For her 60th birthday, G. Morgan Timmis got a tattoo on her right foot of a famous Benjamin Franklin quote: “Dost thou love life?”
Her 62nd-birthday present will top that.
At a time when many of her peers are easing into retirement, Timmis will hop a plane in August and head to Botswana, where she will spend the next 27 months as a volunteer with the Peace Corps.
“I’m not nervous at all,” said Timmis, until recently the manager of historic and cultural affairs for Roswell. “I can’t wait. I’d go tomorrow if I could.”
She will spend several months with a host family while in training to learn what she can about the language, Peace Corps expectations, the country and culture. She then most likely will head to a rural village to help with youth development, assisting students with the life skills curriculum.
“I kind of look at this as a recalibration,” said Timmis, now 61. “OK, I’ve done the career thing. I’ve done the American dream, buy your own home thing and the accumulate stuff thing. Those things don’t really matter to me so much anymore.”
What does matter, she said, is determining what’s really important in her life going forward and finding ways to help others.
“I expect, to some extent, to be a different person,” she said. “Who that person will be, I don’t know. I may never come back. Who knows? I guess I’ve just always had a gusto for life and I want to live it to its fullest. As they say, this is not a dress rehearsal.”
Currently, the Peace Corps, which was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, has more than 6,800 volunteers in 64 countries, and they’re looking for more people like Timmis.
There’s no upper age limit to volunteer at the international public service organization. Probably one of the most famous older volunteers was Lillian Carter, the mother of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who served as a health volunteer in India in 1966 at age 68.
Volunteers have ranged in age from 18 to 86 and come from all walks of life, ranging from college students to seasoned corporate professionals.
Roughly 7 percent of the organization’s volunteers are 50 and older.
Terrell Perry, the Peace Corps’ Southeast regional spokeswoman, said senior volunteers often have the experience and maturity a host nation needs to accomplish its goals. Some nations, in fact, are asking for volunteers who have much more specialized skills that most likely would only come with an older, experienced person.
Last year, the organization relaxed its rules to allow volunteers to select the places in which they wish to work. They can also decide the type of work they want to be involved in, whether it’s health, education or community development.
Currently, there are 162 volunteers in Botswana, which has had Peace Corps volunteers since 1966.
Until recently, the Atlanta native admits she didn't know much about the southern African nation other than it was the setting for "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," a popular series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, and that it was pretty stable.
She said she wanted to work in Africa because she had spent time in Kenya and “felt a certain affinity for the people and was awed by the landscape and animals.”
Close friend Sharon Moskowitz, of Atlanta, was initially floored when Timmis dropped the bombshell that she was joining the Peace Corps.
“I knew that she was looking at retiring. I did not expect the Peace Corps,” she said. “You’re hitting the 60-year mark, and this is the last thing you think someone will do — join the Peace Corps as a senior.”
The more she thought about it, though, the more it seemed such a Morgan thing to do.
“She is quite the adventurer,” Moskowitz said. “I don’t know if she’s jumped out of airplanes, but she has a love of interesting places and people.”
Indeed, Timmis, who earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Georgia State University, has surprised people before.
She admits she had a bit of a “checkered” college career “trying to figure out the meaning of life.”
A good student, Timmis went to the University of Georgia for the first quarter of her freshman year, but decided she wanted to experience more in life. She then attended American University in Washington, D.C., thinking she might become “a Russian diplomat or something.”
Her wake-up call came in the form of a “C” grade. She returned to Georgia and enrolled in GSU. A study program took her to London, where she fell in love with the city and its architecture and history. “I felt so alive,” she said. “My grandparents on my father’s side were big Anglophiles. They had a big map of London on their living room wall.”
Soon Scotland caught her eye and her wandering spirit. She attended Heriot-Watt University/Edinburgh College of Art in Edinburgh.
She considered a career as an innkeeper in Scotland and later returned to Atlanta, where eventually she worked in marketing and historic preservation.
Her resume includes executive director of the Piedmont Park Conservancy, executive director of the Atlanta Urban Design Commission and director of marketing and business development for what is now Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh & Associates.
Later, a friend suggested she apply for the job in Roswell. It was a tough decision. “I’ve always been in Atlanta, a hardcore intown urban pioneer,” she said. She commuted for a while and later moved to Roswell, where she lives with her two dogs. She has arranged for someone to care for her dogs while she’s away.
These days, she spends her time saying goodbye to friends and packing up her home, which she plans to keep. Who knows, she may be back in a few years or so. But knowing Timmis, it wouldn’t be an easy bet.
In fact, the next part of the Franklin quote tattooed on her foot might sum up the rest of her life:
“Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
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