Dick Cook is an archetypal baby boomer: energetic, ambitious and bent on defying the aging process as long as possible.

He's also a CEO, now less than a decade away from the day he's supposed to turn in his keys and retire, according to time-honored business tradition.

Could a CEO retirement rebellion be on the horizon when the business leaders of the can-do generation turn 65?

Cook won't lead it, but he'd cheer it on.

"I don't think there should be 65 as a formal limit," said the president and chief executive officer of MAPICS Inc., an Atlanta-based software provider. "With the lifestyle that most CEOs lead today -- we're just healthier people, more involved in everything than people of the same age were a decade or two ago."

Mark Rednick, no has-been himself as a 66-year-old CEO, agrees. He contends that boomers are in "10 times better shape than guys from earlier generations."

"Most boomer CEOs don't want to retire, period, or they want semiretirement if they do retire," says Rednick, who heads MRI/Sales Consultants of Dallas, an affiliate of Management Recruiters International.

One attraction of semiretirement is that it may provide lucrative consulting opportunities beyond retirement packages that already can be famously substantial, at least at large corporations. But many CEOs, feeling unfairly tarred by the scandals involving a few high-profile colleagues, say it's about lifestyle and the chance to do something different.

If they do keep working into traditional retirement years, they'll have plenty of age-group company. The number of Americans 65 and older in the labor force has grown substantially in the past two years -- to 4.5 million in July, up 7 percent from two years earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Also, a survey of boomers by the AARP, the group that represents people over 50, found that 80 percent believe they will continue to work during retirement.

John Challenger, CEO of the Chicago-based executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, sees another sign of a potential new CEO trend. He says some personal services contracts -- which mandate, among other things, 65-and-out at large corporations -- are starting to be loosened, suggesting a future with more senior boomers staying in the executive suite.

"These are die-with-their-boots-on CEOs," Challenger says.

Count long-time banking and insurance executive Dick Bauer among those in the anti-retirement camp. While three years older than the first boomers, at 59, the chairman and president of The Philanthropic Companies in Berwyn, Pa., shares similar traits and doesn't like the idea of being forced out to pasture.

"I've been struggling with retirement being just a few years away," he says. "I want to be happy and productive as long as I can be, and one way to do that is through my business experience."

Cook is more ambivalent.

A fit 55, he works out regularly and loves to water-ski on weekends, doing stunts and leaving younger men in his wake. Besides putting in grueling work weeks running a $138 million-a-year company, he is incoming chairman of the American Electronics Association.

While he doesn't want to stop working cold at 65, he'd like to pare down the schedule a bit -- which means not being CEO.

"You have to balance your passion for the business and your passion for your personal life," he says. "I firmly believe when I'm 65 I will be more passionate about my personal life than 60-hour weeks as a CEO."

Leslie Muma, 58-year-old chief executive of Milwaukee-based technology provider Fiserv Inc., says the CEOs he knows want to stay healthy and productive, but not necessarily in the hot seat. A self-described health nut, he wants to leave by 65 so he can be an adjunct professor, ride his Harley Davidson, travel more.

He raises the point that it's good for the company to bid farewell to executives by that age, in the interest of new ideas and leadership and in fairness to younger managers coming up through the ranks.

Then there's the mortality issue.

"I don't want to be dragged out of here in a pine box," he says.

Whether baby boomer CEOs bust through the retire-at-65 barrier or not, they are certain to depart from the traditional scenario of retiring to nonstop golf and an end to all work.

"From a CEO's perspective ... the concept of retirement has changed," says Larraine Segil, 54, a consultant and former CEO who teaches executive education at the California Institute of Technology. "They're far more interested in another career, in reinventing themselves."

"Heaven forbid that they just stop and play golf -- no way. Retirement is a dirty word."