Volunteer Army

(2 of 3)

For former globetrotting executives, international aid work fills the void that can come with retirement. For example, Gillette executive Mark Cutler, 54, had lived in five countries worldwide, becoming V.P. of Gillette's international group before he took early retirement last year. Suddenly the workaholic had nothing but free time. "It was very hard to walk away from Gillette at that age--[I didn't want] to replace those intellectual challenges with golf," he says. He tried traveling, and he puttered around his Longmeadow, Mass., home, but nothing gave him the thrill of international work. Having done some Gillette work in Eastern Europe, he jumped when a former co-worker suggested that he sign up with I.E.S.C., which assigned him to projects in Kazakhstan and Russia. He's now back to fast-paced work, converting biochemical-warfare facilities into peacetime factories and, in tandem with U.S. agencies, finding jobs for former government scientists. "It's incredibly rewarding," he says, being "so closely linked to something that is trying to fix mankind."

Life had also become predictable for Don Ramirez, 53, a financial planner in Canberra, Australia. The former Philippine army officer was itching to work overseas again and signed up with the United Nations Volunteers. He is currently organizing elections in Kandahar, Afghanistan--a hazardous task, as the explosion of a car bomb outside his office in November made obvious. Though unnerved, he wasn't hurt. "Things here are still very unpredictable," he says, but thanks to his life experience, "I am quick to adapt to an ever changing, even hostile, international environment."

Even in safer regions, older volunteers stare down tricky challenges. Feeling restless after her husband's death, microbiologist Bettylene Franzus volunteered in her Tennessee town but felt confined by the work. So she joined WorldTeach and now instructs Marshall Islands high schoolers in science. At 75, she's handling myriad problems, from logistical (her science books crumble in the salt air) to physical (the school has no janitor, so she swabs floors, sweeps coral dust and empties trash bins in her classroom) to intellectual (though she's a science instructor, her students' difficulty with English means she also teaches ESL). "I really believe that because I must use both my body and my mind in this endeavor, I have probably kept myself in greater mental and physical health than might be true otherwise," she says.

Still, it's not an easy job, and it can be especially tough to be away from family. Lyman Echola, 68, a former teacher in Wisconsin, has frustratingly little phone contact with his grown children, though he has talked them into visiting Ecuador, where he's a WorldTeach volunteer. Others just cart their children along, as did Barbara and Ed Dunsworth, 50 and 55, when they moved from Nova Scotia (where Ed had practiced law) to take a position in South America with Habitat for Humanity. The family lives in Buenos Aires, where the Dunsworths are helping establish a Habitat branch.