After decades of denial, pandemic is making Minnesota baby boomers feel their age

Marilyn and Juan Galloway exchanged a look that many married-with-children couples might recognize.

Their 22-year-old daughter had just dropped an unintentional bombshell, one that left them equal parts amused and wounded.

"She said, 'If you guys get COVID, you've lived your lives,' " said Marilyn, of White Bear Lake. "She was dead serious, like, 'You're elderly and at the end of the road.' We were stunned. We're 55 and 63. We run, golf and bike. We're more active than our kids. At the age that my grandmother wore a housecoat, I spiked my hair and dyed it purple."

For baby boomers, it seems that COVID-19 has done what self-denial and evidence to the contrary has been unable to do: make them feel old.

For the generation whose youthful battle cry was "Don't trust anyone over 30" and who prided themselves on remaining relevant as the years accumulated, being lumped in with the cohort regarded as frail and vulnerable has come as a shock.

"The pandemic has been a reckoning for baby boomers," said Scott Zimmer, a speaker and trainer for Bridgeworks, a Wayzata consulting company that advises businesses on generational dynamics.

Based on sheer size, the 76 million American boomers, now between ages 56 and 74, have been courted by marketers since their postwar arrival. They have reframed every life stage they've passed through and were in the process of rewriting the script for their retirement years when the coronavirus arrived and stripped away their pretensions.

"They retain a youthful spirit and don't want to slow down like previous generations. They take on encore careers and find new activities to be passionate about," Zimmer said. "Now they're forced to acknowledge that they're not invincible. Even if they're in great shape, they can't deny that their age puts them in greater danger if they catch the virus."

Dings and dents

Writer Bill Souder's upcoming biography of novelist John Steinbeck is titled "Mad at the World."

That could also describe the 70-year-old author's feeling about the way his age group is characterized.

" 'Seniors.' 'Elderly.' I don't like those terms. 'Your sunset years.' The labels they attach feel like they are trying to erase you. The message is that when you get older than a certain age, you're in this other category. You are diminished, a fossil," he said. "I don't belong in that club."

Souder has preferred to define himself by his activities rather than his age.

"I ride my bike, I still wade a trout stream. Last year I got a new hunting dog to trudge through the forest and fields with me. I do the same things I did when I was 40, but a little slower," he said. "I'm like a golf ball. I've got dings and dents, a little asthma, a little heart disease."

Since the arrival of the virus, Souder's pre-existing conditions, previously regarded as minor and manageable, have prompted him to act with caution. He's isolating in his home in Washington County in the company of his wife, their adult son who's quarantining at home following a furlough and Sasha the wire-haired pointing griffon.

"At a certain age you are at an elevated risk and you have to live your life differently," he admitted. "The science is clear. I can't spin it."

Ageism at the root

For many boomers, the pandemic is revealing, even cementing, some long-held negative stereotypes associated with aging.

"They are experiencing ageism with the assumption that a number — their age — is the defining marker," said Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge, a national association of nonprofit providers of aging services. "They may have experienced ageism in the workplace, but not in their day-to-day lives. They're seeing how the contributions of older adults are undervalued and underappreciated."

Age is just a number, but how that number is perceived is subjective. As people get older, the definition of "old" changes. In a Pew Research Center study, only 21% of those between the ages of 65 and 74 said they felt old, and just 35% of those 75 and older self-identified that way.

Advances in medical science in the past half-century have created a longevity revolution that is giving Americans not only longer life spans, but more years of good health. Still, anyone north of 55 is often lumped into the same age category.

Lori Bitter believes that happens out of "ignorance or laziness."

The president of the Business of Aging, a California consultancy that advises companies marketing to mature consumers, Bitter thinks the older demographic needs to be sliced thinner.

"There's not enough understanding that 65 and 85 are vastly different, just as people who are 50 and those who are 65 are nowhere in the same territory. Some of the language used for this vast, diverse group is ridiculous," she said.

"Companies and others trying to speak to the different ends of the cohort need to distinguish between them," she said.

It's a fine point that the pandemic does not take into account.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that "the greatest risk for severe illness from COVID-19 is among those aged 85 or older," the CDC also generalizes with the statement that "As you get older, your risk for severe illness from COVID-19 increases."

That means that in the foreseeable future, taking the threat of the virus into consideration may cause baby boomers to live more constricted lives.

"We really don't want to get it, so we are being conservative," said Souder. "We don't touch our kids. We sit in the backyard. All bets are off on when that will change. But I'm not bedridden, I don't have one foot in the grave. I'm here and a high-mileage version of myself."

Kevyn Burger is a Minneapolis-based freelance broadcaster and writer.