The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

PAGE 14 - Older Americans In Our Society ' WORKING IN AMERICA Work has always been highly regarded by the American people. It was elevated from a mere virtue to almost a sacred duty in the 17th century, when the unwritten Gospel of Work was taking form. The first settlers had a desperate need to convert the New World wilderness into a productive garden, and long hard work alone could do it. But long after that need was met and the garden so well cultivated as to produce considerable wealth, devotion to work remained an article of faith and a yardstick of piety. In early Jamestown and Plymouth, the responsible authorities publicly condemned all shirkers. Three centuries later, the so-called upper classes thought an indolent worker was depraved. • No wonder ordinary citizens worked as long as they could and often longer than they actually needed to. Devotion to work, in other wOrds, promised dual salvation - from poverty with all its misery and from the reputation of defective character. Both evils were lifelong threats for all except the lucky few who had escaped upward to affluence. But the means of salvation was also available. Men and women had the comforting privilege, of working all their lives. There was a catch to it, however. While most workers were able to attain salvation through endless labor, it was denied to some by permanent disability. For the rest there was always the chance of its being snatched away by accident or serious illness. Inability to work was seldom the individual's fault. Yet, society, in its blind loyalty to the Gospel of Work, tended to view it as if it were, and to look down on unemployables as hardly better than loafers. Grossly unfair, we might all agree; but what passes as fair and reasonable at any given time often outrages sensibility in later times. So much for the dark ages. In shifting attention toward the present, twe must acknowledge a major change in American attitudes about work and workers. Just when the breakthrough came would be impossible to pinpoint, but at some moment only decades ago the nation made an astonishing discovery. Thanks to advancing technology it no longer needed the lifetime labor of a large segment of the population. As a matter of fact, there wasn't that much work to go around in certain areas of work. Unemployment was increasingly a source of worry. If society could not provide to everyone the old-time salvation through work, some new plan would have to be developed. Ignoring options such as less than full time work, a "quick and easy" answer was devised. That new plan was to release the older members of the work force from further employment, at some agreed-upon birthday, with pensions replacing wages as income. A New Way Of Life , Pensions were nothing new. They had long served as rewards for military veterans and for certain public figures. What was new was extending the pension idea to all employees, in both the public and private sector of the economy. Instead of working on indefinitely until they died or outlived their ability, employees would be free, after reaching a particular age, to enjoy their remaining years without financial worries. During those years they could do nothing at all, pursue one or another hobby, take on volunteer work or even part-time jobs. Full-time work, for a new employer, was frowned on, as a threat to some younger worker; and to discourage it, some pensions were reduced or suspended if the retiree chose to act so perversely. The results of this innovation have been tremendous, and varied. According to the NCOA-Harris poll report, "The Myth and Reality of Aging in America," the majority of retirees enjoy their new status - more, indeed, than they had thought they would. Three out of four report finding life more interesting than they remember it as being at any earlier age. A few - one in six -- find their pension income inadequate, but "not having enough to live on" is not a personal problem for the great majority, by their own admission. (It is, of course, questionable as to what constitutes "enough." It may be that older persons have been conditioned to accept low income as an inevitable concomitant of old age.) Most have had no trouble deciding how to spend their time and energy; every available option has attracted large numbers. But for a sizable number there is an uneasy sense of something missing. The old-time system offered specific salvation, through work and its attendant social approval. The pension-retirement system removed this sanction and, in the minds of many retirees, provided no adequate substitute. Also lost in the process was the appreciation shown by younger people, never perhaps extensive but always present, for oldsters who, by continuing to work, were demonstrating their devotion to the common cause of "productive life." Pensioned retirement ended this sympathetic attitude and opened the way for a whole set of prejudices, or stereotypes. All of them, in particular ways, are hostile to the image of the elderly that the elderly would much prefer. Mandatory Retirement Boon that pensioned retirement assuredly has been, there is clearly room for improvement. One common complaint of the retirees themselves concerns the mandatory retirement age - 65 as most generally adopted. Some workers, saddled with boring, mindless assignments, yearn for escape, and provisions for early, retirement are increasingly available. But there is strong employer resistance to deferring retirement beyond the arbitrary age. What this does, of course, is penalize the employee in sound health who likes his work, finds in it a highly personal salvation, and fears that retirement can provide nothing for him that remotely compares with his work satisfaction. Complaints over this indifference to the individual, seem particularly justified among the better educated - college teachers, for example, or research specialists - whose capacity for continued productivity is least affected by physical condition. But the arbitrary cutoff age hurts workers at every skill level who are eager and demonstrably able to continue for several more years. Using chronological age as sole basis for ending employment is, in modern parlance, an easy cop-out for management. Developing a functional concept, one that recognizes both actual differences between kinds of work and individual condition, would be more difficult. Most retirees, whether or not they would have liked to continue working beyond the mandatory retirement age, express no interest in new employment even if it is well suited to their skills and e^gperience. Only 20 percent of those questioned by the Harris pollsters would "definitely" or "possibly" consider offers for such work. One reason is the fear, not ungrounded, that accepting further full-time paid employment might jeopardize established retirement income. It is generally safer to start an entirely new career, in self-employment, if the urge to continue working is strong enough, and safer yet to make a job of a hobby or of volunteer work. Life without purpose, as countless thinkers remind us, is unbearable. As the philosopher Carl Jung succinctly put it, "Man cannot stand a meaningless life." In the old days of lifetime labor, even