What's Past is Prologue - Golden years and high achievement

"What's Past is Prologue" series, an homage to William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," looks at events of the past that seem to reoccur later with remarkable similarities. Frank Nickell of the Kellerman Foundation for Historic Preservation, previously a longtime faculty member at Southeast Missouri State University, is primary historian for these articles, which are carried intermittently in the Southeast Missourian.

Age is nothing but a number.

Joe Biden, the 46th U.S. president, will turn a big, round number Sunday, Nov. 20 -- 80.

His White House predecessor, Donald Trump, is 76, and announced Tuesday, Nov. 15, his intention to run for the White House for a third time.

Insider magazine, in a project entitled "Red, White and Gray," found nearly one in four members of the U.S. Congress is older than 70.

Frank Nickell

Nancy Pelosi, 82, the first female Speaker of the House, announced Thursday, Nov. 17, she will not run for a leadership post in the next Congress.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, is 71, and his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, is 80.

Barely two weeks after the entry of a new crop of young Americans -- Generation Z -- into the voting age population in the recent Nov. 8 election, it seems the top political leadership posts in this nation are all occupied by people once referred to as elderly.

"We are an older population (now) but we will turn back, I'm sure, in the next decade to a youth movement as a reaction to this unusual time of 'ageism' in American history," said Nickell, who nonetheless said he has been fascinated by the heightened activity of senior citizens in what are sometimes called "extreme" sports.

"Go on the Internet and you'll be inundated with elderly achievement. People who are 90 years old are running 100-yard dashes, pole-vaulting, mountain climbing, even skydiving," Nickell said, recalling the day in 2014 when former President George H.W. Bush participated in a tandem skydive on his 90th birthday.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, right, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan speak to the media Dec. 8, 1987, in Washington, D.C. Reagan was 77 years old when he left the White House in 1989, the second-oldest president to hold the office. Gorbachev died Aug. 30 at the age of 91.Associated Press

Nickell took pains to single out a few famous Americans who achieved their greatest claims to fame in their advanced years.

• Benjamin Franklin, one of the nation's Founding Fathers, was in his 70s when he signed the Declaration of Independence. He later was also America's first Postmaster General.
• Julia Child, who died in 2004 at 91, was still hosting television cooking shows well into her 80s.
• Anna Mary Robertson "Grandma" Moses, an American folk artist born before the Civil War and who lived to be 101, started a famous career as a painter at age 75. She would be eulogized by Missouri native and former President Harry Truman.

Nickell, 86, who continues his work these days for Kellerman Foundation, said he was a better university historian when he retired from SEMO than at any time in his previous teaching career.

"I look forward to every day and to new challenges," he said, adding people of every age need purpose and a way to use knowledge and abilities acquired over a lifetime.