Tom Winston, second from right, at UT law school
photo by University of Tennessee
For years Tom Winston’s name could be found in the newspapers in Chattanooga for his work as the CEO of Erlanger Medical Center, Cleveland, Tenn.-based Life Care Centers of America and the Chattanooga Heart Institute.
This week he has been getting some additional press for a different kind of achievement, but one that is no less noteworthy. On Saturday, he will graduate with 95 other students from the University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville — at the age of 73.
Mr. Winston was featured in a front-page story in Friday’s Knoxville News Sentinel and has also been written up in the University of Tennessee’s online publications for the unusual achievement of going back to law school beginning at the age of 70.
He told the newspaper he went back to school simply because he became bored with retirement.
While in law school, he befriended a number of fellow students, even though many of them were nearly 50 years his junior.
He continued to live in Chattanooga while commuting and plans to practice here with an unnamed friend after hopefully passing the bar exam this summer, he told the publications.
While admitting memorizing material was a little harder than when he was younger, he told Tennessee Today that the experience has taught him the value of how senior adults can still be positive and important contributors to society.
“Seniors bring a tremendous amount of knowledge, experience, maturity and commitment to the table,” the Memphis native said. “I hope our society will soon recognize that assigning an age, whether 50, 60, 65, or 67, as the end of our usefulness is really quite foolish.”