Unemployed at 62, his plight may be a sign of the times (Barf alert!)

bostonherald ^ | 3-11-03 | Margery Eagan

[Jimmyclyde]

Unemployed at 62, his plight may be a sign of the times

by Margery Eagan Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Here in the living room of what feels like a cozy English country cottage - china-blue walls, hand-painted antique chairs, latticed windows and fine woods - it's hard to believe the once-comfortable occupants are down to their last $2,500.

Not enough to pay their $2,000 monthly rent and $1,200 health insurance, never mind food or heat or gas.

But that's the very scary story of North Easton couple Dick Wilcox, 62, and his wife, Michele, 56. Dick was laid off from his $65,000, mid-level insurance company job a year ago. He cannot afford to retire.

And as a nation obsesses over war, its politicians seeming to forget the crushing effects of a jittery economy, Dick Wilcox has joined the unenviable ranks of older, unemployed, white-collar workers who can't find another decent job.

``It's like all it takes,'' Dick Wilcox said yesterday, ``is one crack in the system and you can go from having a really good lifestyle to being literally homeless.''

To prevent that is why he's spent three months now, morning after frigid morning, at busy Canton intersections. He wears fat mittens and a hooded parka over a neat suit and tie. And like an upscale version of your average street corner beggar, lifelong, middle-class taxpayer Dick Wilcox stands with a mix of humiliation, desperation and defiance behind the 4-by-6-foot plywood sign he made in his basement. And he begs, too.

``I NEED A JOB. 508-238-3226.'' That's what his sign reads in big black letters. ``36 Yrs. Exper. Insur/Mngmnt.''

Dick Wilcox has dropped off hundreds of resumes at companies and office parks. He's sent out hundreds more online. He's had two interviews and not a single job offer near the $50,000 he needs.

Now his severance, unemployment, modest savings and pension are almost gone. Michele Wilcox, who raised three children and supplemented Dick's income with a home crochet business, brought in just $9,000 this year. Her small business is yet another victim, it appears, of a shrinking economy.

A year ago, the couple planned to help an infertile daughter finance an expensive overseas adoption. They'd hoped to replace a 12-year-old car. Now, even if both find $10-an-hour jobs tomorrow, they're on the brink of losing their home.

Dick Wilcox, who has a can-do, take-charge aura about him - and unique ideas on making older workers more attractive - says he's still a bit stunned by it all. ``When I first lost my job I said, `Well, it's not the end of the world. I'll go out and find something else . . .' I never expected . . . this.''

Here is the good and bad news. Last week, his story made the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Since then he's had hundreds of phone calls, mostly from other older laid-off workers who are discouraged, too, ``and practically crying on the phone,'' he says. ``Out of work nine months, 14 months. Unbelievable, terrible stories.''

But he's also had calls from other media outlets, including nationally syndicated radio shows, cable TV's NECN and two of the three big morning network shows: ``Good Morning America'' and ``The Early Show.'' But the morning shows keep delaying him, he says, because of war stories.

Meanwhile, he says, not a single politician has called. ``They'd much rather debate the war than talk about the economy because they don't have any solutions. They just keep promising the economy's going to turn around. . . Now they don't even say it anymore and we've got tens of thousands out of work.''

Although media coverage has led to at least one promising interview offer, Dick Wilcox is taking no chances. He plans to be out again tomorrow morning, the corner of Route 138 and Washington Street, where people have climbed over snowbanks to shake his hand or bring him Dunkin' Donuts. ``One woman tapped me on the shoulder with tears in her eyes. She said, `This is the gutsiest thing I ever saw anybody do.' ''

He says that when he first thought of the sign, he was afraid to tell his wife or children. He was embarrassed, scared he'd seem like a failure, like ``some idiot'' standing in the road.

Yesterday, Michele Wilcox said she'd admired her husband's daring. Yesterday Karen Wilcox, their oldest child, said her father ``had proven us all wrong'' for ever fretting about his sign. She said her father had worked hard all his life and that when she heard him last week on the radio, ``I had tears in my eyes. . . . I'm so proud of him.''

