The Last Lecture

Shaun Assael talks to his retirement-resistant 88-year-old dad about what it means to stop working.

“Dad in the 70s, a star at NYU.”

One of the things I remember most clearly about growing up was falling asleep to the clatter of my Dad’s IBM Selectric. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing in his study down the hall, only that he was a business professor, and a lot of companies came to him for help. As they say, he was big in the ‘70s. 

When I was a freshman at NYU and Dad was the chairman of its marketing department, I couldn’t imagine life as a writer, so I imagined a life like his. I enrolled in pre-MBA classes, including one that involved calculus. Two weeks into the semester, the professor pulled me aside and said, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but you should consider dropping out.” Pig-headed, I stuck with it, cheating with my roommate — the son of a foreign diplomat — to eke out a passing grade.

It was always a big deal when the annual issue of Who’s Who arrived at our house and Dad was in it. A few months ago, I was in the archives of my local library in North Carolina and came across a copy from the early 1980s. Turning to it, there he was, enduring as ever.

A few years ago, in his mid-80s, Dad flirted with retirement. I’d been eager for him to start a new chapter, full of new things. Traveling with Mom. Becoming an expert on a new topic. (Baking bread! Dunkirk!) I have friends close to his age who’ve done it: walked away, never looked back, reinvented themselves well into their 70s. But the most he allowed was to surrender his full-time teaching spot to someone younger and move into an only slightly less demanding adjunct role.

His colleagues threw him a party at a pricey New York restaurant, and for the first time, I saw all the people he’d mentored in one place, thanking him for their careers. His words were warm, his resolve to keep working alongside them still strong.

I was surprised at how that intimate afternoon unsettled me. I was frustrated, irritated even. Why was he hanging on? Why was he subjecting himself to the withering glare of 20-year-old students when he could be on a year-long cruise with Mom? Why was he trying so hard to fight time?

I was asking these questions because I love my dad, so it’s my right to worry about him. But then, as his colleagues toasted him, it hit me: He’d never looked happier. I wasn’t worried about him. It was me that I was worried about. All the questions I was asking about him were the ones I was putting off asking myself.

Though Dad has always been a role model, the one thing he hasn’t been able to show me is how to move on to “what’s next.” Last summer, he called to let me know that he’d made a momentous decision. He and Mom are in good health, and they wanted to travel more. The fall 2023 semester, when he’d turn 88, would be his last. On his final day of teaching in December, I sent him my congratulations. But two weeks later, the reviews from his students came in and they were some of the best of his career. He’d absolutely crushed it.

“Maybe I’ll come back for one more,” he told me.

As more members of his generation think the same way and work into their 90s, I sense a strange schism developing. Buffeted by burn-out — and perhaps buoyed by the stock market — my generation is the first to start considering retiring thirty years younger than our parents.

I wanted to talk to Dad about this. So I called him and said, “I want to write about retiring. What does it mean to you?”

A few years ago, in his mid-80s, Dad flirted with retirement. I’d been eager for him to start a new chapter, full of new things. Traveling with Mom. Becoming an expert on a new topic. (Baking bread! Dunkirk!) I have friends close to his age who’ve done it: walked away, never looked back, reinvented themselves well into their 70s. But the most he allowed was to surrender his full-time teaching spot to someone younger and move into an only slightly less demanding adjunct role.

It took him a few beats to reply. “I think it’s always meant trying to figure out what else would interest me,” he started. “Reading a lot. Learning how to play the guitar. I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out. If it meant not teaching, I always thought of it as a challenge.”

Wasn’t there someone he admired in retirement, someone who might serve as a role model?

“Admired, admired,” he repeated, turning the word around. Finally, he hit on his father. My grandfather worked as a wool importer until his 70s, then moved my grandmother from the home where they raised their kids to an apartment on the Upper East Side. One of my most vivid in a long line of memories was visiting them after they’d just seen Madonna’s 1991 concert movie, Truth or Dare. Even in their early 80s, they were cool-hunters.

I didn’t expect my dad to run out to see Taylor Swift’s Eras movie, but his answer begged the question: Did he ever look to his dad for an example, the way I was looking to him? Or, put a slightly different way, “Doesn’t doing the same thing get old, even if you don’t feel old?”

Henry and Alyce this past New Year’s Eve.

