Grays on The Go

By Nancy R. Gibbs

No one ever expected America to age gracefully. How could the country of adolescent spirit, reckless politics, marathons, short skirts, unbounded energy and a restless imagination admit that its body is growing old? Not with Ronald Reagan in the saddle at 77. Or Joe Niekro, a starting pitcher at 43, fluttering knuckle balls past cross-eyed youngsters on a Saturday afternoon. Or Dr. Jonas Salk, 73, who developed the first polio vaccine 35 years ago, searching for an AIDS vaccine. Or Elizabeth Taylor at 55, flashing a luscious violet smile from a magazine cover. We don't have to slow down, they seem to say. Why should you?

It may be that, with all the willfulness of youth, America is finding a new way to grow old. Far from fading away, the elderly seem to be brightening on the horizons of the mind, the family, the workplace, the community. Everywhere their role and presence are changing. Politicians rush to court the gray vote. Corporations and charities plumb a deeply skilled, reliable labor resource among the used-to-be and not-yet-ready-to-be retired. Madison Avenue prepares to tap a vast, long-ignored market. Where once the image of the elderly was of frailty, there are now energy and curiosity, courses to take, choirs to join, diets to break, children to counsel, battles to fight, whims to follow.

But with these come other, less cheering images and prospects. Among them is the still haunting presence of the elderly poor, most of them widows, many of them black, collapsing into a safety net that cannot support their weight. The well-being of America's senior citizens, though far greater than 20 years ago, is by no means universal. Many are sick and getting sicker, as health care becomes prohibitively expensive. Every year, as the baby boomers age and the nation's center of gravity shifts upward, the allocation of resources becomes ever more difficult and the potential for conflict between generations ever greater.

Budget-conscious policymakers must already balance the competing claims of education, child-care and welfare programs against Medicare, catastrophic health insurance and numerous benefits for the elderly. With each advance in medical technology, doctors and ethicists wrestle over how long people should be kept alive and how to ration health care between the young and the very old. And closest to home, many "sandwich" families will feel a terrible strain as they try to raise their children and sustain their parents on a squeezed household budget.

In many ways, America is not yet ready for a vast social change that came upon it rather suddenly. "It used to be," says Ken Dychtwald, a young, blunt-spoken gerontologist in Emeryville, Calif., "that people didn't age. They died." When the Republic was founded, a newborn child could expect to reach 35. Today Americans could well live into their 90s -- and live well too. In 1950 people 65 and over made up just 7.7% of the population. Now the number is up to 12%, and it will reach 17.3% by 2020. Fastest growing of all is the group 85 and over. By 1995 the population of the average U.S. town will look like Florida's population today.

But it is not just that the elderly are living longer, healthier lives. They are living them differently. Look around the Sunbelt. Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada have some of the country's fastest-growing populations of those over 65. In some places it seems a wholly different, more leisurely universe, full of choices and passions long delayed. There is Hulda Crooks, 91, who has climbed 97 mountains since she turned 65, most recently Mount Fuji in Japan. And Dentist James Jay, 74, who finished, along with 51 other septuagenarians and four octogenarians, that 26-mile ribbon of pain, the New York City Marathon. And Virginia Peckham, 69, known on San Clemente beach as "That Crazy Old Lady," riding an orange-and-white boogie board and shouting surfing mantras. And Etta Kallman, 77, writing knowingly about "The Metabolism of the Dinosaur" and winning awards for academic excellence from New York University. And Jane Stovall, 103 next week, a onetime milliner, author, tango dancer and seniors golf champion and, at 89, a student pilot.

Then there are the seasoned boys of summer: the Kids-Kubs softball league of St. Petersburg, Fla., where rookies must be at least 74 to don the white Good Humor man uniform and black bow tie. The team has its own special rules, Harry Rylee told TIME Correspondent Michael Riley. "You've got a couple of guys there that you could eat a sandwich while they're running to first base," muses the outfielder, whose brothers Morris and Michael play shortstop and infield. "But you can't tell 'em they can't play. That'd be like sticking a knife in them."

