Rural places and small towns lack the resource base for expensive professionalized services available in cities. By the same token, they often lack the multi-layered bureaucracies that make civic engagement difficult in cities (Holton et al., 2017). Both informal community life and essentials, like fire and ambulance services, requires a strong volunteer base in rural communities. But the workforce in small towns often leaves the community for work, dramatically depleting that volunteer resource base. Elders thus become not just the de facto volunteer labour pool, but the skilled volunteer labour pool available to literally maintain and innovate community life.

Nearly all of our interview participants mentioned being involved in multiple activities, on average about three different civic engagements per person. People were also involved in a number of state-wide organizations and political party activities in addition to their local civic engagement. Many were involved in local progressive groups to support the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, then shifted to the 2012 fight against the state government’s legislative priorities, and then shifted to local issues. So on the whole these are very involved people.

Our interview participants were involved in a very wide range of local civic activities. Church, often of particular importance for older and more rural communities,was mentioned frequently. Many were also engaged in developing and delivering services and activities for elders, from creating new senior centres to advocating for health care services to organizing recreational activities. A large number of our interviewees were involved in land and water conservation. Some were engaged in local opposition to powerlines and fracking; some were clearing and/or maintaining trails for silent sports. Some were involved in more traditional social services, from organizing after-school programs for children to providing food for families to supporting immigrants. A few of our interviewees worked on the development of local cultural activities—from concerts to theatres to libraries. Again, the type of work done by our subjects may not be representative of all of the work done by elder activists in rural communities, but they show the diversity of work elders do across communities.

Among the many elders we interviewed for this project, two broad categories of elder civic engagement emerged: those who were passionate about organizational work itself and those who were passionate about specific local issues. The first group was more likely to be men while the second group was more likely to be women. We interviewed individuals who had developed a wealth of skills in organizational areas such as by-laws writing, communications, strategic planning and fundraising. Many of these elders brought specific skills from careers in business or local government to the civic activism they pursued in retirement. While they had specific issues they were working on at the moment that they felt a personal connection to, several of these subjects expressed an interest and willingness to move from issue to issue, organization to organization, as the need for their specific skills arose.

But are elders recognized for these skills and knowledges? In this section we report first on how elders perceive themselves to be viewed by their community and the unique perspectives and assets elders believe they offer.

Viewing Elders as an Asset, Not a Burden

We somewhat naively expected that our elders would talk more about how aging in a society seemingly designed for youth would inhibit their civic engagement. We thought they would report feeling undervalued and overlooked, viewed primarily as beneficiaries of volunteer services and not as engines of civic life. While a few subjects mentioned a general feeling of being looked down upon for their age, the vast majority reported that they felt their age was either irrelevant to or regarded with respect by those in their community.

For some, age may simply not be significant to how they are treated or how they understand their role in civic activities. One person said ‘I don’t think they know how old I am.’ Another elaborated, ‘I don’t see that they see it [age] at all, I think they’re just happy to get anybody. I don’t think they look and say you’re too old or you’re too young, they just look at your interest level and what you think you’d like to do and what you’re capable of doing,’

Others, however, viewed their age as a critical part of what they had to offer their community. More importantly, they felt as though the people they worked with—even those much younger—recognized the value that elders brought.

One benefit elders saw themselves offer was a sense of history that the broader civic community values. ‘[Younger activists] were just fascinated to hear about organization from the anti-war movement, right? Because they didn’t have anything to relate to,’ One elder activist explained. ‘They’d never seen that amount… of people getting together, and they were just totally energized by that. They were thinking, ‘wow we can actually do something.’’ Others reported that they offered an institutional memory about what types of initiatives had worked, what had made a particular organization thrive in the past. ‘I think [elder status is] very much respected and valued and that’s why I was sought out for these projects.’

Another elder leader explained. ‘I have never felt any kind of age discrimination, or anything, very valued and people come to me and ask me ‘what have you done in the past, what worked before.’’.

Biographical Availability for Civic Engagement

For elders in these communities, retirement becomes more of a transition from one form of engagement to another—rather than a withdrawal from work, it is a redirection of elders’ energy and talent to civic and communal life. Retirement makes one available for civic work. One interview participant echoed a sentiment shared by many, saying ‘I don’t feel retired at all.’ Our interview participants spoke mostly of the advantages that retirement and age brought to their civic engagement.

Our respondents reflected on the things that had stood in their way of deeper civic engagement in earlier years: raising children, working full time, caring for aging relatives, managing a home and more. Others discussed how their civic engagement when younger had focused on supporting their children’s’ activities: fundraising through PTAs, coaching soccer teams, teaching Sunday school. As one subject described the difference that retirement made:

‘My experience has been it’s hard to find younger people who want to get involved, for the same reason that I had--they’re working, they have families, they have kids. It seems to me that retired people are the core of a lot of volunteer activity; everywhere I go where people are volunteering they all have grey hair or they’re getting there.’

