Page 28 - BusinessWest May 11, 2026

Dick Easton
This Nurse Proves That Age Really Is Just a Number
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
Dick Easton attended nursing school at
UMass Amherst with students rough-
ly one-third his age.
He started work as a nurse at Cooley
Dickinson Hospital in Northampton when
he was 62, the age when many in this pro-
fession are retired or thinking seriously
about it. He was nearly 70 when COVID
hit, and while that ultra-challenging time
prompted many in the field to head for the
exits, it only deepened his passion for this
second career.
“It brought even more meaning to my
life — it just motivated me to stay at it,” he
told BusinessWest. “It was a very trying
time, but when you met the challenges, it
was incredibly satisfying. There was a lot of
heartache because of deaths in the hospital,
but it had incredible meaning to me every
single day, and never once did I say ‘God, I
can’t take it, I’m going to quit.’”
Easton’s story is certainly an inspiring
one, a saga that drives home the point that
age really is just a number, and not a limi-
tation or a boundary to anything that one
might want to do.
It’s a story — well, this chapter, at least
— that begins in late 1997, when Easton’s
older son was severely injured in a skiing
accident. It turns out that this would be
the first of three incidents — Dick’s own
heart attack a few months later and his
younger son’s back injury while at work a
few months after that being the other two
— that enabled him to see all that nurses
and other healthcare professionals did for
patients and family members. And it com-
pelled him to start thinking seriously about
a later-in-life career change.
“I credit the nurses that took care of
myself and my family with instilling in me
the desire to help people through health
crises; I started thinking, and I started
assessing where I was in my life,” said
Easton, who was in his late 40s when these
health incidents changed the trajectory of
his career and his life. “It made me realize
that nurses did much more than take care
of patients; they were also taking care of
the surrounding family.”
So, Easton, a small-business owner
— one of his ventures shipped shoring
“It brought even
more meaning to
my life — it just
motivated me to
stay at it.”
Easton
Continued on page 30 >>
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28
MAY 11, 2026
MONTHLY FEATURE Business W est