Mother Jones illustration; Celal Gunes/Anadolu/Getty; Alex Wong/Getty
Terri Williams, who lives in northern Texas, started volunteering as a high schooler in the mid-1970s—at first for Planned Parenthood, educating people about birth control. In retirement, she hasn’t stopped.
Linda McMahon’s 2024 nomination as President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, a prelude to attempts in dismantling the department, led Williams to double down on her efforts, which now center on helping elementary schoolers excel.
The work also keeps Williams sane. Following politics leaves her “ready to tear somebody’s hair out,” she said.“After I hang out with the kids, I’m in a great mood—there’s nothing like 17 people screaming, ‘Miss Terri!’ when you walk into the room.”
“I’m doing this so my granddaughters will have the future that their grandmothers had.”
Williams is one of a legion of retired people responding to the tears in the country’s social fabric by volunteering in their communities, rather than staying frozen in fear—work that has taken on new urgency under the second Trump administration.
A January study in the journal Social Science & Medicine found that volunteering slows down aging in retirees: the DNA of people who volunteered the equivalent of one to four hours a week showed distinctive biomarkers associated with decelerated epigenetic aging, with the most pronounced effects among retired people.
“People might do better, physically, psychologically, socially, if they have a role that they think is important and they identify with,” said Cal J. Halvorsen, a gerontological social work scholar at Washington University in St. Louis and one of the authors of the study. “In the American context, we take our jobs very seriously, and so we were curious if volunteering after retiring or when you’re no longer working might have a different effect on your epigenetic aging.”
That study is just part of a growing body of research on the health benefits of volunteering for retirees, a major benefit for older Americans who have mobilized for election defense and other core public services under attack. Another study published in February found that volunteering in early retirement among Americans also reduced rates of depression by around 10 percent—again, a more pronounced effect than in the general population.
“If you retired and you’re volunteering for something, then you still might feel that connection to something greater than yourself,” Halvorsen said.
Karen Edwards, in Connecticut, spends around 40 hours a week volunteering for a myriad of causes. Edwards, who still takes precautions against Covid, does most of that work remotely (and wears a mask to local Indivisible events), supporting the electoral process in races like the 2020 Senate elections in Georgia and the more recent 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
“I did a lot of virtual work, phone calls, texting, a little bit of research here and there, and then also what’s called vote curing,” Edwards said, “helping people who had made errors on their absentee ballots or had never received their ballot.”
Frank Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran based in Arizona, spends four to ten hours a week trying to get people to register to vote. Thompson, a longtime conservative, had been largely disconnected from politics—but Donald Trump’s first run for office, in 2015, changed his views.
“It got me going,” Thompson said, “and I decided I needed to get back and jump back in and try to help talk to people about voting.”
Thompson now works with the Arizona Poor People’s Campaign and the veterans group Common Defense. “I’m doing this so my granddaughters will have the future that their grandmothers had,” he said. “When you start losing freedoms, you know you’re going in the wrong direction, and I don’t believe that that’d be right for them.”
Julie Peskoe, in New York, focuses on reproductive health care and refugee work—already a volunteer, she stepped up her work after retiring three years ago.
“My refugee work is very hands-on, doing things like helping refugees find jobs,” Peskoe said. “With my synagogue, we resettled a couple of families from Afghanistan and from Ukraine and have continued to have a relationship and work with them.”
The people I spoke with believe their volunteering makes a difference
—sometimes keeping up an impact they had during their careers, like Edwards, in Connecticut, a doctor by training and former vice president at a nonprofit for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“I believe I’m helping to restore or maintain democracy,” Edwards said. “I’m just doing it in a different way.”
This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from the Gerontological Society of America, the Journalists Network on Generations and the John A. Hartford Foundation.