[RnMomof7]

I don't understand why there is no sympathy for this man on this thread. Can't any of you put yourselves in his place? I read about him in the Wall Street Journal last week and I really felt for him and his wife. So he was making $65,000 per year? He was also raising three children to adulthood and that probably took most of his earnings. The one thing I didn't understand was the $2,000 per month rent. I wondered why they didn't own a home. The main thing brought home to me by the article in the WSF is the age bigotry that exists. It actually begins when people are in their 40's and gets progressively worse. Now that STINKS.

It is the true nature of Conservatism to be heartless I am afraid..especially YOUNG and well educated conservatives.

This is a heart breaking story..

We raised a family and never accumulated   alot of savings..by the time you put your kids through college and pay for the weddings there is little left to "invest" So you trust your last ten or fifteen years of work will restore what being a caring parent took from you..

Wait until some of these iron men find themeselves on the unemployment line..

There used to be an old saying.."When your neighbor looses his job it is a recession  ..when you lose yours it is a depression

It is my guess this highly trained man mocked the unemployed too until he met them in the employment office..

[matthew_the_brain]

http://www.insuranceoverload.com/jobs.nsf/by+Title+Flat?SearchView&Start=1&Count=5&Query=%5BNSLocDC%5D%20CONTAINS%20(Boston)


http://jobsearch.monster.com/jobsearch.asp?q=&lid=453&lid=893&lid=892&fn=45&sort=rv&vw=b&cy=US&re=14&brd=1%2C1862%2C1863

Quit your freakin whining and get off of your dead arse.

[oldcomputerguy]

I find myself in very similar circumstances in everything except being unemployed. I have no sympathy for him. If I were unemployed tomorrow, I would be depressed about it but I would not be broke.

I have saved for retirement, raised two children and have two homes, one in town and one in the country. If push came to shove, I could retire now though not at my current income but I certainly would not squander my savings waiting for some perfect job to come along, that is the point of no return. He made the bed he is lying upon by not planning for what happened.

[wbill]

He made the bed he is lying upon by not planning for what happened.

Bingo. That's also assuming that this person is not a metaphorical construct. I don't know of too many places that will allow you to have 50% of your take-home go to rent.

I think that you summed up a lot of the feelings on this thread - feelings that are mistaken for heartlessness. Ultimately, we are all responsible for the life choices that we make. Some people choose well and are successful, some do not and get lucky, and some do not and wind up like the person in this article.

[F.J. Mitchell]

You kind of hold people who live within their means, whatever their means may be, in contempt, don't you?

Just because someone is not bleeding from the heart for people who are so stupid that they never give a thought to preparing for the unexpected, doesn't translate into making fun of them. It's more like: You made your bed, you lie in it and stop whining!

I do not know how you jumped from laid off from work to being diagnosed with cancer-I guess by the same logic of those who compare Bush to Hitler, while comparing Hussein to Ghandi. I do not laugh at those stricken with Cancer-I watched a brother-in-law die with Malanoma, and I myself have had several skin cancers removed. I am not however whining for sympathy. It was I who spent too much time in the sun, expecting my pasty white transulucent skin to become an outdoorsey bronze. It is I who pays the Dermatologist several times a year spraying pre-cancerous mutations and for the occasional removal of cancers.

I truly sympathize with the stupid, but have only contempt for the ignorant.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

Speaking of a dead arse.

Best of luck to you forever.
I hope fortune smiles on you always.

[F.J. Mitchell]

As a rule, the kids are out of college, weddings behind and on their own, by the time their parents turn fifty-that left these parents twelve of the fifteen years you say they need to re-fund their retirement accounts and get set for old age.

"It is the true nature of conservatism to be heartless I am afraid."

Maybe you would feel more comfortable with those passionate folks over at DU.

[RnMomof7]

My youngest finished college when I was in my early 50's..he is still not married and I await a bill for "my share" ..the same year his sister married and mom and dad coughed up 15 thousand ( we just finished that loan) ...this man is 62..his kids could be just out of college..he may still have loans to pay for it

I have read enough of the overeducated geeks here to make me want to vomit..they all voice the "let them eat cake " mentality..

Maybe you would feel more comfortable with those passionate folks over at DU

I voted for Barry Goldwater..I was most likely a conservative before you were born so I feel free to call things as I see them...there is a difference in being conservative and being spoiled brats that are so self centered that they can not have compassion for others..