The biographical availability granted by retirement is about more than just having a more open schedule. Several subjects reflected that their age and retirement status had granted them a patience to deal with some of the challenges of organizational work and take a big picture view of the problems in their community. Others reported that, in retirement, they could better balance civic work with the self-care that kept them going. One person explained that retirement facilitated engagement by, ‘Just having the time to organize my life in ways that make sense and get exercise and eat and sleep and all that kind of stuff.’

This renewed capacity for civic engagement led many to rethink the definition of retirement and what it means to be in an aging community. One elder activist argued that people should reframe their assumptions about the burdens of aging, ‘I don’t like it when people have an attitude that ‘you are a drain’ because you’re collecting social security, you’re not working anymore, because we are.’ Another saw their experience in retirement as a call to others to get more engaged, ‘I think we have to redefine what retirement should be…. How do we change that to mean, gee, come on and continue to contribute, especially If you can do that in the area that you have the knowledge in?’.

We do not normally think systematically about how elders provide the civic backbone of rural communities. It is clear across our sample—across different communities and different backgrounds—that the biographical availability granted to elders in retirement enables many to become the workhorses of our civic life.

Freedom for Civic Engagement

Elders value their post-retirement freedom to choose, and take charge of daily life, setting their own pace and their own expectations in a way not possible while they were in the work world. And this sense of taking charge extends to how people treat their civic engagement. As one person reflected: ‘Because retired people have time and can meet on a Sunday or whatever. They tended to be the primary movers or attendees at the meetings. ‘

For others retirement meant getting to focus on exactly what they want to do and not get dragged into issues or tasks they preferred to avoid. One subject explained that they were much more involved during retirement because, unlike traditional work, it was all self-directed. ‘Retirement is the best job I ever had….’ one person exclaimed. ‘Retirement is the first time that you can think about what you want to do, and then you can do it. And after you’ve done it, you can think about what you did.’

Especially for those former civil servants and teachers who experienced the severe right turn in Wisconsin’s government in the early 2010s, retirement also brought a sense of political freedom. We encountered a number of people who retired from public sector knowledge work where they felt their speech stifled by both official policies and a changing culture in government, schools, and higher education that prevented them from freely presenting knowledge. As one former civil servant explained:

‘There are so many people who have retired from the [civil service] before they were ready to, or because they were pushed out or felt they couldn’t do their jobs anymore, that their dedication to public service has not been exhausted. So that’s one of the things that’s kind of remarkable...is that there’s all these really highly qualified people who are taking these things on in their retirement.’

We met so many retired teachers and other public employees who found a second civic life after retiring from the public sector. They knew so much about the issues confronting their communities, they had a career’s worth of skills to commit to these causes, and they had the freedom to use their voice. ‘The door opens. You know you’re no longer being paid by the state,’ reflected one former public employee. ‘you’re more emboldened to carry out what’s in your heart on a more active basis once you’re retired.’ Another person put it even more bluntly, saying ‘It was like my shackles were removed and I was getting out of prison.’

A community built on a backbone of elder civic engagement then, has the potential to be one of the most participatory and innovative settings available, as people contribute to civic life freely based on their skills, interests, and motivations.

The Benefits of Age

Elders have both life experience and professional experience. Our Interview participants saw their age providing important advantages to their civic engagement. They know that one resource they bring is experience. They felt a desire and even a responsibility to contribute from that experience while they could. As one subject said, ‘I have far less life trajectory left than those who are younger than me and I am giving to them what other people gave to me in many ways.’ Another saw this experience as their primary asset for their community, ‘I think first of all, the life experiences that I’ve had, that I can bring to the table.’

Elders also feel a sense of patience and perspective. ‘I think older people have that ability to let things go,’ one elder activist explained. They know that good results do not often come quickly, and they are practiced at not letting the small bumps in the road and difficult people bother them as much. And they are reflective about how to impart their experience as an offering rather than an admonition.

‘Well I think there is something to be said for having some wisdom as you age and some sense of the big picture in a community… I have begun to be less judgmental of others, more accepting, and seeing more the big picture and that things take time, things don't change overnight and that there is progress being made.’

And in these politically polarized times, perhaps especially in Wisconsin, for some people aging brings an ability to work across difference.

‘Since retiring I’ve had to let some of that [political resentment] stuff go, and because it just doesn’t help.... also not letting like differences...like the conservatives and the progressives [and] being able to work with each other and become more content, that there are those differences and accepting.’

It is possible to get a vision of community from these elders that is inviting, inclusive, and knowledge-based.