The List of 65
A birthday of new beginnings
She had taken early retirement from state government and had recently gone through a divorce. Her home had been burglarized, and she later sold it and built a home closer to her sister. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck and, during the months that followed—prior to her father’s death from an extended, unrelated illness—she’d spent much of her time with her parents in rural Shelby County.
As her 65th birthday approached in July 2024, Sandy Waits Phillips realized that she was becoming something of a hermit.
“So the birthday kind of gave me a reason to force myself to ‘reclaim me,’” she says. “I had 10 or 15 things I wanted to do, and then things just started coming to me. I would see things on the computer, things other people had done. I mean, it was just so easy.”
The result was the “list of 65” places she visited or events she experienced during her 65th year. When I overheard her discussing it with friends last summer, I asked to see the list and hear some of her stories. She sent more than a page and a half of single-spaced listings, each dated and accompanied with names of friends or family who joined her on the trips. She had photos, as well.
It began with a visit to the Paul Sawyier Library in Frankfort for a book signing by former University of Kentucky basketball great—now broadcast personality—Jack “Goose” Givens. Then came a backyard campout with four young great-nieces and nephews, Shakespeare in Central Park in Louisville, The Stephen Foster Story at Bardstown, hiking the Red River Gorge and a cave tour. She saw her first pro rodeo in Madison, Indiana, gave carrots to two Kentucky Derby winners at Old Friends thoroughbred retirement farm near Georgetown, and fed honeybees for the winter with Shelby County beekeeper Pat Hornback.
“There’s so much to do, and it’s inexpensive,” says Phillips, a consumer-member of Shelby Energy. “Most everything I’ve done has been less than $50, and a lot of it has been free. It was way better than I ever dreamed it would be.”
She visited the Rabbit Hash General Store in Boone County, toured coal mine Portal 31 in Harlan County, fired a shotgun for the first time at a skeet shooting range in Henry County (“I hit one on the sixth try”), saw the Madison, Indiana, unlimited hydroplane Regatta, took a broom-making class at Shaker Village in Mercer County, went zip lining with her great-niece over the Red River Gorge, toured Winchester’s Ale-8-One bottling company, and attended UK basketball games and the SEC tournament with friends and family. Sixty-five events in all.
Her 66th birthday in 2025 was spent with family at the movie Superman.
Phillips is already filling a list for the new year with her first ride in a small plane—in which the flight instructor let her take the yoke (or steering wheel).
Plans for the coming months include fly-fishing, a helicopter ride and skydiving.
