Keep on truckin':
McCarthy, Abigail
OF SEVERAL MINDS Abigail McCarthy KEEP ON TRUCKIN' YOU'RE NEVER TOO OLD TO HELP Having passed a signifi-cant birthday not long ago I find myself some-what preoccupied with two questions. The...
...She felt it necessary that there be public access to solid facts about important issues because she felt that the mass media are destroying men in public service and the political system itself "with self-righteous pomposity and their sneering and contemptuous coverage of all public figures...
...And those who live far longer than the average are no longer rare...
...Perhaps the epitome of a ninety-year-old happy, for that reason, was my friend of the last twenty-five years, Mary Bingham, who died recently...
...There has been little research on the reasons these people lived so long in relative good health, so one has to make do with their own guesses-often contradictory...
...Now many of them are apt to be celebrating their 103rd, 104th, even 107th...
...To the end she sought solutions to society's problems...
...Mary Bingham was not untouched by tragedy...
...I am part of the first generation in recorded history to live so long...
...They tutor the illiterate, newcomers learning English, and needy inner-city children...
...An ugly family controversy exposed the family to unfavorable and intrusive publicity and ended in the relinquishment of their media ownings...
...And too many of the elderly still live in poverty or near poverty...
...Yet Chalmers Roberts was right when he wrote, reporting on the Conference for the Aging, "My observation is that American society has a very large segment of people who care about others...
...they ate lots of fat meat or none at all...
...twenty-five to fifty...
...Strom Thurmond, at ninety-two, however wisely, chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee...
...He also quoted Rabbi Abraham Heschel who said at the first White House Conference on the Aging in 1961, "Old people need a vision, not only a recreation...
...A national survey this year reported that retirees and people more than seventy-five years old are the only groups of adults increasing their volunteer service...
...The formidable Kathryn Shouse, for instance, remained the guiding light and doyenne of Wolf Trap Farm Park in Virginia, an area center for the performing arts which she founded, until she was almost one hundred...
...old people need a dream, not only a memory...
...Within our limits, so should we.s, so should we...
...The second is: What do I do now...
...But they lived also with a sense of obligation-the obligation to make life better for all Kentuckians...
...I have entered territory that is relatively uncharted...
...No one really knows...
...Among the happiest old people I know are those who remain faithful to the dream most of us once shared: that of leaving the world better than we found it...
...Research on other aspects of life for the aging is equally scanty...
...It is hard to gainsay them: research on nutrition, for example, is based on only three populations: nineteen to twenty-four years...
...The eighty-five-year-old...
...In his speech he reminded those present that they did not live for themselves alone, that they were responsible for "the duties and responsibilities of the national community" and for "the national contract that extends back over sixty years...
...They drank or they didn't drink...
...Supreme Court justices whom I have known were still delivering excellent opinions when nearing the end of their eighties...
...On the day she died she had just finished giving away $60 million and was being honored by the Louisville Rotary Club for her service to the city...
...The ninety-seven-year-old...
...What to do now, then, largely depends on anecdotal evidence and observing those of greater age...
...and fifty and older...
...The first is that posed in the title of a memoir by my acquaintance, Chalmers Roberts: How Did I Get Here So Fast...
...She urged the audience to provide for putting the public library online so that the information highway would be available to everyone...
...Among the few delegates aged ninety or over was Arthur Fleming, secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under Eisenhower...
...What are the nutritional needs of the sixty-five-year-old...
...regardless of age, economic backgrounds, area of residence, or computer literacy...
...When her husband died, she was bereft "because our lives were so intertwined...
...They are a political force, of course...
...She lost two grown sons to seemingly senseless accidental deaths...
...And it is not just here that the aging "keep on going on"-the anecdotal recommendation I gather from watching those I know...
...They [delegates to the conference] seemed mostly...
...I remember too well when to be old meant to live in fear of penury, hunger, and that grisly institution, the poorhouse...
...But she went on presiding over the distribution of money from the Mary and Barry Bingham, Sr., Fund...
...They deliver Meals-on-Wheels...
...they were married or never married...
...The median income for families headed by a sixty-five-year-old or over is only $17,751...
...It seems just a few short years since Willard Scott of NBC's "Today Show" began saluting oldsters celebrating their hundredth birthday...
...The above counters the prevalent notion that the aged are a selfish political force, an idea encouraged by those intent on cutting back government...
...The average life expectancy of Americans has increased some thirty years since the beginning of the twentieth century...
...She collapsed before she could finish her speech in which she made graceful acceptance of the honor but typically pointed that there were still things to be done...
...they took long walks or they didn't...
...I am fortunate to live in a community where many of the aged are taken seriously and are part of the local scene...
...She and her husband of fifty-seven years, Barry Bingham, Sr., owner of the Louisville Courier Journal, were counted among the nation's elite and lived in the style of "the rich and famous...
...In part because of their efforts, beginning in the 1930s, Kentucky achieved a better political system, an improved public school system, racial integration, traveling libraries and health clinics for the rural population, and first-quality cultural institutions...
...Still beautiful at ninety, she would seem to many to have lived a charmed life...
...Personally, as a child of the Great Depression, I am glad of that...
...Statisticians preparing for the White House Conference on Aging in May estimated that the number of people eighty-five and older will increase from 3.3 million today to 18.9 million by 2050...
...a slice of well-fed, well-spoken Americans, older Americans who had made peace with the idea of aging and were determined to make something out of their elder years" (Washington Post, May 9...
...All over the country nonprofit agencies are depending on the elderly for volunteer help...
...They give hospice care and help counsel those coping with grief and loss...
Vol. 122 • July 1995 • No. 13
