Elderly Sisters: Their Best Time is Now : 2 Sisters Are Determined to Make Their Retirement Years the Time of Their Lives

DES MOINES, Iowa —  Gladys Burkhead and her sister, Viola Spratlen, got into a cab the other day and the cabbie began smoking. Poor cabbie.

“The guy was smoking and I just had a fit,” Gladys said. She and Viola are annoyed by second-hand smoke and they aren’t shy about saying so.

“He said it was his cab and I said we were paying the bill. I said, ‘If that’s the way you feel about it, we’ll just get out right here.’ And we did. I said, ‘Don’t pay him, Viola,’ but she did,” said Gladys, 83.

“When you’re old, you can bawl people out,” said Viola, 78, with a laugh. “When we order a cab we ask ‘em not to smoke. I wouldn’t have done that 20 years ago.”

Why not? “You just don’t. You wouldn’t have the nerve to do it.”

“I think the difference is, I’ve survived all these years, and since I did survive, I can say more what I want to,” Gladys said. “I’ve just got a few more years left, why not do some of the things the way I want them done?”

Gladys and Viola surely do things their own way. They own their own home, live frugally on savings and Social Security, collect and mend clothing for the poor and nurture a neighborhood association Gladys founded 10 years ago.

Gladys, the sprier of the two, keeps a tidy yard and garden, coordinates volunteers who plant flowers in the median of a 23-block-long boulevard, and can’t imagine being bored.

“Well, I know what I would have done if you weren’t here,” she said. “I was going to start on the north side and trim down all the vines that have grown up in the lilacs and then go around and finish the other sides.”

“I would have thought of something to do, too,” Viola said. “She does the outside work and I do the inside work. You can’t have two people in the same house work on a garden. We’ve got more friends who complain that so and so went right out and mowed over the petunias.”

The sisters agree that good health is critical for older people, but being happy has more to do with a cheery outlook than a perfect checkup.

“When you give up, it takes a long time to die,” Gladys said. “Grandma Perkins inspired me. The last day she lived, she mowed her yard, picked it all up, pulled weeds and went to bed and died. She was 89.”

Viola has trouble walking, making it a struggle reaching their second-floor living quarters. “The only time my knees don’t hurt is when I’m sitting still. But I’ve always said that if I can’t walk I’m going to crawl.”

Thirty years ago, they bought their 2 1/2-story home near Drake University and until three years ago they ran a small day-care center on the first floor. Their major expenses are health insurance, food and taxes. They don’t have a car and are happy to depend on buses and cabs. Viola takes a few day trips with a seniors group and both visit Viola’s daughter, Lucille, in Arizona once a year.

Getting old, they say, has been a lark.

“Land, yes, it’s easier when you’re older,” they said, almost in unison.

“When you’re young,” Gladys said, “you’re not very smart. You’ve got to make decisions that last the rest of your life.

“When you’re older, that’s all over with.”

“Now I don’t have a worry in the world,” Viola said. “I used to worry about Lucille. Now I let her do the worrying.”

The sisters, born to a farm family in the central Iowa town of Prole, also say there are improvements that have made life easier for older people, such as good cars, indoor plumbing, central heating and the like. But those are just the trimmings. They’d be happy being old no matter what the year.