his Florida home. He had a mortgage, child support and other assorted expenses of a vigorous family man -- including the bills for his hobby, skydiving. "For the first time in 25 years, I started looking for work."
Three years before the axe fell, Bob's company named him Salesman of the Year. He consistently placed in the top 10 percent of the sales force. Still, Bob was philosophical about what had happened. "They could hire three younger guys for what they were paying me, and those guys could probably bump into enough business to equal what I did," he said. "Business is about the bottom line. From a moral standpoint, it stinks, but I understand."
Every day for a month, Bob put on a suit and tie, and went to his home office and sent out resumes -- hundreds of them. The result: nothing, nada, not a nibble. "I discovered that, if you are over 45, you cannot get a job."
After about a year, Bob found one. It paid a quarter of what he'd been earning and it lasted about six months. Then the company moved out of Florida. "It was just before Christmas. We were so despondent we didn't have a Christmas tree for three years."
He continued to struggle. "I worked in grocery stores, I worked in pet stores. For a while I tried to start a pet-sitting business." His wife was a comfort. "She'd seen the same thing happen to her father at IBM."
Bob investigated government retraining programs. "If I'd wanted to become a welder or a massage therapist, I could get help. But for a white-collar worker like me, there was nothing."
After too many job fairs at which he was the oldest guy in the room, Bob realized he needed a plan that would lead to a job with some security. He decided to become a surgical lab technician, until a friend suggested he go to school a little longer and become a registered nurse. "So 35 years after college, there I was attending classes with 19 and 20 year olds. Talk about culture shock."
But Bob had an advantage: experience. "I was informed. I knew a lot about diseases and available treatments. I made some friends and I was in the top 15 percent of my class."
He graduated and started looking for work. "I wanted ICU or emergency-room work, but the special units are resistant to older people."
The jobs he found in Florida were too far away to justify their commuting costs. It was time to move. Bob and his wife settled on Johnson City, Tennessee -- an inexpensive place to live within easy reach of Richmond, Virgina, where both have family. They moved in November 2005 and Bob found a job on the night shift in the ER of Northside Hospital.
It was a difficult transition, but Bob's new job is a perfect fit. "I'm 60 and I've got a whole new career. To get it, I had to go to school for two years, and I earn what I used to pay in taxes."
Yet he doesn't mind. Why should he? He's doing work he loves. "I am highly motivated and I don't like the mundane," he says. Working in the ER scratches that itch in a way selling medical equipment never could. Bob Seymore lost his job but found his calling. "A lot of people get trapped in their jobs," he says. "I know I was."
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