For many of the relentlessly young, the attitude is born out of a community + life that resembles nothing so much as their college years of half a century ago: a life of options, dates, lessons and sudden, surprising fellowship. Florida Gerontologist Otto Von Mering, 65, refers to the "fictive kinship," whereby older people acquire a new support system long after their families and friends have dispersed. Take Liz Carpenter. At 65, the twangy-voiced former press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson started writing a book. At 66, she found romance -- with a man she had known when she was 20. Now 67, she has devised her cardinal rules for aging: entertain a lot, never pass up an invitation, and by all means fall in love. On a hilltop outside her home in Salado, Texas, she entertains friends in the Jacuzzi she calls her "golden pond." Every month she gathers with fellow members of the Bay at the Moon Society, a group of large-lunged Texans who meet at a different ranch to sing and holler at the midnight sky. "Aging has become very stylish," Carpenter concludes happily. "All the best people are doing it."

But the elderly are doing far, far more than just playing. The "shadow work" of millions of volunteers -- in schools, hospital wards, prisons and arts centers -- has helped fill the hole left by younger women, once full-time volunteers, who have entered the work force. Many retirees view such service as a duty as well as a pastime. Lois Eiseman, 67, a former kindergarten teacher, travels to schools and day-care centers to test children for hearing disabilities. Restaurant Owner "Daddy" Bruce Randolph, 88 this week, serves thousands of dinners to Denver's homeless and shut-ins every Thanksgiving. Wayne Matson, 67, a retired Air Force colonel, volunteers full time for the humane society in Winter Haven, Fla. "If you're not committed to something," he declares, "you're just taking up space."

For others, the luxury of time and health has required some creative thinking. In the 1880s, when German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck set the retirement age at 65, the average life expectancy was 45. No problem there. But these days, many of those over 65 who prepared themselves for a life of leisure found they were not cut out for it. For them, the greatest luxury of retirement is returning to work -- on their own terms. Robert Pamplin, 76, former head of the Georgia-Pacific Corp., prudently began plotting his corporate afterlife ten years before he reached his company's mandatory retirement age. In 1976, on his 65th birthday, he bought a small sand-and- gravel company in Portland, Ore. Ten years and two other acquisitions later, he oversees a small empire with revenues of $420 million. Pamplin too saw his postretirement course as a sort of duty. "God has given us certain talents," he says. "And he gave them to us to use."

Granted, many retirees looking to return to work have had a harder time. It often takes many months to find a suitable job, whether to supplement Social Security or fill spare time. But between 1980 and 1986 the number of part-time employees in the U.S. rose by 23%, twice the rate of full-time jobholders, in part because many large corporations were quick to respond to the widened applicant pool. McDonald's created McMasters, a four-week job-training program for people over 50. The part-time work has helped people like Kathrine Gaik, 76, dodge an idle old age. The Travelers Insurance Co. of Hartford is saving more than $1 million a year by hiring back retired workers instead of paying fees to temp agencies. What is more, says Employment Director Donald K. Deward, "we get better, more competent, dedicated and highly motivated people."

The activity and prosperity of America's retirees have not gone unnoticed on Madison Avenue. There was a time when advertisers behaved as though no one past middle age ever bought anything more durable than panty hose. No more. Few marketing experts can ignore the fact that Americans over 50 earn more than half the discretionary income in the country. Magazine publishers are betting on the favorable demographics. Norman Lear's former wife Frances, 64, will next week debut Lear's, a glossy upscale bimonthly for women over 40. Major firms are forming special groups to study the senior market, and at least one company that offers ageless ads has opened. "My sense is we're on the leading edge right now," says Jerry Gerber of LifeSpan in Manhattan, "way out there, totally new, totally different."

In time, through sheer force of gravity, the products themselves, and not just the ads, will be shaped for an older consumer. "We have designed America to fit the size, shape and style of a country we used to be," says Gerontologist Dychtwald, "and what we used to be is young." Books and newspapers, with their tiny print, are designed for wide young eyes, as is the lighting in public places. Buttons, jars and doorknobs are obstacles to those with arthritis. Traffic lights are timed for a youthful pace. "In years to come," predicts Dychtwald, "huge industries will emerge as America changes its shape and form."

One huge industry has already emerged, based in Washington but reaching across the country: an industry of influence. Politicians for years viewed the aged as a uniform group -- physically and often mentally feeble, politically compliant, socially inert. The candidate who does so now risks being trampled by what one Congressman sweetly calls the 800-lb. gorilla. The American Association of Retired Persons, with 28 million members, is bigger than most countries. The Gray Panthers, with 80,000 members, pressures Congress on everything from health insurance to housing costs. This year the formidable gray lobby is moving full force into grass-roots presidential politics. And when it moves, the ground shakes.

