Gray Panthers

The First Pennsylvania Bank of Philadelphia was the recent object of a determined protest. Demonstrators descended on its president demanding free checking accounts and no-charge money orders for members of their minority. The answer was no, and the protesters said that they plan sit-ins.

Blacks? Chicanos? Women's Liberationists? Nope. Old folks. The latest protest group making waves is a doughty band called the Gray Panthers, founded in Philadelphia by a curt, spry lady named Margaret Kuhn, 67, who definitely does not weave scatter rugs or play shuffleboard. She and five chums, all retired church workers of different denominations, set up headquarters in Philadelphia's Tabernacle Church last year. Their basic goals: to develop a new life-style and a new base for the elderly.

The committee now has a team of lawyers investigating old people's homes and lobbying in Congress for better legislation to protect the aged. Says Miss Kuhn: "Much of senility is not irreversible; it is induced by despair and frustration. Fixed retirement is dehumanizing. It shows how stupid our society is in making scrap piles of the elderly. We're not mellow, sweet old people. We've got time to effect change and nothing to lose." Gray Power has even attracted youthful devotees --known, of course, as the Panther Cubs.

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