RETIREE DISCOVERS A SURPRISING NEW CAREER

Until she retired from Florida’s Dade County school system almost five years ago, JoAnn Sampson never had run a day in her life. Perhaps she should have given it a try sooner. In the past three years, running has earned her five gold medals and one silver as a senior athlete.

Sampson, a former elementary school teacher and member of the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) retiree chapter, discovered her hidden talent quite by accident. “I was reading the paper and saw an ad for the Senior Games,” she explains. She sent for an application and when she received it, she noticed the application listed dozens of events. “I checked the first event listed,” says Sampson. It was the 100 meter race.

She panicked a bit when she realized she only had four months to train. “I had never done any sort of racing,” says the Hallandale Beach resident. Advised by a friend, Sampson began walking. She did it faithfully seven days a week. A month later she added yoga to her routine and began doing short sprints to build her speed.

Sampson brought home the gold in that first race. The win qualified her for the Senior Games state championship, where she won the silver. So began a new career for a woman who never set foot on a track until her 60s.

“This just lets me know that God gives us all a talent. I’m so grateful and blessed,” she says. “I feel a lot better than I did when I taught school. I’m competing and meeting all kinds of people. It keeps me
feeling young.”

This past summer, Sampson traveled to Honolulu to take part in the USA Championships, where she ran with some of the fastest women in the 60 to 64 age range. She placed sixth and picked up a few pointers from several racing
veterans. Even though she placed sixth, her time of 17:38 qualified her for the World Masters Championship in San Sebastian, Spain.

The new medicare prescription drug program began on Jan. 1, 2006. Part D drug benefits will not be provided directly by Medicare. Instead, to get Part D coverage, seniors must choose a plan from a Medicare-approved private company or entity that offers a Part D plan in their area.

Premiums and costs will vary, and enrollment can be complicated, so the AFT was looking for ways to provide useful information. To help seniors better understand the new program, the AFT has joined with the Medicare Rights Center, a national consumer service organization, to provide members access to the Center’s Medicare Interactive Web site, www.medicareinteractive.org/aft.

The Web-based tool is designed to provide older adults and people with disabilities, their caregivers and the professionals who serve them user-friendly consumer information about Medicare benefits, rights and options at no charge.

Medicare Interactive weaves together national and state-specific information and includes an explanation of how Medicare works with retiree health coverage, answers to frequently asked questions and links to related sites.

Joined by its union partners in south Africa, the AFT has launched a two-year project to address the alarmingly high rates of HIV/AIDS among that nation’s educators. Almost 4,000 teachers in South Africa died of AIDS-related complications last year, and more than 12 percent of South African teachers are HIV-positive.

“If this epidemic is to be halted, people must get the information they need to protect themselves, and those infected must have access to treatment. Our project focuses on both aspects,” says AFT president Edward J. McElroy. “The spread of HIV/AIDS is not an African problem, or an American problem. It is a challenge to the entire human race.”

Over the past three years, the AFT and its members have raised more than $185,000 to support union-led prevention and treatment efforts throughout sub-Saharan Africa. More than 15,000 African teachers have participated in AFT-sponsored training courses. The South Africa project includes training on HIV/AIDS prevention and healthy standards of living for 7,500 representatives of South Africa’s teachers’ unions—the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, the National Professional Teachers’ Union of South Africa, the National Teachers’ Union and the South African Teachers’ Union.

Tax-deductible contributions to the AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign can be sent to AFT Educational Foundation, 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20001. Checks should be made out to the AFT Educational Foundation.