At age 52, Brenda Ison is the oldest person in her Empire Beauty School class.
“A lot of the other students could be my kids,” she said.
Ison took the big step to enroll in school and start a new chapter in her life after watching a series of factory jobs disappear.
“It’s so easy to get caught up thinking you can only do factory work, so all I ever looked for is factory work,” said the Grand Rapids woman, who took advantage of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance program. “But now I know I can do this. I’ve accomplished my goal and gotten my schooling. I want to take advantage of every opportunity.”
Ison isn’t the only woman in her 50s reinventing herself these days.
Sharon Caldwell-Newton, executive director for the Women’s Resource Center, has seen a 20 percent increase in the number of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s tapping into the expertise offered at the center.
“The increase is directly tied to the downsizing of the economy,” Caldwell-Newton said. “These are women who were in management and have worked for 15 to 20 years, but who have lost their jobs.
“Women often come to us a bit shell-shocked. They are grieving a loss in their lives, whether it’s a job, a divorce, a death. But when they can get past that initial shock of life falling apart, many women have taken this as an opportunity for reinvention.”
When Frances Gentile, of Eastown, lost her job 4 1/2 years ago, she didn’t do much grieving. By the time she had ridden her bike home the day she was let go, she had come up with the name of her new business: Frances Walks Your Dog.
“I was slaving away, literally, in my boring cubicle job as a proofreader in the mortgage documents industry. Mercifully, I was canned and I was not upset about it,” Gentile said with a laugh.
To get started with her new dream, she called the Women’s Resource Center.
“They said to contact GROW (Grand Rapids Opportunities for Women), so I did,” said Gentile, 55. “I took every class. I created a business plan that was scrutinized by bankers, created flow charts, studied the competition.”
The adaptability Gentile showed is a trait women have, said Patricia Duthler, director of GROW, which helps women start their own businesses through mentoring, classes and other resources.
“Women are able to be entrepreneurs, to be a business of one, because we are accustomed to multi-tasking,” Duthler said.
GROW helped Mary Sibley, 55, of Wyoming, with creating a Dot-to-Dot Braille Transcription business. She envisions the business helping smaller restaurants create Braille menus (big chain restaurants usually have them), translating take-out menus, business cards and other things into Braille.
“I wouldn’t have approached this without the classes at GROW,” Sibley said. “I’m chomping at the bit to get this going. It’s exciting to know it’s going to come to fruition. I’ve got a lot of people behind me.”
Sibley, who was born blind, has worked at Grand Rapids Area Transportation Authority (GRATA), Meijer Inc. and as a teacher. She has a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees.
“I’m trying to find my niche in areas people haven’t touched before, such as hospital discharge papers and contracts between individuals. There are myriad things not available to the visually impaired,” she said.
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Another 50-something creating a new life for herself is Nancy Claus. She’s gone from designing home interiors to designing the interiors of souls. She will graduate this spring from Western Theological Seminary in Holland after spending the past 41/2 years retooling her life.
“As an interior designer, people would invite me into their physical and emotional environments. All those years doing that has prepared me for ministry,” said Claus, 54, who lives in East Grand Rapids.
Claus and her husband, Tom, a partner in Mazda Great Lakes, attend Central Reformed Church. Her dream is to work in a similar congregation as an associate pastor. She has done three internships as part of the rigorous training at the Reformed Church in America seminary. The first was at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services, in the Electroconvulsive Therapy Clinic; the second was at Porter Hills Retirement Communities; and the third at Third Reformed Church in Holland.
“In 4 1/2 years, I have never once doubted my call,” she said.
Committing to such big changes sometimes requires an external push, Caldwell-Newton said, but the result can make for a better life.
“Women ... find their footing and explore what they really want to do with the second half of their lives,” she said of those the Women’s Resource Center helps. “The negatives have become a pathway to something new and exciting.”
Gentile agrees.
“I’m very happy to have found work that I like,” Gentile said.
“I love all of my clients. And I love that I am the beneficiary of my labor, not some boss in the corner.”
E-mail the author of this story: yourlife@grpress.com