Retirement is so 2015. These days, many senior citizens are using their golden years to take on new challenges or to keep right on doing what they’ve been doing for decades in the workplace. They’re tackling pursuits both personal and professional, while wowing everyone they meet. Now, meet this year’s crop of stellar seniors, who are being singled out for their selflessness, their steadfastness and their dedication to making the community around them a better place.
Bill Scharle
Ask Bill Scharle to sum up the theme that permeates his 87 years on this planet, and this is what he’ll tell you, with a laugh: “I guess I’m just one of those people who has to be active to be happy!”
Scharle has been driven and goal-oriented for most of his life, starting in eighth grade, when, between playing sports and palling around with his friends in Allentown, he settled on a career choice. “I knew I wanted to be a chemical engineer,” he says. “I was always strong in math and technical things. I never wanted to do anything else.”
That may seem like a lofty goal for a boy growing up during the uncertain days of the Great Depression and World War II, but Scharle never deviated from the plan. Following his graduation from Central Catholic High School in 1946, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Villanova University in 1950. The following year, he secured his master’s degree in the same field from Lehigh University and began working for gas-maker Air Products. Around the same time, a young woman who once roamed the same halls at Central Catholic came back into his life. Her name was Rose Marie O’Neil (nicknamed “Bunny”—more on that in a moment).
“I had a friend who was dating her [O’Neil] and I was dating someone else,” Scharle recalls. “We double-dated for a while. Then we decided to switch dates.” It was a swap that would prove to be fortuitous for Scharle; he married O’Neil in 1952. As for the other couple, “They didn’t make it,” says Scharle, with a chuckle.
And as for that nickname, Scharle says his wife has answered to “Bunny” ever since she was a little girl. “There was a picture of her in a sled, wearing a fur hat,” he says. “Everyone just thought she looked like a bunny.”
Soon, that “bunny” and her hubby had a brood of their own; the couple would go on to welcome five children—four girls and one boy. As Scharle rose in the ranks at Air Products, travel became a way of life for the family. “We lived in California, Florida and London,” Scharle recalls. Ultimately, the Scharles would return to Allentown to stay. But no matter where the family’s home base was over the years, the growing children were the perfect “miniature muses” for another one of Scharle’s passions: photography. “It’s been a hobby of mine my whole life,” he says. “I was always taking pictures of the children when they were growing up.”
He worked his way through countless rolls of 35mm film over the years. Now Scharle, like most photographers, has graduated to all-digital technology, but his affinity for his craft hasn’t wavered. In fact, he has landed a second career, of sorts: he is the official photographer for Phoebe Ministries’ Allentown facility. He and his wife moved into one of Phoebe Terrace’s independent living apartments two years ago, and Scharle says he knew he was the right man for the gig. “I’m a quality fanatic,” he says. “I know I can take a good picture.”
Scharle snaps away during all of Phoebe’s events. He says he has photographed the residents during a myriad of activities, including dances, concerts and fashion shows. He even rented a backdrop and equipment for Phoebe Terrace’s 30th anniversary celebration in 2013 so he could take professional portraits of every single resident. And, perhaps most impressive of all, Scharle develops all of the pictures on his own dime at Dan’s Camera City. The photographs are then displayed on easels in the main lobby so all of the residents get a turn in the spotlight. “I do it all for Phoebe,” he says.
Even when he is not panning and zooming in search of the perfect shot, Scharle is donating his time to other volunteer endeavors. He remains a fixture on several local boards, many of which he joined around the time he retired from Air Products as Group Vice President of the Process Systems Group in 1988. Those boards include Sacred Heart Hospital, Holy Family Manor Nursing Home and Central Catholic High School. He has been the recipient of many awards that pay testament to his character, generosity and integrity, such as the J. Stanley Morehouse Award from Villanova University in 1980, the Distinguished Graduate Award from Central Catholic High School in 1994 and the Bishop’s Distinguished Catholic Alumni Award in 2013.
