It’s never too late
LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 4 February 2007 Issue
Getting old means retirement to a lot of people. But for others it is just the beginning of a better, rosy, fulfilling or successful life.
Ray A. Kroc was 52 years old, had diabetes, incipient arthritis, and already lost his gall bladder and most of his thyroid gland on the day he affixed his signature in 1954 on a lopsided contract in favor of brothers Maurice and Richard McDonald to franchise a copy of their hamburger operations in the United States. Undeterred by earlier business failures and despite his financial handicap, Kroc made McDonald’s a 25 million dollar business in less than five years. At the time of his death in 1984 at the age of 82, sales approached $9 billion. Today, it is one of the biggest and most successful fast food chains in the world.
Sidney Sheldon, an American writer, Broadway playwright, a television and movie screenwriter, did not begin writing his best-selling novels like The Other Side of Midnight, Master of the Game, and Rage of Angels until after he turned 50 years old. He almost committed suicide at the age of 17, struggled to fight manic depression for years, and died at the age of 89 a couple of days ago.
Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a Bengali-Indian writer, wrote and published his masterpiece The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian in 1951 at the age of 55, and authored thirteen other English books after that. Prior to his death at the age of 102, Chaudhuri wrote his final work Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse when he was 99 years old.
Taikichiro Mori founded the Mori Building, a leading property developer and one of the most successful real estate management companies in Japan. Before his death in 1993 at the age of 88, Forbes magazine ranked him as the richest man in the world in 1991 and 1992. Before starting to build his business empire in his mid-50s, Mori had been a professor of business in Yokohama, Japan.
Richard Buckminster Fuller, American inventor, designer, and visionary, became famous with his geodesic dome project that revolutionized engineering. In 1949 at the age of 54, he erected the first geodesic building in the world. At the age of 32, Fuller was bankrupt, jobless and saw how his young daughter Alexandra die of polio and meningitis complication. This drove him to drink and almost commit suicide. But later he decided to embark on, as he declared, “an experiment, to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity”. He died at the age of 87.
Ronald W. Reagan, the 40th and the oldest ever elected US president, though a movie and television actor did not enter politics until the age of 44. The Great Communicator, as he is known because of his quotable speaking style, became governor of California at the age of 56 and ascended to the US presidency at the age of 69. On his death at the age of 93, Reagan left a good mark in US history.
Julia Child was a famous American cook who introduced the so-called French cuisine and offered her cooking techniques through her best-selling books and popular television shows. They say that she did not learn how to cook until she was in her late 30s. She was already 50 years old when she first appeared on television to mesmerize her audience on how to cook the omelette. A recipient of the French Legion of Honor in 2000, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003, and honorary doctorate degrees from Harvard and other universities, Child was almost 92 years old when she passed away in 2004.
The list and the heartwarming stories of renowned late bloomers can go on and on. But the message seems clear – there are no deadlines, or no such thing as being too late, when it comes to starting one’s life.