In New Hampshire, leading up to primary night, the AARP mailed out 250,000 pieces of literature detailing the candidates' positions on Social Security, long-term health care and other incendiary issues. One booklet was called You Can Select the President -- a brash enough claim, until you consider that in 1984 a total of 101,000 Democrats voted in the primary and that the AARP has 145,000 members in New Hampshire alone. A $250,000 television ad campaign aims to get out the gray vote. "The old folks," says Political Consultant Thomas Kiley, "are showing more political muscle in this election than ever before."

The candidates have been quick to respond. Most have produced either a touching story of an aged parent or, in the case of Michael Dukakis, the real thing. Jesse Jackson, invoking Social Security's creator, tells voters that he "would rather have Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Ronald Reagan on a horse." Virtually all have come out in support of the long-term health- care bill now stalled in Congress, which, if it ever passed, would cost the Government tens of billions of dollars over the next five years. Only Republican Pete du Pont has proposed radically restructuring Social Security, a notion that George Bush boldly dismissed as a "nutty idea."

The fervor with which the elderly lobby to protect their benefits seems incongruous -- and unforgivably selfish -- to younger people who see only the silvery life-style of the old rich. But the AARP campaign is born of stark realities: the persistence of nasty pockets of poverty among the aged, the threat of catastrophic illness that faces every old man and woman and, above all, the prospect of cutbacks in benefits as Washington struggles to balance its budget.

The programs that the elderly are fighting to preserve were created a generation ago, when the reform-minded leaders of the 1960s vowed to protect senior citizens from the shameful destitution that had terrorized earlier generations. At the time that Lyndon Johnson launched his immense rescue mission, the Great Society, more than a quarter of all old people lived below the poverty line. In the popular imagination, being old usually meant a frail and lonely dependency, in which old women lived on cat food in spartan apartments and relied on busy children or social workers for a ride to the doctor.

Washington waged war on poverty among the elderly through two programs that helped rich and poor alike. Congress created Medicare insurance in 1965. In 1972 it voted a 20% increase in Social Security benefits and linked them to the Consumer Price Index in an attempt to safeguard retirees from the double- digit inflation that was devastating young families. In 1980 alone, payments increased a record 14.3%. Now each month 91% of those 65 and over receive benefits totaling $13.6 billion. The percentage of elderly people living below the poverty line has been cut from 20% in 1970 to 12% in 1984.

These outlays, combined with other sources of income, have provided many of the elderly with a sense of security that their own parents never enjoyed and that they will not relinquish without a fight. The median income of couples 65 and over in 1986 was about $22,000, which can go a long way when mortgages are paid up, children have left home, and there are few large purchases, such as appliances, to worry about. A 1984 congressional report on aging concluded, "Today . . . the act of retirement alone is no longer the source of poverty, isolation, and poor health it once was."

Yet for all the improvement in the condition of America's senior citizens, there is a sharp divide between the vigorous "young old," those 65 to 75, and the far frailer "old old," those 75 and up. There also remain grave disparities among ethnic groups. Nearly a third of elderly blacks live on less than $5,300 a year. Among black women living alone, the figure is 55%. For all the creative thinking on Madison Avenue and in corporate boardrooms on how to make use of the elderly as a resource, there still needs to be a comparable response from Washington when the aged become a burden.

But many young people do not see it that way. In their view, Washington is already doing too much for aged citizens, a perception that could bring about a serious breach between the generations. Already the emerging power of America's grandparents frightens many of their children and grandchildren. Some experts forecast a costly confrontation, in which embittered young people and embattled older ones fight with the most sophisticated political weapons over ever scarcer resources. In the shorthand of demographers and journalists, the scenario is known as the age wars.

Consider the following: Martha Dierdre is 72 and worth about $300,000. Widowed five years ago, she lives in a $150,000 condominium in Los Angeles, drives an Audi, consults her broker weekly, and plays bridge on Tuesdays over tea and crumpets. Her most solemn ritual takes place at the beginning of each month, when she walks to her bank and deposits a $420 Social Security check. She thinks of her husband, a warehouseman who worked hard and saved for 30 years. "A deal is a deal is a deal," she declares. "I don't care what I'm worth; that money is mine."

