Older Wiser Stronger: Southern Elders

People over 65, our nation's elders, are not a separate, alien minority. They are all of us at a certain time in our lives. This truth was driven home to me during the past two years. My father died in the spring of 1983, and my mother died eight months later. He was 85 and she was 74. Shortly before my father's death my first grandchild was born. Suddenly, in less than a year, I had become — at age 47 — a member of the oldest generation in my family. 

Working on this special issue of Southern Exposure has helped and encouraged me immensely as I've struggled with my own feelings about old age and mortality. As a result of "meeting" the elders in this issue I've gained an enthusiasm and optimism about the next decades of my life that would have seemed impossible two years ago. I feel very fortunate. After all, few occurrences in life are so nearly certain for all of us as becoming old some day. Having had this opportunity to learn about elders whom I can strive to emulate in the future will enrich the rest of my life. I hope you can share this enrichment as you read "Older, Wiser, Stronger." 

The fact that we are all either elders or becoming elders gives us a unique basis for developing broad coalitions of people of all ages concerned about the quality of life in America. And these coalitions should be especially concerned about the quality of advanced old age, for that's the time in our lives when all of us are most likely to need assistance. 

Besides this fundamental bond among generations, there's also the fact that many of the problems of older people — high hospital costs, low incomes resulting from low-wage jobs, inadequate housing — are not restricted to one age group. They afflict large numbers of people, and they cry out for united action. Just as elders need the support of younger generations, intergenerational grassroots organizations are strengthened by drawing in larger numbers of older members. 

One of the primary aims of this issue of Southern Exposure is to combat ageism by offering positive profiles of Southern elders. With insights gained from their long years and varied experiences, many elders have a finely tuned ability to survive — and to prevail. As a result, in grassroots organizations in communities across the South older people are providing strong leadership on a wide variety of crucial issues. 

• One of the most crucial issues in modern health care is the takeover of public hospitals by for-profit hospital chains. This is driving up the cost of medical care, as well as decreasing access to medical care for the uninsured poor. In Nashville, Tennessee, home of the largest of the for-profit hospital chains, the Real People's Coalition — with mostly elderly participants — is determined to improve health care conditions and ensure access to care for all people — see page 78. 

• Elder members of the Kentucky Fair Tax Coalition bring a valuable perspective to this group's struggle to address long-standing problems of land and mineral use, unfair property tax structures, and poor community services. The elders remember when the waters of eastern Kentucky ran clear and the mountains were not stripped bare by the coal companies — see page 68. 

• Anne Braden interviews a number of well-known elder activists who have worked for social change almost all their lives. Their tenacity and unique world views make a convincing argument for the crucial value of elders in the ongoing social struggle — see page 34. 

At present, two major factors drive a wedge between the oldest and younger generations and dramatically undermine the lives of older people in our culture. These are ageism and the resulting unwillingness of younger generations to support programs that improve the lives of elders. The term, "ageism" was coined by Robert N. Butler, who has focused his attention on older people for more than 25 years as physician, researcher, and participant in community and public affairs. He says: 

"Ageism is a systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old, just as racism and sexism accomplish this in relation to skin color and gender. Elderly people are categorized as senile, rigid in thought and manner, garrulous, and old-fashioned in morality and skills. Ageism allows the younger generations to see older people as different from themselves; thus they subtly cease to identify with their elders as human beings. 

"Unlike racists and sexists, who never need fear change in their skin color or gender, ageists are at least dimly aware that if they live long enough they too will end up being 'old' — the object of their own prejudice — and the ageists' attitudes turn into self-hatred." 

For both selfish and altruistic reasons, then, we need to sort out the causes of ageism and combat it, within ourselves and within society. If younger people start thinking about this problem now, they will be acting in justice to elders now and also helping themselves in later life to value their own experiences as long-lived people, rather than becoming mired in self-disgust. 

The high value we Americans place on production and independence contributes to ageism. Our society, with its strong work ethic, identifies us most often by our jobs. To work is to be worthwhile. When elders retire from the world of work, they are often perceived — by themselves as well as others — as no longer productive, valuable members of society. If failing health forces them to become dependent on family or the larger social circle for support, they are further diminished. 

Perhaps ageism is also an attempt to dissociate ourselves from older people in order to ward off the fact of our own mortality. Death has become the last taboo in our society, and it's possible to deny its existence only if we deny the fact of old age, the last stage in life before death. Pat Arrowood Tolliver, a former Foxfire student, describes his relationship with elders this way: "Seeing that they still had useful lives helped me get over the fear of death that I had seen as the next step after getting old. That had been the only thing I had seen about being old, and it frightened me." 

Florida Scott-Maxwell has a different perspective on death. In her eighties and experiencing declining health, she faces her approaching death with thoughtful calm: "I do not know what I believe about life after death; if it exists then I burn with interest, if not — well, I am tired. I have endured the flame of living and that should be enough." In the strong belief that our quality of life can be enriched and ageism reduced if we can learn to tolerate the thought of our own mortality, we have included two articles about death in this issue and have listed a number of books about death and grieving in the Resources section. 

On the final page of "Older, Wiser, Stronger" Mary Brinkmeyer, age 8, describes some children's books about elders, as well as about the need to accept death. These are books that Mary and her sister Eliza, 5, have especially liked and recommend to other children. 

