Natalie DiBlasio

USA TODAY

Bonita Osborn was 20 years old and planning her wedding on the day she heard President Kennedy's call for volunteers for the newly created Peace Corps.

"I thought, 'Oh my golly, what a wonderful opportunity. I wish I could do such a great thing,' " she recalled.

But for Osborn, the timing wasn't right. She got married, had children and then grandchildren. "Things keep happening in life, and you just don't get to do what you want to do," she said.

Fifty-three years later, Osborn is 73 and a Peace Corps volunteer helping to run a catering company that employs people with disabilities in the Eastern European country of Moldova. ,

For years, the Peace Corps was a young person's purview, an organization that drew recent college graduates hungry for adventure, unencumbered with families and mortgages and willing to endure the hardships of life in remote locales. Though college kids still flock to the organization, a slightly grayer demographic has stepped up.

Osborn is one of about 500 volunteers over the age of 50 serving in the Peace Corps, the organization said. The AARP crowd accounts for 7% of the volunteer corps, up from 1% at the end of the 1960s, the organization said.

Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet said the older volunteers bring different skills and experience to the corps than their younger counterparts, and they can serve as mentors.

"Our older Peace Corps volunteers have a whole lifetime of expertise both professionally and in how to get along with others," Hessler-Radelet said.

Joining the Peace Corps over the age of 50 comes with different challenges, Hessler-Radelet says. Learning an exotic language can be harder for older volunteers, and sometimes age comes with health needs that cannot be met in some countries. Still, the Peace Corps places no age limit on its volunteers. Its oldest volunteer is 80, and the corps has had volunteers as old as 86.

"We want Americans who are driven by service and who are interested in seeing the world from another person's perspective," Hessler-Radelet said. "That is not age-dependent."

Osborn came to the Peace Corps after a lifetime of experiences that included working as a telecom industry executive and a ski instructor, hiking Mount Kilimanjaro and biking across the USA.

"I am terrible at retirement," Osborn said. "I call the Peace Corps my fifth career."

Since that day in 1961, Osborn's outlook on life has changed.

"I am more patient. ... I am way more willing to accept people as individuals," she said. "I didn't come on a mission to change the world. I came on a mission to try to listen to what the people need. That comes with age."

Osborn planned her two-year commitment around family graduations, weddings and the births of great-grandchildren.

"Its wonderful to finally fulfill a dream that you had 50 years ago," Osborn said. "I never thought I was going to do it. I thought I was too old."

Katherine Fulford, 64, and her husband, Mark, 66, have been married for 40 years. Katherine worked as a leader and fundraiser for number of non-profit groups in Denver while Mark worked as a commercial bankruptcy lawyer.

Now they spend their time demonstrating condom use and explaining safe sex in Swaziland's schools, bars and anyplace people will listen.

At 26%, Swaziland has the highest HIV and AIDS prevalence rate in the world, UNICEF reported.

"It just seemed like the right time in our lives to do something different," Katherine Fulford said. "It felt like a time to give back."

While other couples their age enjoy the perks of plush retirement in the USA, the Fulfords live in a two-room, tin-roofed hut on a rural homestead with no running water.

She collects her fresh water in buckets when it rains, then culls the mosquito larva.

"The creepy crawlies in this country get my attention," she said. "It has been an adjustment."