Today the nation celebrates Senior Citizens Day to show appreciation of our country’s 47 million elders. The day harkens back to 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed Proclamation 5847 to celebrate seniors each year. In my time in Alaska, I’ve been impressed with the respect given Indigenous senior citizens by the younger generation.
The Daily News-Miner could fill a special issue with the accomplishments of elders 60 and older. The Alaska Department of Labor, Workforce and Development, Research and Analysis notes that Alaskans aged 60-plus (147,504) represent more than 20% of the state’s total population (736,556).
In particular, I’d like to doff my cap to our pioneer population in their 80s and 90s who contributed their talents prior to statehood in 1959. Many of the Daily News-Miners loyal readers tell me they have subscribed for more than 40-50 years. Many of them as children were newspaper delivery carriers as I was at age ten. Today, I find it absolutely ironic that there are rarely carriers of a young age. Our carriers are all adults.
Today is a good day to remind readers that it wasn’t until 1986 that the Age Discrimination in Employment Amendments were passed that removed age 70 as the mandatory retirement age in many professions. Reagan, himself at 75, signed the bill making a mandatory retirement age illegal in most professions.
I saw the trauma of a favorite English literature professor in 1982 when he was one of many State University of New York (SUNY) professors ordered to accept mandatory retirement. Professor Fraser Drew loved teaching so much that he even offered to accept adjunct professor pay to continue, but a SUNY Buffalo State dean refused his appeal. No matter that in 1973, the chancellor of the statewide SUNY system awarded Drew its first Distinguished Teaching Professor Award. No matter that as a scholar he personally interviewed the likes of poet Robert Frost in Vermont and Ernest Hemingway in Cuba. He still endured the ignominy of the old heave-ho.
Today, thanks to Reagan, professors across the country can teach as long as they are capable of a sterling performance. Of course, problems come along with the end to mandatory retirement in education. Junior professors often complain that the pipeline to full professorships gets roadblocked by seniors who won’t ever give up the cap and gown. In some disciplines, students and administrators complain that certain professors stay on even after they no longer are keeping up with developments in their field. So I’m referring, of course, to professors past 70 who keep up as academic powerhouses.
As a matter of disclosure, I hit 77 on Aug. 19, sharing that birthdate with former president Bill Clinton. At a party Saturday for my fellow “Romeo and Juliet” cast members at the home of director Courtland Weaver and his black lab, Juniper, my wife Gosia let the cat out of the bag that it was my birthday. I can tell you that the “Happy Birthday” song never sounded better than when sung by cast members blessed with professional quality voices. I thank each of them.
If you can thank just one senior citizen (other than me) today for their service, you know that you’ll see a grateful smile beneath the wrinkled brows and white hair.
Gosia tries to tell me that age if just a number. “I know it,” I say, “but doggone it, I just wish my number was once again a 29 or 39.”
