- April 19, 2024
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Nearly eight out of 10 Longboat Key residents no longer work -- for pay -- but keeping busy with packed volunteering and philanthropic schedules often demand more time than a 40-hour work week.
Retirement is a participation sport as far as many on Longboat are concerned. Rather than sit back and watch the golden years go by, many retired island residents with high-powered past lives see the post-career years as extra opportunities for fulfillment, enjoyment and new experiences.
Stress had become Bob Gault’s enemy by the time he retired in 2006 from a 44-year career in the theme park industry. The last 15 years had been with Universal Studios as the CEO of Universal Orlando Resort and after years of opening Universal Studios Japan and serving as president of SeaWorld, he figured he’d had a good run.
“(Wife) Shannon was smart,” Gault said. “She said, ‘Look, if I'm going to Japan, I’m going to have some property back here where we can plant the flag.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, let's find out. Let's find a place to retire before we make this major commitment.’ So we bought property here in '97, which is the smartest thing we ever did on Longboat.”
In the corporate world, Gault couldn’t really shift responsibilities to other colleagues as he prepared to retire bit by bit. One day he went to work, and then the next day, he didn’t. Though Gault’s job had become a seven days a week, 12 hours a day affair, he was ready to let go. He stayed active during his working years and retired looking forward to starting fresh hobbies.
“There's an old saying, ‘If you are what you do, and then you don't, you're not,’” Gault said. “I've always been active. I love boating, I love golf. I love a lot of this stuff. I couldn't do what I wanted to when I was working, so I was really happy to have the freedom of time. I wasn't one of those people who had my whole sense of meaning so wrapped up in what I did, and I had other interests.”
Gault had the freedom to fill his time differently — like many, he didn’t take much of a pause before pursuing passion projects. He joined the Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key and took his career talents in marine life and finance to the board of Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium and the Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce and even joined the finance committee at his church in Sarasota.
“That's basically my life plus just enjoying a beautiful view of the bay, and the birds and the dolphin and the manatees,” Gault said. “I'm on all kinds of boards, and I'm just so active all the time, but the stuff I do is meaningful. For me, it’s not that time consuming. There's life after your business … When you're really involved in your career you don't have a lot of time to look up and see what's going on around out in the real world. And so it's wonderful to be able to focus more on a broader picture of life.”
Carol Erker and her husband Bob retired in 2014 and decided that they didn’t want to just be snowbirds flying back and forth every year to escape Chicago winters. Erker knew joining a Rotary Club was part of the plan for retirement, so when she saw a blurb in the Longboat Observer that a group was starting a club on Longboat Key, she jumped in and became part of the founding group in October 2014.
“I figured it was a good way to meet people and to understand what's going on in the greater community and have an opportunity for service too, because I figured, ‘Wow, now that I'm not working 60 hours a week, I'll have time for service,’” Erker said. “Sometimes it gets busy, but for the most part, it's a positive focus, and I've made some very good friends in the organization over the years.”
Erker was a transactional attorney in her life before Longboat and had her own firm. Some of her expertise still comes in handy when writing club bylaws or coming up with a use agreement for event facilities.
“I find that that background is helpful,” Erker said. “I didn't think I would be doing that much ‘work’ in my retirement.”
She began planning her retirement two years before she actually walked out the door, because she said she needed to tie up loose ends that come with passing on a business you started. By the time she finally pulled herself out, she thought it would have been harder to cut the cord.
“I was kind of surprised that I wasn't getting calls,” Erker said. “Initially, it's like, ‘Where are all the emails and the phone calls? But I had planned my transition so that I merged my practice with a group of attorneys who were about 20 years younger than I who were in the growth mode … I guess I must have done that well, because they really didn't need me after I was gone.”
In the end, there’s her new passion project in Rotary paired with the Sunday boat rides and the rounds of golf that are maybe a bit less frequent than she originally planned. Who wants emails anyway?
Janice Pearce spent her whole career at Penn State and her whole life in State College. Her husband, Rich Pearce, had very nearly done the same, minus a few years. With such a tight grip on the university and their lives as a financial officer and assistant vice president respectively, retiring was a process.
“A friend of ours kept telling us, ‘You know, it's not Pearce University,” Janice said.
By the time they did retire, they were very ready. Both of them had their last day on June 30 and were loaded up in the car with the dogs on the way to Florida on July 1.
“We thought we would initially come down and treat it like a vacation,” Janice said. “However, we came to the condo and immediately Rich was on the board as the treasurer. He was on the Finance Committee and I was on two other committees. All of a sudden, we had filled our days with condo work.”
They were making an impact on the community they had joined, working to make it more social and more smoothly run, but eventually looked at each other and wondered where the vacation vibes went.
“We started saying, ‘Well, you know what, we said we were going to come here for the fun,’” Janice said. “We started going out on the boat more often, fishing more often. My husband has his ideal day of what we would do: Go to the beach, walk the beach, come back, and we get our shrimp to go fish off the dock here. Then we're able to relax at the pool in the afternoons, and then have a nice grilled dinner at night.”
They’ve started going to classes at The Paradise Center and meeting with the Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key to fill their days meaningfully. At home, Janice knits for charity and always has a bag of yarn and needles in the car in case of traffic. For his part, Rich decided to take up music.
“I just turned 73 but at age 71. I decided I wanted to play a musical instrument,” Rich said. “I mean, I didn't even make my eighth-grade choir, but I decided to learn how to play an organ. Actually, we've upsized a couple of times on organs. I have an audience of two when I play — our two little Havanese dogs.”
