Profile: The Gray Revolution

Now for the good news about Joe’s Generation: They’re not done. Don’t count them out just yet. Traditionally, civic involvement peaked in midlife and tailed off afterward. Volunteering, for instance, usually declined after age 50. “But the current generation of seniors has turned that wisdom on its head,” writes Putnam. “They are largely responsible for the boom in volunteering in recent decades, and they have resisted most staunchly the decline in participation in community projects.”

In short, the long civic generation is entering its Second Act. They know they’ll probably live into their 80s, or maybe their 90s, if they’re not there already. And they’ve been redefining retirement. They also know — since they read the newspaper — that the secret to a healthy, happy old age is activity. To quote a factoid on Putnam’s website, Bowlingalone.org: “Joining and participating in one group cuts in half your odds of dying next year.” To a member of the long civic generation, this good behavior comes naturally.

And how wonderful that could be for a city like Philadelphia. Imagine the potential, especially since some of the brightest, most energetic and most affluent members of this generation are the empty nesters moving back into town, into the luxury condos that have lately transformed the skyline of Center City. To date, they’ve been greeted most warmly by the chamber of commerce: SPEND YOUR NEST EGG HERE! Yes, they certainly do support the city’s restaurant scene, as well as the arts. But, given time, what if their greatest impact turns out to be political, not economic? Young hipsters aren’t Philadelphia’s real future; they’re too cool to get involved. But what would happen if the Nutter administration actively courted all the Joe Mankos?


IN THEATER, the seeds of the second act are planted in the first. So it was with Joe Manko. By nature and by his own admission, Joe is a “connector,” to use the term popularized by the book The Tipping Point. He knows a lot of people. A lot of people. In the 1980s and ’90s, as he gained stature in Lower Merion politics, he also got drawn into regional Democratic politics, thereby adding two more networks of friends and acquaintances to the existing circles of family, work and synagogue. Sooner or later, all those circles begin to overlap, so that … Let me put it this way. You can’t meet Joe without him knowing at least two or three people you know. You’ll forgive his wife Lynn for constantly asking him, “Is there anybody you don’t know?” At 68, he’s become convinced: “Philadelphia is, like, two degrees of separation, that’s about it.” Well, yeah — if one of the people is Joe Manko.

His rise in Democratic politics is visible on the windowsill of his corner office at his law firm on City Avenue. Photos, haphazardly propped up, show him with Al Gore, with Joe Lieberman and Joe Hoeffel. There he is with John Kerry. There’s Joe and Lynn with Bill Bradley, Joe and Lynn with Arlen Specter, Joe and Lynn with Bill Clinton.

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