The Coming Culture Is Aging-Oriented: Fairfax Plans to Accommodate and Use Its Many Boomers

[12 April 2007 - Washington Post - By Annie Gowen] When Karren Scott retired from her job last year as a manager at the Department of Defense, she sometimes found herself "completely disoriented" as she made the transition from a life with "a very clear mission every day" to the more relaxed pace of a retiree. Now, Scott says, she's reinventing herself, taking classes in Annandale and searching for rewarding volunteer work. Still healthy and active at 55 -- and determined to continue living in her home in the Alexandria section of Fairfax -- Scott is one of a growing number of baby boomer retirees that Fairfax County hopes to get more involved in their communities -- by volunteering, for example -- as the Board of Supervisors works on an initiative to better serve and accommodate the county's increasing older population. Across the country, jurisdictions are grappling to address a senior population that surely will grow dramatically in the next two decades, mostly because of the large baby boom generation, some 77 million U.S. residents born between 1946 and 1964. More