But his greatest legacy of all may be his family. He is immensely proud of his five children—one daughter followed in his footsteps and is now a chemistry teacher at Central Catholic. Scharle and his wife also enjoy the company of 21 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. And even though he has slowed down some in recent years, Scharle has no plans to sit still—or rest on his laurels—anytime soon. “I just enjoy it all too much,” he says.
Ruthie Cautero
Ruthie Cautero may be 78 years old, but she doesn’t need much coaxing to get out on the dance floor, especially when the Village People are part of the equation. The resident of Traditions of Hanover in Bethlehem recalls a prom that was held at the facility recently. “My legs felt like rubber, but then they played ‘YMCA’ and I had to go back out there,” she says with a laugh.
Impeccable rhythm and hip-shaking dance moves aside, Cautero is also known for her high energy and infectious laugh. Laurie Schwab, director of resident life at Traditions of Hanover, describes her as a “positive force of nature.”
But it wasn’t so long ago that Cautero was having a very bad year. In 2013, while she was living in the Pittsburgh area, her brother, Henry—her only sibling—died suddenly at the age of 71 from a blood clot. Her husband, Tony, succumbed to end-stage diabetes two months later. That same year, she fractured her pelvis. Any one of those events alone would be enough to break a person’s spirit, but Cautero isn’t a glass-half-empty kind of woman. “I don’t like to dwell on the past,” she says. “I like to think about the future.”
Born in Punxsutawney (home of that famous groundhog, Phil) in 1938, Cautero (nee Fera) recalls a simple and happy childhood, spent in the company of friends: “We went out in the morning and didn’t come home until suppertime.” She moved with her family to Clark, NJ at the age of 15. When she was old enough to grace the bar scene, Cautero says Staten Island became a popular destination on the weekends. It was on one of those outings that she met her future husband, Tony.
“He was a singer, a tenor,” Cautero recalls. “We’d go to weddings, and people would beg him to sing. He would, and then they’d all cry.” The couple tied the knot themselves in 1961 and settled in Staten Island. They welcomed a daughter, Susan, in 1962, and another daughter, Lisa, in 1964. Cautero was a stay-at-home mom for many years, until she began working as a hospital unit secretary, first in Staten Island, and then in the Pittsburgh area, after the Cauteros moved there in 1990. She retired about a decade later, and it was around that time that you might say Ruthie got her groove back.
Although she caught the moving-and-grooving itch early (her father loved to dance, she says), Tony was never one to cut a rug. But Cautero found her creative outlet in the Clover Belles and Beaus, an entertainment troupe that was founded by a friend at the retirement community where they lived in the borough of Plum. They traveled around the region, dancing to standards like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” for crowds at nursing homes, assisted living communities and parades. “Oh, the places you had to change costumes!” she says. “Dirty supply closets, bathrooms, behind trucks. We did it all.” Eventually the group disbanded as its members advanced in age, but Cautero says she holds fond memories of the friendships she made and the laughs they shared.
Following her husband’s death in 2013, Cautero was ready for a change of scenery, and that’s what led her to her next adventure—moving to the Lehigh Valley at the age of 75, to be near her daughter Lisa, who lives in Effort. Her studio apartment at Traditions of Hanover’s independent living facility is sparsely decorated, and that’s just how she likes it. “Stuff smothers you,” she says.
Instead, Cautero invests her time and talents in the people around her. She serves as an ambassador to new residents, presenting them with a welcome basket and helping them learn the lay of the land. She also coaxes residents who might be shy or reclusive to partake in the center’s many social activities—that’s where those dance moves really come in handy. “I feel that people are missing out on so much,” she says. “I want people to enjoy what I enjoy. I don’t embarrass easily.”
Cautero also volunteers once a week at the St. Luke’s Hospice House in Bethlehem, a nod to her gratitude for the support she received when her husband was in the final stages of his life. “It was a very difficult time, but I had help from my angels,” she says. “I’m very spiritual. I have a different outlook on death than other people have. Death is just a part of life.”
