Men Still at Work: Professionals Over Sixty and on the Job (10 page)

When it comes to masculinity, the military is one institution that holds a prominent place in the public’s mind as the bailiwick of powerful men. Military service has historically been synonymous with patriotism, courage, might,
and
masculinity. The father of the next man you will read about embodied all those qualities. Chris Walsh’s father was an admiral in the US Navy who commanded a squadron of nuclear missile submarines. According to Chris, his father’s powerful aura affected all three of his children, and it wasn’t until Chris was fifty that his father let him know how proud he was of Chris’s accomplishments. Chris, now sixty-one, is an architect serving his second term in the state legislature. Retirement is nowhere on his radar screen; he has too many other plans.

Profile: John Christopher Walsh

Chris Walsh’s father, a highly successful naval officer and a hard worker, was a big influence on his son’s early years. Graduating from the Naval Academy at the close of World War II, Jack Walsh worked in naval intelligence and commanded several submarines, eventually commanding a squadron of nuclear missile submarines and achieving the rank of admiral. It is hard for Chris to believe that his father, now eighty-nine, is prey for Internet and telephone scammers who take advantage of and abuse the elderly. “Part of elder caregiving,” according to Chris, “is morning coffee with my dad and keeping a step ahead of the scammers. I systematically delete junk from my dad’s computer so he doesn’t see it, and try to intercept any checks he writes to suspicious groups. I also had to make the decision to stop him from driving.” Chris sees caregiving as a learning experience. “With our children we go from heavy involvement to lesser involvement over the years; with our parents we reverse that and go from lesser to heavy involvement. It’s hard to watch a man who was in charge of submarines be frustrated by his checkbook.”

Shelia Walsh, Chris’s mother, influenced him in a different fashion. As was typical in the 1950s and 1960s, she was the primary caregiver and, in a military family, often functioned as a single parent for long stints. “My mother was the creative personality with the big and interesting ideas; she was mercurial but very nurturing.” Beset with many years of health issues, including strokes and near total blindness, there is very little left of the élan that was her hallmark, explains Chris. Sadly, it is sometimes a struggle to remember her former personality.

As the son of a navy man, Chris experienced frequent moves around the country while he was growing up. His college years were equally checker-boarded: he enrolled in and dropped out of one school after another, with stints as a waiter, bartender, salesman, and delivery van driver along the way; always, however, taking night classes in diverse subjects, such as linguistics, welding, botany, and Chinese poetry. In retrospect, the van-driving job was fortuitous: it was for an architecture firm where Chris interacted with some of the world’s leading architects. In a bizarre and almost comical set of circumstances, his causing an extensive ten-car, slow-speed accident prompted the architects to invite him to “turn in the keys,” come inside, and
draw
, at which point he began to take architecture night classes. He later completed his degree in the five-year architecture program at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and there he met his future wife, Cindy.

Architecture being a somewhat nomadic profession for a young man, Chris moved from Manhattan to Dallas and eventually to Massachusetts where he, Cindy, and their two small children relocated so Chris could open his own architecture firm. They temporarily moved into his parents’ spacious antique house in Framingham to get a better sense of where in New England they wanted to settle down. Some twenty-six years later, there they remain. As his dad and mom aged, it became clear that the home they loved was becoming dangerous and they were at risk of injury on the rickety staircases. To prolong the ability of his parents to live at home, Chris designed and had built an extension onto the house with a handicapped-accessible suite of rooms for them.

Four years ago when Chris was fifty-seven, he made a career move that he had been contemplating for some time: a run for state representative. The incumbent won that 2008 race, but Chris came close, losing by one hundred votes. Emboldened rather than discouraged, he ran against the incumbent again in 2010 and won. A Democrat, he represents the Sixth Middlesex District, encompassing some forty thousand people or close to two-thirds of Framingham, the largest
town
in Massachusetts. He serves on three House committees: Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities; Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development; and Transportation.

In Massachusetts, state representatives have to run for reelection every two years; and in 2012 Chris was elected to a second term. He is the only architect serving in the State House. “The last time there was an architect in the State House was in 1886,” he tells me. “One of my goals is to encourage more architects to run for the legislature. People trained in design are good at conceptualizing; they tend to be good at redefining a problem or reframing a question so it can be solved.” He points, as one example, to the popular shopping malls on busy Route 9 that drained business away from downtown Framingham. “Downtown is no longer a retail center, so what is it? How can it be transformed? I see that as a design problem.”

When I asked Chris to talk about his career change, he surprised me by insisting it was
not
a career change. First of all, he still considers himself an architect. Then too, in his view, architecture and serving in the state legislature are quite similar. “Both require you to be interested in the quality of the environment, be able to listen well to your clients/constituents, understand how things work or not work, and figure out which pieces affect a situation so you can solve a problem and make things better.”

He explained that his decision to close down his architecture practice was driven in part by the high cost of liability insurance, especially for a sole practitioner. A legislator can influence local and state affairs without carrying liability insurance. He also realized that he needed a bigger playing field to get things done, that is, the leverage a seat in the legislature affords. “I suppose if I had been fabulously famous as a sole practitioner, it would have been harder to close up shop. Given the recession and the continuing economic slump, however, it was a good decision.

