PROJECT ESCAPE

A memoir chronicles a challenging post-retirement journey to a life of reimagined possibilities and fulfillment.

After working 40 years as a corporate manager of environmental issues for major energy and chemical companies, Jackson had no plans to retire. But when she turned 65 years old, Human Resources began pressuring her. The author pushed back, finally securing a severance package and staving off her departure for another year. During her final months, she began planning her next “Act”: “I attacked the idea of leaving the corporate world in the same way I would have managed a major capital project.” She sketched a five-point “project development and execution process” and titled it “Project Escape.” Phase I was to “Identify Needs,” which would have to work for both her and her husband, Craig, a biochemist. She created charts and tables, searching for something that would benefit others; allow her “to recover, regroup, and find” herself again; connect with the gentleness buried beneath her thick corporate skin; and make her feel “valued.” Then came her eureka moment: the Peace Corps Response, a new program designed for older volunteers with professional experience. Off she and Craig went to Palau, an island in Micronesia in the western Pacific. Jackson’s articulate memoir is an intriguing, emotion-filled story about how things can go wrong despite the best laid plans; lessons learned; and a few significant things that, despite adversity—or perhaps because of it—went unexpectedly right. In vivid detail, she recalls the sometimes-humorous, often chaotic, and demoralizing months spent trying to fulfill the intended mission while adhering to senseless Peace Corps regulations, such as the prohibition against supplementing the couple’s tiny stipend with personal funds. Their shabby housing was a few miles from Jackson’s office, with no public transportation. She describes walking along the heavily trafficked road and having to jump for safety into “the litter-filled culverts on each side of the road where sewer-smelling mud squished up” onto her flip-flops. The couple persevered admirably, but readers are likely to feel frustrated that it took them so long to start breaking the rules.

An engaging and informative personal account; will especially appeal to those pondering major life changes.