It’s that attitude that drives Cautero’s philosophy about how to best spend whatever time one is afforded on this earth. “Try everything,” she advises. “Don’t sit back and be afraid. Embrace life.”
Robert Zentz
Robert Zentz remembers the time he gave retirement a try. The year was 1995, and he was ready to call it a career at Allentown’s Sacred Heart Hospital, where he served as Vice President in charge of Patient Services. “I retired from there on December 30,” he recalls. “I had two days at home; then I went back to work.”
The position that pulled him back into the workforce was supposed to be a temporary one; Whitehall-based Fellowship Community, a retirement campus that offers independent living, personal care, short-term rehab and a specialized memory unit, asked him to steer the ship for a year. Now, more than 20 years later, at 78 years old, he is still the organization’s president and CEO, and he couldn’t be happier. “I enjoy working, and I enjoy working with people,” Zentz says.
It’s not surprising that Zentz feels most at home when he is on the job. Born in 1937 in Buffalo, NY, he says he joined the working world at just six or seven years old, when he started helping out on a farm. “You worked from morning until night,” he says. “That taught me a lot. Discipline. You had to keep going.”
As a teenager, he took on a paper route and a job in a bakery, where he made one dollar an hour. Zentz says it was expected that eventually he would follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and father at Bethlehem Steel’s plant in Lackawanna, NY. At the age of 18, he did just that, but his tenure there was short-lived; he was laid off a few months later. By that time, Zentz was already a married man (he tied the knot with wife Marilynn in 1956), and he knew he had to land another job quickly. He went out on a limb and accepted a job as an orderly at Sisters of Charity Hospital in Buffalo.
That began what would be a decades-long career that would take him to numerous hospitals and medical facilities all over the region, starting as a registered nurse and working his way up the ladder to the highest levels of management. “In order to support my family, I knew I had to move up quickly,” Zentz says.
The couple welcomed their first of seven children, Michael, in 1957. The brood of nine moved to the Lehigh Valley in 1970, when Zentz accepted a job as Director of Nursing at Sacred Heart Hospital. He supplemented that position with side jobs at several places, including Palmerton Hospital and Cedarbrook nursing home. But looking back, Zentz says he has enjoyed his time as an administrator the most. “It’s great being in a position of leadership and being able to get things done,” he says.
Not only is Zentz the president and CEO of Fellowship Community, but, as of 1997, he and his wife are also residents, so the people he is helping to care for aren’t just his clients, they’re also his neighbors. With the exception of the one weekend a month he travels back to his native Buffalo to relax with his wife, Zentz is a constant fixture on campus, choosing to walk the grounds daily rather than stay cooped up in an office. Fellowship Community is firmly a “pro-hug” facility, Zentz says, so it’s not unusual for residents to greet him with their arms outstretched. “It’s important to show them that you care,” he says. “They need that. We become their family.”
Some of those residents even end up on the company payroll. Senior citizens who are 70 years old and above make up 10 percent of Fellowship’s 361-member staff. “It gives them a purpose, a reason to get out of bed,” says Zentz. They take on tasks in a wide variety of fields, everything from maintenance to marketing. It’s a conscientious and concerted way of doing things that hasn’t gone unnoticed. Under Zentz’s guidance, Fellowship Community has received accolades on the local and state levels for its approach to patient care, including being named among the “Best Nursing Homes” by US News & World Report. Also, The Morning Call has recognized Fellowship Community as one of the Lehigh Valley’s top workplaces for the past three years.
But Zentz’s industriousness isn’t confined to the Fellowship campus. He is active with several community organizations, including the Whitehall Township Planning Commission, the Cetronia Ambulance Corps and the Board of Directors at Sacred Heart Hospital. He is also a past president of the Whitehall Chamber of Commerce. As for whether he will take another stab at retiring, Zentz says he is not sure—right now, he is too busy enjoying the ride. He says, “I never had a time when I didn’t want to go to work. I get up and I’m ready to go.”
By Amy Unger | Photography by Elaine Zelker
