Mo rocca celebrates late-in-life success stories | members only access

Mo Rocca, 55, hopes to popularize a new term: In his new book, _Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs_, the _CBS Sunday Morning_ correspondent chronicles entertaining

and unexpected stories of people who are rockin’ life in their 70s, 80s and beyond — selling out concert halls, attempting land-speed records and debuting as authors, for example. Rocca

tells AARP how hearing these stories inspired him to step out of his own comfort zone, how he’s trying to make healthier dietary choices in his 50s, plus the food he introduced to Barbra

Streisand. _This interview has been edited for length and clarity._ WHAT LESSONS DID YOU LEARN FROM THE ROCTOGENARIANS YOU INTERVIEWED? They ignored the conventional wisdom that the third

act in your life as a drama should be a period of winding down, a period of decline. I keep thinking if life is a three-act play, you don’t want the audience leaving at the second

intermission, or the third act. You want to end with a bang. You want the critics to say, “Wow, what a great ending.” We’ve added all these years to life expectancy, so we’re figuring out

what to do with those years. There’s a whole lot that you can do. In his new book, Rocca highlights entertaining and unexpected late-in-life success stories. AARP (Courtesy Simon &

Schuster) WHO WAS ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE PEOPLE TO TALK TO? One of the patterns I noticed in a lot of these stories is people returning to first loves, but in a much clearer, simpler way — and

in a freer way. It’s so inspiring. I love the story of Ruth Slenczynska, who I first profiled for _CBS Sunday Morning_, who was one of the great child prodigies at the piano. But she was

terrorized by her father — the stage parent on steroids, a nightmare story. She had to quit eventually because it was too much torture. And this is a woman who played with Rachmaninoff, who

subbed for him when she was a child at one concert. But finally, she learned to love playing for the sake of playing. DID RESEARCHING THE BOOK CHANGE YOUR OPINION ON AGING? I think so. I

prefer profiling older people because they’re more interesting to me, and I’m an old soul myself. Yet, in writing this book, I realized I too had fallen into this trap of feeling like

opportunities had passed me by, and that life was a series of an increasing number of exit ramps that were closed off. And of course limits set in, primarily physical ones, but opportunities

also open up. I think of my mother when she prunes the grapefruit tree that we planted together many years ago. You prune branches and then they come back even stronger — there are more

shoots, sprouts. So, yes, it has made me rethink aging and become much more optimistic. The conventional wisdom had crept up on me, and I didn’t realize it.