Dierdre's only grandchild Paul earns $16,000 a year working at a lumberyard in Portland, Ore. His wife Karen brings in an additional $6,000 as a part-time secretary. Since they cannot afford a house, they rent a two-bedroom apartment for $500 a month, where they raise their three-year-old daughter. They too have a ritual. Every two weeks, when they deposit their paychecks, they agonize over the 7% deduction for Social Security tax and wonder if they will ever see that money again -- unless, of course, they visit Grandma. "This whole system just beats the hell out of me," says Paul, 27. "It's like that old saying: robbing from the poor to pay the rich."

Paul does not personally blame the elderly. Few young people do, even when they sense, as they read the newspapers or go shopping for a house, that they are walking into a trap. Who is going to protect young families, they wonder, from an economic system that is eroding their living standards? Or a health system that promises at least partial care for the elderly but guarantees nothing for families with sick children? Or a political system that allows communities to outlaw residents under 19 to ensure peace and quiet -- and reduce school taxes at the same time? Or a Social Security system that seems to assure only that the young will never draw out anything like the amount they are required to pay in? "I don't have a grudge against older people collecting Social Security because the Government told them to expect it," says Law Student Jeffrey Rosen, 28. "But what about us? Something has got to be done."

Jeffrey's is a generation that viewed progress as an American birthright, only to discover its expectations vastly exceed its prospects. For the past 15 years, even as their parents grew more financially secure, young workers have faced declining real wages, rising taxes, high interest rates and prohibitive housing costs. At times, the Government seems to be conspiring against them. During the Reagan Administration, payments to the elderly have risen 35%, so that now more than a quarter of all Government spending goes to the 12% of the population who are 65 or older. Meanwhile, America's infant-mortality rate remains one of the highest among industrialized nations, and one in five children lives in poverty. While Social Security remains off limits, Aid to Families with Dependent Children was cut by 19% and school-meal programs by 41% between 1981 and 1984. The U.S., argues Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, may be the "first society in history in which a person is more likely to be poor if young rather than old."

Of such sentiments and statistics is the fear of an age war born. Lured by high stakes and intuitive appeal, the lobbyists are swarming around the "generational equity" issue. Three years ago, Republican Senator David Durenberger from Minnesota helped establish the youth-advocacy group AGE (Americans for Generational Equity) to advance the claims of the young and counterbalance the powerful gray lobby. "The AARP is almost totally focused on the well being of its clients," says AGE Executive Director Paul Hewitt, "but they are going to have to address ways to avoid putting unbearable burdens on the baby boomers' children." Other youth advocates in Congress are also sharpening their blades. John Porter, Republican Representative from Illinois, for example, calls the budget deficit an exercise in "fiscal child abuse."

When the social costs of the age quake -- the arrival of the baby boomers into their golden years -- are tallied, the figures become even more alarming. The $50 billion spent on health care for the old when Reagan came into office is expected to reach $200 billion by the year 2000. Between 1980 and 2040, experts project a 160% increase in physician visits by the elderly, a 200% rise in days of hospital care, a 280% growth in the number of nursing-home residents. Between now and the year 2000, a new 220-bed nursing home will have to be opened every day just to keep even with demand. Without a change in the present system, pension and health-care costs will account for more than 60% of the federal budget by 2040.

So who is going to pay for America to grow old? With each advancement in medical technology, the possibility of extending people's lives increases. Who is to decide who should get the organ transplant or have first access to kidney-dialysis machines? The questions have fired a debate about what society owes its elderly, what should constitute a natural life-span and how far doctors should go to keep elderly patients alive. Medical Ethicist Daniel Callahan, 57, suggests that health involves more than preventing death. "We should seek to advance research and health care that increase not the length of life," he argues, "but the quality of life of the elderly."

Senior citizens deeply resent critics who seem to begrudge them their independence or imply that anyone ever got rich on a $500-a-month check. Many retirees worked hard, lived frugally and saved carefully to guard against the nightmare of a destitute old age. And while it is true the elderly consume roughly a third of the nation's medical resources, Medicare cannot begin to cover all the costs of a long illness. Already senior citizens pay three times as much out of their own pockets for health care as the young do. They view their benefits as a right, not a windfall. "I spent years away from my family fighting in Europe," says Roger Davis, 68, of Los Angeles. "Don't tell me the nation doesn't owe me something in my old age."

