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Lounging on the beach or playing a round of golf every day doesn’t appeal to these Greater Des Moines residents. They are part of a growing trend of people who never fully retire from the work force, simply because they don’t want to.

According to the AARP Public Policy Institute, the proportion of Americans 65 and older still in the labor force was 16 percent in 2007, compared with 10.8 percent in 1985. One of the top reasons: personal enrichment. Here’s how three people have remained active beyond the retirement eligibility mark.

ANNE LOHMEIER
Age: 58
Previous career: speech pathologist, Heartland Area Education Agency
New job: owner, Lohmeier Consulting Services

Retirement is not a word Anne Lohmeier uses. She prefers “graduation from full-time employment with benefits.”

In fact, Lohmeier’s schedule is so full with consulting work, playing with her grandchildren, volunteering and traveling with her husband and friends that she now needs a calendar to remember it all.

“I feel like I’m being programmed full time and my husband laughs and teases me a little bit and says, “Who is it that sets up your schedule?'” she said. “But the beauty of it is flexibility, and even with my consulting business, I can say that it won’t work for me. I’m being very selective with that in terms of: Is this really meeting my mission and my purpose?”

A year ago, Lohmeier panicked when Heartland Area Education Agency, where she had worked for 34 years, gave her and a few other employees the chance to retire early. With no plan, she worried about contributing to society. “I couldn’t imagine not being purposeful,” she said.

But then the New York City Department of Education called Heartland right as Lohmeier was preparing to leave, looking for someone who could help it rework its entire speech pathology program. Thus started Lohmeier Consulting Services.

As soon as she retired, she started designing programs for New York City’s speech pathology department and devising a plan for implementing the programs. She flies to the Big Apple about once every two months, spending a few days working with the special education director and speech pathologists, and giving presentations. She’s also a consultant for the state of Kansas, where she helps train speech pathologist trainers.

A desire to spend more time with her two grandchildren in Des Moines and one-on-the-way in New Zealand encouraged Lohmeier to retire early, but her and her husband’s business ventures (he was retired for four months before becoming a partner in a garage door business eight years ago) have changed their vision of retirement. They purchased beachfront property in New Zealand, where one son lives, with the intention of spending four to six months a year there. They have now sold it, realizing they don’t want to be away from their grandchildren that long, especially with their son’s family planning to leave New Zealand in a few years.

Still, Lohmeier said, “I feel like for the first time in my life I’ve really had balance in my life. I can allocate time for profession and family and friends and travel, and I think it’s helping me be a little easier-going.”

She now spends full days in the office, one day a week with her two granddaughters, early mornings training with her husband at the gym, time volunteering as a member of the Altoona Campus’ board of directors, member of the Altoona Planning and Zoning Commission and pre-marriage counselor for young Catholic couples, among other commitments.

A flexible work schedule has been a luxury, which she attributes to her husband, an accountant, who planned out their financial future, as well as the continuing benefits from the school system. “I count those blessings every single day,” she said.

H. KENNARD BUSSARD
Age: 71
Previous career: founder of the architecture firm that became RDG Planning & Design
New job: consultant, RDG Consult LLC, a subsidiary of the firm

When Kennard Bussard travels south for the winter, he heads to Des Moines, where he works 10- to 12-hour days as a consultant for RDG Planning & Design. His summers are spent in Door County, a Wisconsin peninsula that juts out into Lake Michigan, teaching a class, building things or taking back-road drives in his 1928 Model A Ford sports coupe.

“I feel blessed to have the opportunity to continue my career doing what I do best and for the joy of doing it,” he said. “In my case, doing meaningful architectural and planning work gives me the gratification of making things better. It keeps me interested and energized.”

At the turn of the century, Bussard realized the importance of passing on the torch to the firm’s younger generation to ensure its survival. He stepped down as CEO of RDG, but started RDG Consult LLC, a subsidiary that has allowed him to remain involved by working on self-generated projects. He hopes his efforts will create an opportunity for other semi-retired architects to remain involved in the firm.

Bussard and his business partner, Jim Wilkins, founded Wilkins and Bussard Architects in 1966 (“We had no clients, no office, and no money … only a dream,” Bussard said). It started with a focus on designing schools, which grew into larger projects, such as Des Moines Area Community College’s Ankeny campus. His proudest project: renovating the state Capitol,which has been ongoing for more than 30 years.