To overcome ageism, we need to become more aware of its pervasiveness. It's often cloaked in double-talk by writers who would have us believe that they're enlightened about the subject. Here's a good example, from an article in the November 1984 issue of Vogue. It is misleadingly subtitled "Aging well is more attitude than artifice": "Age need not wither us, but only if we face it with vitality — exercising, so we can jump up from a chair at seventy, sit cross-legged on the floor at eighty, so full of spirit that any wrinkles we might have will be dimmed by our energy." 

But what if we suffer from rheumatism? What about the off-days, when we just don't have it in us to be energetic enough to "dim" our wrinkles? And isn't it a ridiculous denial of reality to speak of wrinkles as something 70- and 80-year-olds might have? The same article instructs us that there are "many things that a woman can do to maintain her sense of self — haircoloring, face-lifts, etc.; but they should be done to gain time, not erase it." More doubletalk, implying we lose our identities if we accept the reality that we are elders. 

Nancy Breeze tells us how she and a group of friends in Florida have rebelled against ageism, and its particular stigma against women, by creating their own modem ritual to celebrate their fiftieth birthdays and thus "recover our self-respect and pride in our age." In a society that considers older men as sexually attractive and brands older women as sexless and boring, the efforts of women to join together in fighting ageism are particularly important to share. 

The problems of elders are disproportionately problems of women: the population of older people is overwhelmingly female. Women's life expectancy is 81; it's 72 for men. Two-thirds of Americans over 75 are women, and as a result the problems of advanced age — chronic illness, dwindling economic resources, surviving one's close friends and relatives — fall most heavily on women. 

Since 1900 average life expectancy has lengthened by more than 50 percent — from 48 years to almost 75 years. This is due primarily to declining deaths from epidemics, heart attacks, strokes, and other diseases that used to kill people in youth or middle age. Recently, because of improved lifestyles over the past few decades and improved medical treatment today, mortality rates for elders have been dropping faster than those for other age groups. 

As a result of increased longevity, lower birth rates, and the "graying" of those born during the baby boom, the number of elders is predicted to increase during the next 50 years at a rate dramatically greater than that of the total population, especially in the South. 

As older Americans grow in numbers, they are also flexing their political muscles. As Claude Pepper points out in his article in this issue, older Americans are the most active voting bloc. In 1980 one-third of all votes cast were by people over 55; and 70 percent of all people between 55 and 74 cast ballots. 

Much of this burgeoning political activism stems from the formation, by and for elders, of major self-advocacy membership groups during the past three decades. The American Association of Retired Persons, formed in 1958, was a prime mover in the fight against the mandatory retirement age. The National Council of Senior Citizens was established in 1961 and led the push for national health insurance, which resulted in the enactment of Medicare. The National Caucus on the Black Aged was organized in 1970 primarily by black professionals concerned that insufficient attention was being given to the special needs of black and other minority elders. Maggie Kuhn organized the Gray Panthers when she was 67 with the intent to "radicalize a growing number of the elderly" and advocate change that will benefit people of all ages. 

You will meet members of some of these organizations in the pages of this issue: 

• Charlotte Flynn, leader of the Austin, Texas Gray Panthers, talks about their campaign to obtain protective services for abused people of all ages. When their efforts were only partly successful (protective services were made available for abused elders and handicapped people), the Gray Panthers increased their strength by joining with a broad range of groups working for social justice — see page 46. 

• Lucille Thornburgh has led the Knoxville, Tennessee chapter of the National Council of Senior Citizens into a coalition with two grassroots organizations to fight utility and telephone rate hikes, push for medical reform, register new voters, and reform state taxes — see page 40. 

• Aaron Henry, one of the founders of the National Caucus on the Black Aged and a long-time Mississippi activist, describes the conflict that led to the organization's formation and talks of his work for the rights of older people as an extension of his civil rights activity — see page 37. 

• In Jackson, Mississippi, Eddie Sandifer, Nellie Bass, and Mildred Patterson have led the Gray Panthers in working for nursing home reform and opposing cuts in services and programs for people with low incomes — see page 120. 

Now that elders remain healthy and active well into the traditional years of "old age," people between 65 and 75 are really more middle-aged than old. Increasingly, both service providers and policy makers refer to the "young old" (65 to 75) and the "old old" (75, or even 85, and older) to differentiate between groups that are likely to have very different needs. In Angie Cannon's story about the old old in Florida, you can find out what one state is doing to meet the increasing problems of declining health and wealth of its oldest residents. 

In our section on federal programs, we describe the increasing unwillingness of younger generations to support assistance for elders. Many fear that Social Security and Medicare won't survive to benefit them when they need help; thus they resent supporting those programs now. We hope that anyone with reservations about the value of these programs will read Wilbur Cohen's article about the history and purpose of the formation of the Social Security system, along with Claude Pepper's article, where he insists that our national health programs can and must be saved. 

Our elders, throughout this region and in this nation, are a resource that we should both cherish and fight to protect when ill health or poverty renders them dependent. Many of our elders — rich and poor, healthy and frail — possess a vital sense of history. Many also have a special understanding of the continuity of struggle over a long period of time — both personal struggle and efforts to solve larger social problems. As a result, many elders are able to take a long-range view of problems that may confound younger people. 

The perspective acquired in longevity, the wisdom distilled from experience, the endurance developed through long years of challenge and survival — all these qualities are treasures that our complex and troubled society cannot afford to discard. 

Any movement for social justice will be enriched and made more powerful by the inclusion of increasing numbers of older, wiser, stronger people. At the same time, as broad coalitions of people of all ages increasingly take on the problems of older people as their own, the wellbeing of all of us, elders present and future, will be more secure.