Baby boomers start turning 60

~ America's idealists define their generation in myriad ways.

For Greg Brune it was taking shrapnel in the back along a muddy river near Saigon.

For Becky Mocherman it was about the changing role of women and watching Neil Armstrong take a stroll on the moon.

And for Cecil B. Thomas Jr. -- who grew up in the deep south in a family of black sharecroppers -- it was walking up to a Dairy Queen in Paragould, Ark., to be met by a sign that said "no n--- allowed."

These are the faces and experiences of the baby boomer generation. The faces of Vietnam. The faces of civil rights. And the faces of outspoken idealism.

These are also faces that are growing older.

The oldest baby boomers, who once trusted no one older than 30, are turning 60 years old in 2006.

The oldest of an estimated 78.2 million baby boomers -- Americans born between 1946 and 1964 -- will turn 60 this year at the rate of roughly 7,900 a day. The list includes President George W. Bush, former president Bill Clinton, business tycoon Donald Trump, actor Sylvester Stallone and Cher.

Baby boomers, who are expected to live longer than any American generation before them, account for a fourth of the U.S. population.

"It's such a foreign number, 60," said Mike Price, a Cape Girardeau resident and assistant federal prosecutor who turned 60 on Feb. 15. "Back then you thought turning 30 was old."

Baby boomers unquestionably left their mark on America. In the 1960s and '70s, baby boomers were outspoken idealists, challenging and shaking up society's traditional values. Baby boomers drove the civil rights movement. Women shrugged off their traditional roles and pushed their way into a male-dominated world. Later, the children of Depression-era parents embraced consumerism, shopping malls, credit cards and car loans.

For many the defining event was Vietnam, where more than 50,000 young soldiers died for a cause many back home just couldn't understand.

Both Brune and Price, who were childhood friends, served in Vietnam after graduating from Southeast Missouri State College in 1968.

Brune, who turns 60 on July 5, got a Purple Heart after taking shrapnel in his back and having part of his left ear blown off. Brune, now Southeast Missouri State University's director of athletic development, was a military adviser and a first lieutenant who called in airstrikes, among other duties. He and a company of soldiers were using machetes to cut through dense vegetation along a river to make an ambush more difficult.

"We were going to make sure they wouldn't have a place to hide," Brune said. "But they had an ambush already set up."

As the enemy descended he watched as his Vietnamese interpreter's head was blown off. "They were raking us from both ends," Brune said before a long pause. " ... There wasn't ever a dull moment in the war."

Price, who was an adviser and civil affairs officer, said Vietnam changed everything. "We grew up fast," Price said. "It was a hard time to go through. When I left for Vietnam, my son Michael was 10 days old."

In a break with history and unlike soldiers returning from the Iraq war today, soldiers returning from the Vietnam War were not greeted with a hero's welcome. Instead, there were often protests and soldiers were often condemned for their involvement in the war.

Price was never treated badly when he returned from Vietnam in 1971, but he was aware it was happening. Still, he didn't take it personally.

"I understood it more to be that they weren't upset with the soldiers, they were upset with the war," Price said. "I looked at it more as war protest than the question of them being upset with the troops"

Both Price and Brune wonder today how much of a difference the war made. Both men gave the same answer: "Probably not much."

The tumultuous 1960s also saw the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Each of those men left their stamp on the world.

Cecil B. Thomas Jr. recently moved to Cape Girardeau to become pastor of Second Missionary Baptist Church. He remembers how Dr. King not only changed the way the world viewed blacks but how he viewed himself.

Thomas, now 54, at the time thought little of the fact that as a child he and his nine brothers and two sisters chopped cotton for $3 a day. He didn't think much about never sitting in a classroom with a white person until he was in college.

While it bothered him, that sign on the Dairy Queen in the late 1960s didn't seem so out of place. "It was no different than when I was a child and we had to be out of the movie theater by Saturday afternoon before the white people came," Thomas said. "That was just the way the world was."

Thomas paused and smiled: "Before Dr. King came along."

He remembers watching Dr. King's speeches on television and thinking he had opportunities to do greater things.

"He gave us hope," Thomas said. "He gave me the desire to be a better man -- equal to any of my Caucasian friends."

Today, Thomas said, two of his closest friends are white. He doesn't harbor any prejudices or ill will toward whites for the discrimination he faced.

