When Kathie Swift took an early retirement package from the Iowa State Fair in late 2004, she was looking forward to a hard-earned break from long workdays. She imagined filling her days traveling, taking Russian classes, volunteering and whatever else she felt like doing. But after about six months, she decided to rejoin the ranks of the working class.

Thomas Phillips didn’t even entertain the idea of not working after he retired from Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. in August. Even before his retirement became final, he had already lined up his next job.

“I’ve not been one to say I’d like to be a couch potato or sit and do nothing,” Phillips said. “I like golf, but I don’t see myself trying to turn pro or trying to play every day.”

In the coming years, expect to see more examples of people like Swift and Phillips who don’t view retirement as a time to settle into a routine of playing golf or traveling cross country in a recreational vehicle. A survey released last month by the Pew Research Center suggests that people’s expectations about retirement are changing. Among more than 1,200 non-retired survey respondents, 77 percent said they expected to work for pay after they retire. That’s a sharp contrast to the 27 percent of current retirees in the Pew survey who reported having worked for pay at some point during their retirements.

“I’m healthy, and as long as I continue to be, I plan to look for opportunities to give back to the community as a volunteer as well as providing professional expertise,” Phillips said.

Also, the age at which people retire or expect to retire has been creeping up since the mid-1990s. The average age at which the retired group of survey respondents left the work force was 57.8 years. The average age at which the working population in the survey expects to retire is 61.

It doesn’t appear that financial reasons explain why people are waiting longer to retire and then continuing to work after leaving their careers. A majority of the working people in the Pew survey, 60 percent, said they plan to work after retirement because they want to. This is true for Swift and Phillips, who both took on work during retirement that allows them to hone skills from their careers while doing things they find meaningful. At the same time, they also realized they didn’t want to carry the full schedules they once had, so they made sure their new jobs offered flexibility.

Kathie Swift, Testimony to Tolerance

Swift ended her 26-year career with the Iowa State Fair in late 2004, when she retired as the event’s public relations director. She was 63 at the time, and she decided that she wanted to “go out on a high note” after record-breaking attendance at the 2004 Sesquicentennial fair.

After leaving the fair, Swift dove deeper into volunteer work in the community through organizations such as the Windsor Heights Foundation, the Friendship Force of Greater Des Moines and the Salisbury House Foundation. She was in the process of lining up an instructor for Russian lessons as a refresher course for her college studies of the language when she found out she had to have surgery for a carotid artery. That minor health scare got her thinking about changing her course.

“I wasn’t looking for a job at that point at all, but sometimes you get called to look around and see the greater world and what role you can play in it,” Swift said. “There is so much you can do right close to home.”

She heard about an opening in May last year at the Des Moines Public Library for a half-time education coordinator for Testimony to Tolerance, an initiative that uses testimonies of Holocaust survivors to fight bigotry and injustice. It sounded like the perfect opportunity for Swift, who has been interested in the Holocaust for the past 20 years after visiting concentration camps in Germany and Poland. She applied for the education coordinator job and was hired in June 2005.

Des Moines is one of only two cities in the country to have a Testimony to Tolerance program. The program is supported by the Shoah Foundation Institute, a non-profit organization started by “Schindler’s List” director Steven Spielberg. The Des Moines Central Library has 17 testimonies from people who experienced the Holocaust and settled in Iowa after World War II.

“The power of these messages amazes me,” Swift said. “You feel that if someone can be aware of someone else’s story of suffering, it’s going to make them think twice about something they might say or jokes they might laugh at about someone being different.”

Swift’s responsibilities began with building public awareness about the testimonies, and now she is working closely with educators on how the testimonies can be used in the classroom to teach students about the dangers of bigotry and prejudice. A third component to her job is helping schools start or expand diversity clubs.

She said she has used many of her skills she developed during her public relations career in this role, even though the position might have been intended for someone with an education background.

“I do a lot of public speaking and continue to use skills from my career to make the public aware of what we have to offer,” she said. “I still get to work with the media sometimes and do some writing and editing.”

