Tampa Bay Times Article

Make retirement the best chapter of your life

By Patti Ewald, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 

    This is just a short stop for Robert and Jo Mellis as they move from Wekiwa Springs State Park, north of Orlando, to Lake Manatee State Park in Bradenton.
    They sit in lawn chairs facing the Gulf of Mexico. 
    The water looks like a sea of diamonds the way it does at that certain time in the afternoon when the sun is at just the right angle to bounce little flickers of light off the waves and ripples. 
    She is knitting. He is reading. They take turns reaching into a bowl of trail mix on a makeshift table between them. 
    To all the world, they look like a happily retired couple with not a care in the world and not a place they have to be.  Until you realize what's providing the shade in which they sit. It's their RV, a 34-foot beast that is to them what a shell is to a tortoise. It's the home they take with them everywhere they go. This day, they've taken it to the base of the Sunshine Skyway bridge, to the road leading to the fishing pier. 
    They are spending the year exploring Florida's state parks. They stay as long as they want at one park  and then pack up and move on down the road. 
    That would be quite an accomplishment for most 71-year-olds. But not for this husband and wife. A mere five years ago, they were making their third trip to Namibia, a developing nation on the southwest coast of Africa. They had been there two years before, when they were 64. It was the same year they went to Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Germany, Spain, Gibraltar and England. 
    Their first visit to Namibia was three years before that, when they were 61. To these post-retirement globetrotters, cruising Florida in a vehicle equipped with all the comforts of home is a breeze. 
    Robert Mellis went to Africa and Asia to teach and mentor working journalists in developing countries. Two of his trips were funded by the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C. Funding for the other trips came from many sources, including the Independent Journalism Foundation in New York, the U.S. government through its Aid to International Development program, several corporations — and even the newspaper in Namibia. 
    Jo Mellis, who has been at his side since they met in Boston in 1962, continued as his constant companion. She always went along and always found her own projects to work on — not the least of which was her opposition to the schools being built in Cambodia. "I got really annoyed," she said. "The Japanese were there building schools with no bathrooms. "Schools. With. No. Bathrooms," she repeated incredulously. "What are the girls supposed to do?" 
    Mellis started his lifelong career in journalism at age 15 in Scotland after he dropped out of school. "I was the youngest editor in Scotland," he said. He came to the United States and worked at several newspapers, including a stint at the St. Petersburg Times, before settling into a job as publisher of a group of weekly papers in Connecticut and New York. It was there that he learned to make the most of what he had — which wasn't much. That's the nugget he wanted to share with reporters and editors in poor countries: You can do great journalism even without a lot of resources. 
    And so began his travels that took him to 19 countries in 20 years. Mellis details all of this in his book, Now We Begin: How to Add Fun and Enjoyment to Your Retirement Years and Make a Difference in Our World. 
    Were they ever scared? Not really, they said, but there were some scary times. "We were in Namibia right after 9/11 . . . all the talk shows in the country were saying America got what it deserved. They called us the bullies of the world," Mellis said. "Sometimes you have to just let things roll off you. Not everybody loves America," he said. 
    What was their favorite place? There's no hesitation. "Bhutan." It's a small country the size of Switzerland in the eastern Himalayas that measures Gross National Happiness and strictly limits the number of tourists it allows in, Mellis said. The idyllic Buddhist nation nestled high in the mountains between Tibet and India makes its money selling hydro power to India, he said.
    The editor of Kuensel, a newspaper subsidized by the Bhutanese government, asked Mellis to help it become self-sufficient. Mellis obliged, teaching its business staff — of one — how to prepare and sell display advertising to local merchants. The paper, and the merchants, were pleased with the results, he said.
    Robert and Jo Mellis believe their life has been richer and fuller after retirement than most people's are during an entire lifetime. And it makes them feel like shouting from a mountaintop to other retirees: Just do it. 
    They are done with international traveling, but they plan to keep preaching the gospel of "Your Life Has Just Begun When You Retire" to everyone they meet. 
    In the epilogue of his book, Mellis said, "It has become our mantra that our retirement became the starting point for our new life, the beginning of what has become the most interesting phase of our journey. "And I constantly remind myself of the Monty Python skit in which a cart is pushed through the streets of some woebegone city in England with a man calling out, 'Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.' The men with the cart haul a puny-looking guy out of a hovel and throw him on the cart while he whispers, 'I'm not dead yet.' "We are not dead yet. Lots more living will be done." 


Be brave, stay engaged 
Tips from Robert and Jo Mellis on how to make your retirement years the best of your life. 
• Just do it. Be brave. Be fearless. 
• Stay involved with people. 
• Stay interested in life. 
• Always challenge yourself. 
• Try to do something different. 
• Chase the thrill — get on that Harry Potter ride at Universal Orlando.
• Volunteer. Do your fair share of giving and everybody benefits. And remember, you don't have to be rich to have a great retirement. Be frugal. Live on your Social Security — but just live. 