The firm changed names several times to reflect ownership changes before becoming RDG. Since retiring, Bussard has taken pride in RDG’s growth, especially in its sports and wellness projects across the country.

His passion remains for school projects, which he attributes to his mother, who taught for 51 years. Now he is working with the West Des Moines Community School District on its 2010-2020 strategic plan; he helped create the first vision plan for 2000-2010 to account for the 1 percent sales tax that allowed the district to renovate many of its schools. He also is giving back, working with three partners on building a sustainable village for young mothers and their children in Uganda and mentoring young architects.

Bussard seeks short-term projects from Thanksgiving to May, when he and his wife, Mary, are in town. He admits that “the first couple of years were hard,” when he first stepped down from his leadership role at RDG, but he has not gotten involved in ownership decisions and has learned to be “just another guy” at the firm.

His architecture degree from Iowa State University is still his most influential experience, he said, and led him to California, where at age 27, he was involved in planning and designing a new university on 1,000 acres. Then, with three children, he moved his family back to Des Moines to start his own firm.

Bussard doesn’t rest well on vacations, such as his trip to Naples, Fla., in February, and he doesn’t play golf. For him, his passion is architecture, mentoring young people and spending time with people like him, who are in the “September of their careers.”

“There are many ways to stay active,” he said.

BOB BOBOWSKI
Age: ?
Previous career: owner, MaxiMail Inc.
New job: account manager,O Thirty-Two Design Group

Ask Bob Bobowski his age, and he’ll ask you how much money you have in your bank account. Ask him about marketing, and he’ll share stories all day.

“I’ve always believed that your attitude in business is how you feel about it and how you work in it, and not how old you are, because I’ve worked with people who were much younger than I, and I could swear they were ready to fall over,” said Bobowski, whose trademark is a hat – one for every day of the week.

A desire to be closer to their grandchildren caused Bobowski and his wife, Dorothy, to sell their marketing firm on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive and their condominium near Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago 10 years ago and move to Grimes. But that didn’t mean Bobowski was ready to retire from a more than 30-year career in marketing.

His new life is a bit quieter, without casino nights that brought around 40 advertising executives and corporate clients to their home, trips to New York City and other cities in the United States to work with clients and the Direct Marketing Association, serving on the board of Chicago’s Premium Industry Club, and work for the Catholic Church that included setting up the Papal Hotline with Illinois Bell for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Chicago – which got them front-row seats to watch Sir Georg Solti conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But Bobowski has found new opportunities in consulting and employee training for local corporations, speaking at universities and working full-time for O Thirty-Two Design Group.

“My wife, Dorothy, says, ‘You’re going to die mid-stride,'” he joked.

Bobowski joined o32 at the beginning of this year because its co-owner, Joe Nicholson, impressed him. “He reminds me of people in Chicago and New York,” Bobowski said. “He’s on the very cutting edge of new media.”

Bobowski’s role has been to bring in new business, using his connections and lack of fear in cold-calling executives to set up meetings with potential clients and give strategic presentations. “Having worked with (clients) in Chicago, all of a sudden you’re a member of the club and everybody accepts you,” Bobowski said.

Before starting his Chicago firm, Bobowski worked in the direct marketing divisions of several major advertising agencies, including J. Walter Thompson Advertising. He founded the ECHO Awards program, which has become one of the largest competitions for direct marketing in the world. He participated in a roast of Ted Turner, which included celebrities such as Gerald Ford, and got Art Linkletter to help market a fashion company that was trying to keep middle-aged sales representatives. His own firm provided direct-marketing services to clients including Deere & Co., General Motors Corp. and Citigroup Inc.

But advertising is not Bobowski’s only venture. “It’s kind of like a driving force inside me that says you’ve just seen something and, you know what, there’s a better way to do it. So what you do is you set up an enterprise to do it better,” he said. He hopes to pass this trait on to his five children and nine grandchildren.

He prefers skipping vacation, but occasionally he’ll escape to Florida or Canada to fish with his sons. He likes playing piano and volunteering for the Catholic Church. He even ran for a seat on the Grimes City Council, but lost.

Still, Bobowski admits he’s slowing down – just a little.

“As you go along, you find you enjoy just being together with your wife, listening to something on television or being at an event,” Bobowski said. “You slow down a little bit.”