PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 20, No. 8, Oct. 19, 2000

Coombs enjoying retirement to its fullest

Becky Mabry , Assistant Editor
(217) 244-1072; mabry@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand Patricia A. Coombs

If anyone is enjoying retirement more than Pat Coombs, she’d like to know who it is.

Coombs, a 55-year-old former administrative aide in the math department, said she’s having the time of her life.

"I really loved my job," she said of her 35-year-career in math. "But I absolutely love being retired."

Her last day was Jan. 31, and she’s spent the past nine months getting up in the morning without an alarm clock, cleaning her house when she "feels" like it, and starting a new part-time, second career. She has her real estate license and works for a company in Champaign.

That keeps her out among the public, but allows her the freedom to work as much or as little as she’d like.

All of the 35 years that Coombs worked at the UI, she worked in the math department in Altgeld Hall. She started as a clerk typist I in February 1965 and advanced through the ranks to the top position of administrative aide.

"The math department people are really super nice," she said. "There were a few times over the years when I did think about looking for other positions, but for me, the math department was kind of a second home."

She worked in various offices in Altgeld, and in fact, worked in the same office three different times in her career path.

"I just kept moving up and down the hall as the jobs changed," she said.

Her lunch hours for the past 25 years were frequently spent in the break room in the basement of the Henry Administration building, where she played bridge with other UI employees.

At one time they played five days a week, but in recent years they got together just three times a week. As people would retire, new players would join the game. Coombs estimates 25 to 30 people filtered in and out of the bridge games.

"I still play bridge quite a lot," she said. "In fact, some of the people I play with now are the same people I played with at noon. But I probably only play about four times a month now."

Though she’s away from campus now, she often sees her coworkers and other UI friends for lunch dates and other get-togethers. On the first day of new student week this fall, she was feeling pangs of homesickness for her former job.

"I thought, ‘Oh! All those new freshmen and new graduate students and new faculty! How exciting.’ I thought I was really going to miss all that until about 10 o’clock that morning, and then I thought ‘Nope. It’s fun being retired.’ "

The casual pace of life these days feels fine, she said. She plans to do some traveling, including a trip to Ireland.

"I had an identity in the math department, and I think I had an identity across campus with my peers, and that’s gone," she said. "But I guess the bottom line is I worked 35 years and I was ready to retire. I think if I wouldn’t have been ready, I wouldn’t be this happy."

She is reminded of how fortunate she is when she overhears friends who never worked at the UI worry about health insurance and retirement benefits.

"I look back at the day I started working for the university and at the time, I was young and I didn’t think about tomorrow. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me,’ " she said.