His antique swivel chair squeaked as he leaned back in it. “You know, I started teaching pretty much on the day you were born,” he said. “And the expectation back then was that students were there to listen, to be lectured to. It was a one-way street. So I’d just stand up and talk. And I wasn’t always sterling.”

“What changed?”

“It was the kids as much as me. They became more interactive, so I had to be, too. I’m a slow learner. It took until my 70s. But I started listening. And then it became a conversation, a two-way street.”

“It energized you.”

“Yes. But it also scared me. There’s always insecurity walking into a class of undergraduates. And here I am, about to turn 89. It’s a challenge, to say the least, staying up on the things that interest them.”

I’d never thought of Dad as scared, much less driven by fear. But it made sense. Putting himself in front of students who were seventy years his junior was a test of his ability to keep growing, no matter his age. It was courageous in a way I hadn’t considered.

At the same time, it made it hard for him to understand professions that are less welcoming to aging.

“What would you say if I told you I wanted to quit journalism?” I asked.

This stopped him. “I’d try to talk you out of it. You love writing. Why would you stop doing what makes you happy?”

I have a list of answers. I’ve spent every day since I was 17 doing pretty much the same thing, too: chasing the next story. But journalism isn’t academia. There’s no such thing as tenure. Instead, it’s all about buyouts and layoffs and bots these days. My heart broke reading about how Sports Illustrated recently tried passing off AI-generated content with fake bylines.

“What would you say if I told you I wanted to quit journalism?” I asked. This stopped him. “I’d try to talk you out of it. You love writing. Why would you stop doing what makes you happy?” I have a list of answers. I’ve spent every day since I was 17 doing pretty much the same thing, too: chasing the next story. But journalism isn’t academia. There’s no such thing as tenure. Instead, it’s all about buyouts and layoffs and bots these days.

And for all its egalitarianism, journalism is ruthlessly ageist. I remember talking to a big-time bylined writer who’d gone Hollywood and was in a race to finish as many screenplays as he could by his mid-50s because, as he put it, “No one gets a job in Hollywood after 60.”

I’d worked as a magazine writer at ESPN for a quarter century when, at the age of 57, I got swept up in a wave of layoffs. The network bought out the remaining time on my contract, so there was a soft landing. But the world I got thrown into was changed, particularly book publishing, which has been reshaped by consolidation and formula. An editor at a major house recently got excited about a major sports biography I’ve spent the last few years developing, only to see it shredded in the maw of his “review committee.” He apologized that he couldn’t buy it, telling my agent, “If only it was five years ago…”

But burnout didn’t feel like enough of an answer for Dad. So I remembered a quote I’d recently read from Paul Westerberg, the 64-year-old front-man from The Replacements. Asked why he hasn’t released an album of new music in twenty years, despite writing prolifically, he replied,  “Sometimes, you just have to keep a few for yourself.”

Father, left, and son, right, recently in Queens.

I ran the sentiment by Dad, albeit with fewer details. (Explaining The Replacements would have taken a lot more time than Taylor Swift.) Then I felt him processing. One of the oddities of having parents in their 80s and 90s is that you continue looking for their approval, and I’ve always had a ready answer when they asked what I’m working on. But here I was, asking for his permission to back off, to not have an answer, to stop while he was still going. It seemed, well, childish of me.

He brought up my mom, who’s spent a lifetime painting without a major art world show, yet she continues to evolve and please herself, not to mention the rest of us. (Our home is filled with her work.) “Recognition isn’t as important as being happy,” he said finally. “What makes you happy? That’s the most important question.”

I was still unsure how to separate the two, but I thanked him for his advice. I also told him I’d call in a few days to see what he’d decided about returning to teaching.

When I did, he surprised me. “I’ve decided not to come back,” he said.

“Really,” I said, being cautious. “But those reviews…”

He mentioned a couple of minor health things, but mostly the desire to end on a high note. “I can’t say I’m happy,” he told me. “But I think I made the right decision.”

Dad mentioned reading more and returning to his long-neglected stamp collection. He’s also preparing to leave with Mom on a cruise through the Panama Canal.  “I think there’s plenty to keep me busy,” he said.

As I look at my next thirty years, I’m not sure what’s ahead. But it makes me happy to think that Dad and I might be able to discover it together, with plenty of time to be role models for each other.