Baby boomers, as Thomas sees it, are also defined by faith, loving one another and making the world a better place.

Baby boomers also shook up traditional views of marriage and women. In 1960 the American government approved the world's first commercially produced birth-control pill. Fathers started taking active roles in housekeeping and raising children. When Becky Mocherman was growing up, girls thought only about getting married.

"We never did think about a career," said Mocherman, now a social studies teacher at Central Junior High in Cape Girardeau. "We just got degrees in case something happened to our husbands."

But Mocherman, who turns 60 this year, eventually began to realize she could do whatever she wanted to regardless of her sex.

"Females are just as capable as men," she said. "Women have just soared in their freedoms. Women have choices now. A lot of things have happened in our time."

Later, technological advances like computers were thrust upon baby boomers. To today's youths, it's old hat, but not to a baby boomer. "Baby boomers didn't get into that tech stuff," she said. "It hit us in our 40s. We had to learn to use all of those machines."

Mocherman said a discussion of the baby boomer generation wouldn't be complete without talking about the music. The boomers had Woodstock and icons like Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, Motown singers, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.

"I thought we had the best music," Mocherman said. "I was really into the Beatles. Free love and all that stuff."

Now baby boomers have moved on from free love to considering the costs of retirement.

U.S. Census data show that 13 percent of Cape Girardeau County's 70,730 residents are over the age of 65. That number will soon swell as the large numbers of baby boomers become seniors.

But baby boomers can expect to work longer, according to Ruth Dockins, spokeswoman for the Southeast Missouri Area Agency on Aging.

"People aren't going to be able to retire as early as they could have," Dockins said. "There are going to be issues with Social Security, insurance and just getting by."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual expenditure on health care for people ages 45 to 54 -- the age group at the heart of the baby boomer generation -- is $2,695. When budgeting expenses, baby boomers should expect increased health-care spending as they age. According to the bureau, those age 55 to 64 spent $3,262 and those 65 and over spent $3,899.

Social Security benefits may be problematic, too. According to Census projections, 57.8 million baby boomers will be alive in 2030, when boomers will be between the ages 66 and 84. Currently, the ratio of workers to Social Security beneficiaries is 3.3-to-1. By 2031 the ratio will be only 2.1-to-1, according to the Social Security Administration.

In other words, people are going to have to work longer until they retire, Dockins said. Coupled with higher insurance premiums, it's going to cause problems for baby boomers, she said.

"People are going to have to work until they just drop dead just to be able to keep their insurance."

Still, area baby boomers say they are looking forward to the golden years of retirement. It won't be so hard on some baby boomers, who are largely acknowledged as the most populous, prosperous and educated generation in American history.

Some even had the opportunity to retire early.

Larry Lusk of Cape Girardeau retired at age 41 after more than 20 years in the U.S. Navy. He turns 60 this year.

"We lived frugally," Lusk said. "Still do. No credit card debt. I wouldn't consider myself wealthy, but I'm financially comfortable."

He's making up for lost time with his family.

All the other 60-year-olds -- Brune, Price, Mocherman -- talked of traveling, spending time with grandchildren and doing other things work stood in the way of.

"It hasn't always been easy, but what is?" Mocherman said. "It seems the next generation after us has a lack of appreciation for things. ... But us baby boomers, we've been able to roll with the punches. It's been a pretty good life."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137

By the numbers

* 78.2 million. Estimated number of baby boomers, as of July 1, 2005.

* 7,918. Number of people turning 60 each day in 2006, according to projections.

* 50.8 percent. Percentage baby boomers in 2005 who were women.

* 9.1 million. Estimated number of baby boomers in 2004 who were black. Also, 8.9 million boomers were Hispanic.

* 141 million. Estimated U.S. population in 1946, the year the first baby boomers were born. Today, the U.S. population stands at about 298 million.

* 13. Percentage of baby boomers who provide financial support to both parents and children.

* About half. Number of baby boomers who expect their biggest source of retirement income to be private investment. Twenty-one percent expect Social Security to be the largest source, and 19 percent are relying on employer pension plans.

* 55 percent. Number of baby boomers who said when they retire they expect to "live very comfortably" or "meet expenses with a little left over." Twenty-four percent said they expect to just meet basic living expenses and 17 percent said they won't have enough.

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Pew Research Center