Blue-Collar Boomers Take Work Ethic to College

By LIBBY SANDER

For 16 years, Russell Kearney awoke at 1:30 a.m. to hoist boxes of Wonder bread and Hostess cakes onto a truck and deliver them along a 120-mile route through eastern North Carolina.

After a decade, lifting and pushing thousands of pounds of bread — sometimes as much 10 tons a day — ruptured...