The globetrotters Robert and Jo Mellis have been all over the world in retirement. Here are the places they've been and the age they were at the time: 
By plane 
Age 57: Singapore, Malaysia, Borneo, Sri Lanka, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan 
Age 61: Namibia 
Age 63: Cambodia 
Age 64: Laos and Vietnam, Germany, Spain, Gibraltar, Namibia, England 
Age 66: Namibia 
By boat 
Age 60: Maine to Florida 
Age 63: Canada 
Age 62: The Bahamas 
Age 65: Down the east coast of the United States 
By RV 
Age 67: Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia 
Age 68: Maine to Florida via Cape Hatteras, N.C. 
Age 69: Along the Mississippi River to Ontario 
Age 70: British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska 
Age 71: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and back to Maine 
Source: Robert Mellis 
Copyright 2012 Tampa Bay Times

The Joys of Just Sitting

When we visited our old friend Michael Marzella on Pine Island, FL, this osprey came over to check on us while we ate lunch along the water of peaceful Pine Island.

I’ve been sitting outside our motor home today in the waning afternoon sun, watching a squirrel making his world perfect. I watched this for more than hour. Now, I know, if you are a captain of industry, running a company, making millions, a retiree who spends his/her time keeping track of the rise and fall of the stock market, or even being the captain of a charter boat that sails the Gulf Stream to bring dreams of paradise to your clients, watching a squirrel for an hour seems like an enormous waste of time.

It is not. It is fascinating.

The squirrel lives in the oak tree that provides shade to our rig. From his point of view, it’s his tree. So he’s not thrilled to have a motor home skulking under his tree. Add to that, he has to deal with the outrageous annoyance of having two cats that watch him for countless hours, with much twitching of tails. But a squirrel must go on living.

He comes down the tree trunk, head first, seemingly oblivious to the law of gravity. He stops and starts, quivering and shaking his gossamer-thin tail at enemies of the world of squirrel-hood. He lands on the ground, gently, rummages for a nut or some other tid-bit. He’s pretty thorough, digging under the ground, sifting the dirt through his two front paws, placing some treasure in his mouth for a few seconds to taste its value to him.

His almond-shaped eyes dart back and forth, constantly on the alert for trouble. He sits on his hind legs and cleans himself with his two front paws. He’s at one with his universe. When a dog walks by on a leash, he’d instantly on guard. He never lets that dog out of sight until it disappears among the other campsites.

Everything in his world is tied to his eyesight and his sense of smell, it seems. He constantly is looking for his next meal. We’d just cleaned off our picnic tables and the debris from the grill had landed on the ground. He was all over it, picking up the burned bits of chicken or pork ribs that we’d had during the week. He poked the tasty bits into his mouth. Wait a minute. I thought these creatures were vegetarian! Doesn’t look like it to me. I’d say he has adapted his eating behavior to be an omnivore. It’s all good from his point of view. Just like the wild hogs that roam in the park we stay.

These hogs came over more than 600 years ago from Cuba. Brought over by the Spanish conquistadors. They were allowed to run free and breed with the idea they would be a source of meat to the Spaniards. And did they ever! There now are thousands wandering in the wilderness of South Florida. A ranger told us the other night that they are not rounded up and killed in our park (Collier-Seminole in the Everglades) because the panthers that are highly endangered here like to chow down on wild hogs. Just to the north of here, however, there are 550 wild hogs living on the island of Cayo Costa. 

Jo and I and our kids anchored off Cayo Costa back in the 1970s. All I remember of it, though, were the stunningly beautiful white sand beaches and the billion-strong mosquitoes that kept guard over the island paradise. The mosquitoes were so plentiful that they actually drove us back into the Gulf of Mexico with their ferocious biting. We escaped with our lives – but barely.

Before we came down the coast to camp at Collier-Seminole State Park, we stayed at Myakka River State Park. We loved that park. Never have we seen such a remarkable array of water birds. Each day, we’d make our way to the side of Myakka Lake and view the 100-plus white pelicans – enormous birds with a wingspan that stretches between 6 and 8 feet. They are fascinating to watch because they are group feeders. That is to say, they have worked out that if they work in a circle they can corral the fish in the lake. They close the circle slowly and then, in unison, they stick their huge bills under the water and simultaneously slurp down the trapped dish.

We also spent time watching roseate spoonbills, kites, osprey, all manner of hawks, black-backed stilts who are just as described: a long-legged bird with a black back, that stalk through the shallows, dipping their beaks into the muddy water and almost always coming up with a dainty morsel.

No. I think just sitting and watching is a fine thing for a man to do. Perhaps there is nothing better than to stop, look and listen to the great world around us.

Two moorhens paddle by a squadron of white pelicans on Myakka Lake.