VOICES OF RETIREMENT

Lucile T. Wessmann of Sarasota, Fla., formerly of Long Island, retired late in 1969. For more than 30 years Mrs. Wessmann was a financial writer and editor and a partner of a New York Stock Exchange firm. She now works for a marine laboratory near her home:

"My Wall Street career did nothing to prepare me for the challenges of retirement years or how to put them to constructive use."

"From leading a very busy life you settle down to doing . . . what? I kept on with free-lance work for a while. But it's hard finding things to do that make you feel you're not wasting time."

"I'd built my life about my work. Who am I, now that I've stopped working?"

"When my husband retired four years after me, that helped a bit for a while. But now I'm a widow. Widows outnumber the married women three to one in my apartment building."

"I would certainly have reservations about recommending that others retire permanently to the Sunbelt unless they have good specific reasons."

"There's a Hindu prayer I've always liked: "God give me work for the rest of my life, and life for the rest of my work."

"My advice is: If at all possible, don't cut your bridges o what you've done and where you've been."