But I have confidence that their day will come..and we will get to hear the whinning from the geek choir..what goes around comes around.....

[wjcsux]

Don't forget Ray Croc and Winston Churchill.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

Since this is Marge Egan, it is likely that he is a made up guy, with the added misfortunes tossed in to add affect.

However, I see more and more middle-aged(35-55) guys being dumped every day with nothing too optimistic in there futures. Most are guys who had less good fortune than this guy. Guys who worked in metals shops and other hard work that a guy who wasn't a genius and had little post high school education could get. Now, after a lifetime of playing by the rules, the rules have changed and their good times are over.

As you said, your father's generation and many younger, are taking it on the chin.

Yes, they are responsible for themselves, and no, no one owes them a living. But from what I hear and see, many have come to the conclusion that this was "done" to them. In their minds, if not in fact, it was a governmental action to ship away their careers.

This is not a good thing and should not be too cavalierly dismissed. If you watched the last days of the Soviet Union you saw forty and fifty year old guys just like these, beating the hell out of the cops and the army because they had come to the conclusion that they had no future and just decided to wreck everything.

I'll tell you, in their shoes, I wouldn't be so quick to believe that at least my grandchildren might be able to recover from what had been done. I'd be pissed.

I have nothing to worry about as long as it isn't TEOTWAKI but I'm a bit ticked off about this globalist crap.

So only the repetitive and low tech stuff is being shipped out? So what should all the people who are not computer architecture engineer material do? Drop dead?

To suggest that it doesn't matter that people outside the top twenty percent of intellect don't matter is as elitist
as the Damnocrats.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Credentials h*ll, would you believe old con-artists? I didn't think so-P.T. Barnum had it right all the time.

[RightWhale]

I voted for Barry Goldwater

That makes you at least a month older than I am. I would have voted Goldwater. Righteously.

[RnMomof7]

Quit your freakin whining and get off of your dead arse.

LOL Typical..I am a retired nurse..my kids are raised I have never asked for a hand out or taken one..I await your turn on the unemployment line..Please let us know so we can all tell you where to go

[RnMomof7]

It is scary but I think he is too liberal now:>)

[Xenalyte]

Most of the smart-ass attitudes on this thread are just one layoff notice from a complete attitude adjustment.

I was laid off January 3. I started work again on January 21.

[GovernmentShrinker]

The guy needs professional psychological help. No financial institution in the world is going to hire a 62 year old who never had enough sense to buy a home and prepare for retirement. Personally, I think it was despicable of the Wall Street Journal to publicize this guy's with his obvious mental problems, on the front page last week -- now the Boston Herald is following suit. Without all this publicity, and with some counseling, he might have managed to find some kind of employment in his lifelong field, but now EVERY potential employer knows exactly what a financial wacko this poor fellow is.

[RightWhale]

Goldwater became kind of liberal later. He was an easy-going man, not the flamethrower in person that he appeared to be during his presidential campaign. The cordial Dirkson-Goldwater debates were the best part of the Senate in those days. Not like the screaming fits going on now and then these days.

[Centurion2000]

Once it's paid off you can't be evicted as long as you pay your property taxes.

EXACTLY .... some people see that as rent.

[CyberAnt]

But ... at 62 - and in good health, he's probably close to 15 years from retirement. And ... what with the cost of living today, people just don't seem to realize what it takes to live.

[GovernmentShrinker]

If this guy could rent in this area for $2000/month, he obviously could have bought something comparable. He;s been steadily employed for 36 years -- over 15 at his recent employer and/or in the same area (I can't recall all the details of last week's Wall Street Journal article on him). He could easily have bought a home with a 15 year mortgage, and owned it free and clear by now. Then, after losing his job, he could have sold it for a huge profit, bought someplace much less expensive (since he doesn't need to be in the area for his job any more) and had the difference to pad his meager retirement account. I can't imagine what this guy and his wife were thinking of RENTING for $2000/month all this time, while apparently unable to put much away in retirement funds. Much less what their infertile daughter was thinking of, asking her parents, with no home of their own and almost no retirement savings, to finance an expensive overseas adoption. Whole family needs to see a shrink pronto.