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 Ron Meyer: One Average Man’s Adventure Into Retirement-
Or, From Shipping to Broadcasting in one Easy Step
By: Jay Ramseyer
So what could be more natural? One day you’re delivering boxes to smiling people and the next day you’re signing your life away to buy air time so you can become the next Larry King.
I can hear you now. You’re saying you’ve got to be kidding, right? How could this happen? Even more important, your asking, how can I be sure I don’t end up in a moment of old timer’s insanity, like this guy, and slam dunk thirty years of hard work and discipline that should be culminating in a once in a lifetime chance to sit back and enjoy a little slice of peace and quiet by jumping into a total tumult of entrepreneurial hodgepodge brought on in a moment of broadcasting bravado? I know that’s what you’ve got to be asking.
At least there are surely some lessons to be learned here that will help you and I stay on the straight and narrow and save ourselves from a similar fate of decision making fatale. So let’s have a look at a real life case study. You’ll want to grab a highlighter and post notes on your refrigerator for future reference in case you find yourself in a similar moment of potentially lethal path altering temptation.
We’ll be considering the case of Ron Meyer. He looks like any man might look and he is an average man in many respects, with perhaps a little less hair than most. He’s a family man, with a wife and two kids and
four cute little grandbabies. He has a nice three bed room home all dressed up in country Victorian on a patch of soft green carpet in the heartland of America. He mows his yard riding on a green machine that is so common to this part of the country. He’s a caring man, a church going man and a career man.
Every day for the past twenty seven years he has gotten up every working morning whether rain, sleet or snow, put on brown, kissed his wife Jackie goodbye and hopped into a UPS delivery truck, risking life and limb to deliver both important and not so important packages to a hundred common country folk like you and me.
So how could an otherwise disciplined and caring man come to such a colossal collision of career colliding consequences? It’s a mental event all of us baby boomers will face one of these days real soon; it’s called retirement.
Over the next ten years over thirty million men and women will come to that time in life where traditionally we say good by to a work we knew and step into a time that has come to be defined (Over the past fifty years) as a time when we get to rest and generally do what ever we have always wanted to do, but have never had the time.
Let’s face it. The change called retirement can also be a very stressful time and cause a mind to split. It’s filled with all kinds of adjustments. It’s a time that forces contemplation about whether life has been as productive as we would have wanted. It’s a time when big questions loom about where to go from here and how to make what suddenly looks like meager retirement savings stretch out for the next thirty or forty years. For many its stressful and stretching questions about who they will be now that all the indicators they have become so accustomed to have suddenly changed.
Retirement brings a plethora of new questions about what my new role will be; to my spouse, my family and my community. It’s a time when all things so predictable and routine are suddenly gone and now everything is up for grabs. Then to add to the stress of it all so many things are changing in the financial and social climate of our country.
All of us baby boomers will face these issues soon, so what do we do? The American retirement dream is changing under a flood of newly immerging issues of national security, health and financial stability. So let’s go back to Ron and take a deeper look, maybe we can see some answers.
On the surface the move from shipping to broadcasting doesn’t seem connected, but a deeper look reveals a consistency of purpose and self definition.
At the heart of it all is Ron’s most unmistakable quality (Besides his que ball head), his faith. As a born again Christian Ron is deeply committed to his family, his church and his friends. For many years he has taught Sunday School and all kinds of classes on issues from marriage and family to youth and money. He has a group that meets regularly in his home where he encourages and admonishes friends and family to live a life like that of his Lord and Master. He has helped create special events at his church to draw and minister to those in need.
Over his many years of faithful service as a UPS delivery man Ron was even known to encourage and pray for his customers.
Ron has done what many of us will need to do in the coming years. Take stock, take a new direction, look deep within and ferret out the tried and true purposes that have been part of us all along. We will need to mead out a new direction that emits from that consistent and deepest fundamental fiber of who we are.
In broadcasting Ron has found new life and new direction in the most fundamental and consistent expression of who he is. The outer expression has changed, but Ron hasn’t. He is still caring about what happens to people and he knows faith is what can make the difference for anyone no matter what they face. In that nothing has changed.
Once he delivered packages to homes in a big brown truck. Now he delivers his faith to homes all over central Indiana via radio every Sunday morning at eight thirty on Shine 99, 99.7 on your FM dial. It’s a half hour of interesting guests, real people like housewives, businessmen, sports figures and community leaders, who join Ron to share encouragement from the Bible and through their own personal experiences.
Slated guests speak to a wide variety of topics from finances to drug addiction to health issues in a fast paced, professional program centered on encouraging people to find faith, develop their faith and discover practical ways to express their faith.
Ron may not have a lot of hair on his head, but he has hair where it really counts. There can be no doubt about the authenticity of the faith of a man when he has the courage to step up to the plate and sign on the line for a new adventure that is centered on bettering the lives of others when he could be easing into a live of leisure for himself.
Perhaps all of us who will be facing retirement soon can learn something here about what retirement should really be all about. It’s not the “me” trap where it’s all about the leisure and pleasure I can have because I’ve earned it. It’s about stepping up to the plate, or the microphone in Ron’s case, and investing ourselves into making a difference. After all, the American dream of retirement might not be an option in the future if we do not properly invest ourselves back into this country and into our communities. We must do what we can to assure that our nation is kept strong and sound so our children and grandchildren will have a safe and stable place to retire someday.
Nothing will more powerfully teach your grandchildren what retirement should be all about than your own example.
You should catch Ron’s example this coming Sunday morning at eight thirty, 99.7 on the FM dial. It will encourage you to do what you should be doing; building your own faith and then investing yourself into others.
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