Such attitudes rile policymakers who are charged with slashing billions of dollars out of already hard-hit social programs. While no one proposes cutting off the truly needy, those lobbying for reform point out that thousands of millionaires receive a monthly check. Argues Horace Brock, president of Strategic Economic Decisions Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif.: "There may have been a social contract that what you put in you got back, but not six times what you put in." Unless the system is revamped, he warns, when the baby boomers reach retirement age, Social Security will be in jeopardy. Just as alarming, the trust fund that supports the hospital-insurance part of Medicare could be bankrupt by 2002.

That prospect worries older people as well as the young. In fact the reason Social Security is unlikely to ignite an age war is that many elderly people acknowledge its flaws and admit the system needs to be changed, while many young people support its basic principles. Even some lobbyists for the aged privately accept the need to adjust Social Security, by raising the age of eligibility or taxing benefits for the wealthy, as part of a drastic deficit- reduction plan. While many retirees defend Social Security, they are horrified by the legacy of a $2 trillion debt they will leave behind. "The interest on it is about $1,000 a second," says George Toll, 82, of Long Beach, Calif. "That's why I worry about my grandchildren."

Such signs of mutual concern and interdependence reassure social scientists and policymakers. In fact the whole age-war scenario, some charge, is a political distortion, designed to stir up passion and protest about what should be an issue not of age but of social justice. "I don't think it should ever be put in terms of equity, that there is a choice between the elderly and children," argues Alan Pifer, co-editor of Our Aging Society. "There are many other questions." The central issue, these experts agree, is how to protect those in society who are most vulnerable, regardless of age. "The 'intergenerational equity' debate," insists Ronald Pollack, executive director of the Villers Foundation, an advocacy group for the elderly, "is a diversionary and dangerous sideshow."

That view is supported by opinion polls, which reveal that most children are grateful for Social Security because it relieves them of some of the responsibility for taking care of their elders. Some, but not all. Financial responsibility is only one of several kinds, and perhaps not the most burdensome. An ailing parent, even in a distant city, can take an emotional toll on adult children. In many cases the parent may be living in the same town -- or the same house. Already, says Fordham's Marjorie Cantor, former president of the Gerontological Society, "the family is the major source of support for the elderly. And there is no indication in the future that families will abandon them." The notion of an age war rings false with many experts who work with both the elderly and their children. "Adult children spend a lot of time caring; they make a lot of personal sacrifices," says Dr. Carl Eisdorfer of the University of Miami. The support goes both ways. In fact private transfers of money and assets within families are just as likely, if not more likely to take place from old to young. "The traditional generosity of grandparents," says Author Lydia Bronte, formerly of the Carnegie Corporation, "now takes the form of helping with college tuition, down payment on a house, furniture -- not just a check every Christmas."

So how will America adjust to its growing pains? It is possible that advances in science, steady economic growth, better education and some courageous and creative politics will allow the nation to mature gracefully. The signs of interdependence and cooperation encourage policymakers, who agree that a family is a far better source of compassion than a federal agency, however well funded. With that in mind, some politicians are urging that Congress consider tax breaks for families responsible for the care of an elderly parent. Others are lobbying for a broader national health plan that would provide care for the young and old alike.

Corporations too are looking for ways to support workers who are burdened by care-giving obligations. Such benefits, they expect, will raise productivity, reduce absenteeism and allow them to hang on to valued employees who might otherwise quit. Travelers Corp. has offered lunchtime support groups, flextime hours and an information fair for employees to meet with social service experts. PepsiCo provides seminars and a handbook on care of the elderly. Remington Products Inc., of Bridgeport, Conn., pays half the cost of parent sitters who can take over for employees on evenings and weekends.

Within many schools and communities, leaders are exploring ways to bring together retirees with skills and time to spare and young people in need of training and guidance. With the encouragement of the First Lady, the Foster Grandparent program is expanding rapidly. The assumption that one generation can serve as a resource rather than a rival to another, most advocates on both sides would agree, holds far more promise than any call to arms.

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CREDIT: TIME CHART BY JOE LERTOLA

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DESCRIPTION: Population over 65 by age group, life expectancy by sex and race, spending on pensions and health care as percentage of GNP, 1950 and 1985, with projection for 2020; color illustration: man sitting in rocking chair and man running.

With reporting by Jon D. Hull/Los Angeles, Jeanne McDowell and Jeannie Park/New York