“My current job and my interests match up well. It meets my need to tinker—with things, with ideas about improving the quality of life not only in our community but also more broadly, attending to the environment, education, transportation, and being a caring society. That’s what is important. On the downside, it doesn’t pay all that well, so I am less successful in a monetary sense. When one hops around over the years career-wise as I have, it’s hard to amass a fortune.”

Chris’s wife, Cindy, runs her own business called Red Rover Clothing. She designs and manufactures women’s outerwear and accessories, including jackets, pullovers, and capes made of Polartec, scarves and baby gifts. Her studio is located in a nineteenth-century clapboard building adjoining Framingham’s historic town common. “Cindy’s business is amazingly time-consuming. She works intensely, sewing most of the goods herself,” Chris says admiringly. “Aside from the fact that she’s always doing something, always on the go, the family depends on her and the business that she has created from scratch.”

When I asked Chris whether Cindy agreed with his career move, he said that she was not overly enthusiastic about his run for state representative the first time because she dislikes politics in general and campaigning in particular. When he ran again, she was not happy. “Making a major move at my age was tricky for both of us. However, I visualized it, I went for it, and once I won, she relaxed or at least became resigned to it. I do my thing, she does hers, but we continue to do a lot of things together.” They also enjoy sailing, camping, reading, gardening, and travel, activities that “fit into small crevices” of time. “Cindy and I are both workers, so down time has become incredibly important.”

It is clear that Chris knows himself well. “I’m a joiner. Being a state rep fits my personality. I enjoy campaigning, listening to people (complaints and all) and attending dinners. I try to work smarter, not harder. Still, I admit to being tightly wound and driven by fear—a fear of being unsuccessful drives me to try harder. Actually, what I am really looking for is
respect
for what I accomplish. You might say that my father’s aura got to all three of his children.” Chris reveals that his sister, a talented playwright, shares a similar fear; and his brother, also an architect, was laid off during the recession and has not worked for several years. “I think it wasn’t until I was fifty that my dad let me know how proud he was of me. All this introspection may come across as narcissism, or, in a better light, it may simply be what prods me to try to accomplish more.”

Does Chris aspire to higher office? “Not really. As a state legislator I have more potential influence for those community quality-of-life issues than I ever did as an architect. If I became state senator, I might have even more leverage, but a move like that would depend on a lot of reshuffling. In the game of politics the ball can bounce erratically. If it falls into your hands, you run with it. It can just as easily bounce crazily away. There are many, many moving parts.”

Chris would like to remain in office for at least a few more sessions. “I’ve just gotten started and I really believe my best work is yet to come,” he tells me. After that, there could be yet another career move, perhaps into teaching. Meanwhile, he is thinking about taking a master’s degree in public administration. Being one of the older House members, he is aware that he perhaps sees things a bit differently than other reps. He often reminds himself not to be “delusional,” that is, so attached to his own ideas that he cannot hear other people, other ideas or other alternatives. He cites a Zen koan: “The finger is not the moon.” This, in his view, means that pointing at something, naming it, defining it or putting his own expectations on it, does not necessarily make it so and says more about him than about the world.

Thoughts about masculinity and the military bring up gender issues. In January 2013 Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced the end of the military’s ban on female troops engaging in combat. Secretary Panetta and the chiefs said not everyone is going to be a combat soldier, but everyone is entitled to the opportunity, if qualified. It made many observers wonder whether the new policy of equality in combat operations is an important breakthrough for soldiers of either gender. While we cannot know how Dr. Mead would have responded were she here today, I can report some things she said about men and the often unforeseen consequences of women’s lib: On the one hand, a woman should be allowed to have children
and
do other things and have a style of life that doesn’t demand that she stay at home day in and day out waiting for the plumber to show up. On the other hand (she reminded us), we’ve forgotten that for every woman who is boxed up in the suburbs
there’s a man boxed up in a job
. Women’s lib forgets that
men’s
lives can be just as ruined by children as women’s! Following that rather daring remark, Dr. Mead next responded to a question about role reversal, that is, the man becoming a house-husband and the woman going off to the office: A man who can cook better than his wife should do the cooking. And if he is better at nursing the children when they are sick, he should be the nurse. However, in her candid assessment, “We haven’t gotten there yet.”

Can the idea that men suffer from being boxed up in their jobs be reconciled with John Gray’s picture of men (Martians) always doing things to prove themselves and develop their power and skills, defining their sense of self through their ability to achieve results, and experiencing fulfillment primarily through success and accomplishment? Wouldn’t a man who feels trapped in his job eagerly look forward to retiring as soon as possible? Or would a powerful need to prove himself keep him on the job and trying to achieve results? It turns out that reality is not so black and white. If it is “axiomatic that a man’s professional identity or work role fundamentally shapes the organization of his life,”
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there are many things to consider carefully when that professional identity or work role nears its end. In the next chapter we will look at today’s economic environment and the factors that are most likely to influence a man’s decision to retire or stay on the job.