Swift’s job was originally slated to end this past summer, but has been extended through December. The job is supposed to entail working about 20 hours a week, but that varies depending on what projects she’s working on. Swift likes that the work is “unstructured” in that she sets her own schedule based on the work at hand. This gives her some additional flexibility with her time that she didn’t have while working at the fair.

Another benefit to Swift’s current job is that she can take time off in the summer, whereas that was impossible while she worked at the fair. This past August, she traveled to New Orleans with a group of volunteers from JustFaith, a group of people who are concerned about peace and justice issues. The group assisted residents in hurricane-damaged areas.

After Swift’s term with the Testimony to Tolerance ends, she plans to continue working, although she isn’t sure yet what that work might involve. One idea she is batting around is going to China to teach English.

“I have a friend who is still in the work force who said she can’t wait to retire so she can finally clean her closets,” Swift said. “Nobody will ever accuse me of cleaning my closets. I’m excited about opportunities to do something new and learn something new.”

Thomas Phillips, Teachers, Coaches and Professionals Inc.

Phillips, 63, retired at the end of August as Pioneer’s community investment director. He announced his retirement early this year to begin his transition of leaving Pioneer to start Teachers, Coaches and Professionals Inc., a consulting company he formed with his wife, Carline, to serve educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

“Just like there is lifelong learning, I think there is lifelong teaching as well,” Phillips said.

Phillips said TCP melds his interests with those of his wife, an adjunct professor at Drake University who holds a doctorate in curriculum and instructional technology. Phillips said he and Carline were both fortunate to have many mentors and coaches in their lives who helped them become successful, and now they want to use their work experience to help others, both on a volunteer basis and through their business.

This isn’t the first time they have worked together. They tried this same type of business in Chicago in 1992 on a part-time basis.

“The major change would be that up to this point since we’ve been living in Des Moines, we’ve both been doing our own things,” Carline Philips said. “Now we have more opportunities to collaborate. Thomas is a natural when it comes to presenting and working with people, and having my background in teaching, we have a vast array of experiences.”

Currently, TCP’s largest client is Pioneer, as Phillips continues some of the projects he was working on there. One example is the Des Moines Art Center. In the past, Pioneer had allowed Phillips time out of the workday to help the Art Center with its capital campaign, and now Pioneer hires TCP so Phillips can continue that project as a consultant on behalf of the company.

Although some of Phillips’ current projects mirror what he had done at Pioneer, he expects to broaden the scope of his work in the near future. He would like to teach workshops or business courses and serve as a professional mentor to a range of non-profit organizations. He’s particularly interested in projects that involve helping students prepare for entering the work force.

“I taught an intro to business course at [Des Moines Area Community College] a couple of years ago and I really enjoyed it,” Philips said, “but I found the schedule to be pretty demanding at the time. Now that I’m retired from Pioneer, I will have the opportunity, should I elect to do that, to go back and teach a class or serve as a guest lecturer.”

And though his work schedule before retirement had made it difficult to be involved with as many charitable groups as he would have liked, he will now have more time to give to organizations of his choosing.

“Community development is truly a 24-7 project,” Phillips said. “If you’re going to be successful in the community development area, which Pioneer was, you devote time beyond the workday to different fundraising events. What we are looking for now is going from that 24-7 position to something more like 12-7.

“We’ve been blessed to work in the corporate world and have some financial resources that now we can afford to pull back from the 70-hour weeks. We are in this business as more of a service than a salary-demanding situation.”

Phillips said he has had to make some adjustments from reporting to work at Pioneer every day to working out of his home. He likes that he “doesn’t need an alarm clock,” that he saves time on commuting to work and that he has more time to visit his family. But he also misses his co-workers and the administrative support he once had.

“One of the things I’ll deal with more now is evaluating my productivity,” Phillips said. “So far I’d give myself a passing grade.”

Carline Phillips said she likes the change of having her husband around home more and working with him on some projects, although their offices are on two different levels in their home.

“After 40 years of marriage, we’re good friends and we work really well together,” she said.