at the most humdrum levels, work did provide specific meaning. Interestingly, the NCOA- Harris study found that retired workers missed the people at work almost as much (74 percent to 73 percent) as they missed the money the job brought in. Also, 62 percent missed most the work itself and 59 percent said the thing they missed most about their job was the feeling of being useful. A question demr.r-.iing attention, just now, is whether the pensioned retirement system provides, or can provide, meaning that is at all comparable. For many retired Americans, the answer seems to be Yes. But for a substantial minority, several million individuals, meaning proves elusive. Helping these people discover meaning in retirement is a challenge to ingenuity and collective good will. Help In The Search A good deal of public money is currently being spent on organized recreation for retirees. This is better than merely providing park benches for the elderly, but it is a poor substitute for genuine aid in the search for meaning. Some retirement communities, through their own initiative, have solved or at least reduced the problem through programs of mutual aid. Port Charlotte university in southern Florida, with its many how-to-do-it courses, all taught by resident members of the Port Charlotte retirement community, is a conspicuous example of what can be done without external aid. But most communities would need experienced outside help and guidance, plus pump-priming support, to organize such a facility. If the result is the discovery of meaningful activity by increased numbers of retirees, the cost would be justified. Special techniques, of course, would need to be developed for the many retired people who live alone or remote from others with similar needs. Until we are ready, as a nation, to call a halt to our vaunted progress, and to settle for present actuality as adequate for all future time, we can hardly accept a condition that denies meaning, or a means of discovering it, to any segment of the population. Some few individuals may never be able to find a meaning in their existence, but most of us can, through purposeful activity of our own free choice. The options are limitless. Work, in the form of lifelong paid employment, is no longer a primary source of salvation. As redefined, however, to include all purposeful activity, it still stands high in American regard. Pensioned retirement makes old age far more enjoyable than it once was, but it does not, and never can, eliminate the need of purpose. Systems change, but work as salvation remains a constant, not to be denied to any American, at whatever age. (This series is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities). Village of Sunnyside 385-2696 Sanded Congratulations Order Of The Day Congratulations are in order for Mr. and Mrs. Dick Schneider. They are the proud grandparents of the biggest baby boy born in McHenry hospital. The mother is Ber- nadette (Schneider) Messel. We would like to wish a very happy birthday to Jeff Lehman on the nineteenth. Many, many more. Jeff. Matty Backs and Dick Schneider celebrated their birthday on the twenty- first. JoAnn Kennebeck had her special day on the twenty- second and Mrs. Becker's boy was 6 years old on the twenty- fifth. Mr. and Mrs. John Becker celebrated their anniversary on the nineteenth. Mr. and Mrs. S R. Kelso also celebrated their anniversary on the nineteenth. Marines From Old Corps Meet At Birthday Ball t! SENIOR CITIZEN'S CORNER* HELPFUL IDEAS FOR SUCCESSFUL RETIREMENT Your Other Income Social security is intended to partly replace earnings lost Now you can make a Long Distance call to any other state in the United States for less thanyouH pay (bran icecream cone. If you've eaten any ice cream cones lately, you know it's pretty hard to get one for less than a quarter. Yet for only 22C or less you can make a Long Distance call to any other state in the United States (except Alaska and Hawaii) with our new one-minute weekend rate. That's 22C or less for the first minute. 16$ or less for each additional minute. And all you have to do is dial direct and call on the weekend before 5 p.m. Sunday. Look at it this way. Isn't a Long Distance phone call to your family or friends worth the price of an ice cream cone? because of the retirement or death of the wage earner. For this reason, any income you have from savings, investment, in­ surance, or pensions, will not af­ fect your monthly checks. If you work while getting social security, your earnings may af­ fect your checks. You can earn as much as $2,520 in a year without having any benefits withheld. If you earn any more than that, $1 in benefits is withheld for each $2 you earn above $2,520. No matter how much you earn in a year, you can get full benefits for any month in which you do not earn "Once you've been a Marine, it's like religion, it never leaves you," one World War II era Marine described the corps' spirit. But as long as there have been U.S. Marines, 200 years, there have been two Marine corps, the "Old corps", and the "New corps". The Old corps is made up of Marines who have been in uniform longer than those in the New corps. There is no real dividing line. When 6,000 present, former, regular and reserve Marines gather Nov. 1 in McCormick Place to celebrate the 200th birthday of the corps, two former Marines will truthfully be able to claim membership in the Old corps. Charles Stone, 88, of Chicago, was there in 1907 when the Great White Fleet sailed around the world to show off the American flag. John L. Baker, 79, of XaGrange Park was there when the Marines earned the nickname "Devil Dogs" in the trenches of France in World War I. Stone, who resided at 5630 North Sheridan, said he joined the Marines after a four-year hitch in the Navy to "find out what a good outfit was like." At the Birthday ball he will have the honor of cutting the 1,500 pound cake, a task traditionally left to the oldest more than $210 in wages and don't perform substantial serv­ ices in self-employment. In future years, the amount you can earn without having any benefits withheld will go up to keep pace with average wage levels. Whenever the amount goes up, you will get a notice with your check. Your social security check should arrive in the mail about the same day each month, usually on the 3rd. @ Illinois Bell Direct-Dial rates Ho not apply to coin, hotel guest, hospital patient, credit card, collect or person-to-person calls, or to calls charged to another number, because an Operator must assist on such calls.They do apply on station to-station calls placed with an Operator from a residence or a business phone where Direct-Dial facilities are not available.The 1-rninute rate does not apply on calls within Illinois. Rates quoted do not include tax. V EKCO. FLINT Crepes»Plus The Everything Pan For delicious thin French Pancakes you can serve many ways! 7*inch Site 8-inch Size Easy to Make HEAT DIP COOK FLIP Now even beginner cooks can turn out these delicate specialties and vary the fillings to create dozens of one-of- a-kind treats for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert. The crepes turn out deliciously thin every time so that you can fill them with fresh or preserved fruit, cream cheese or a cheese filling of your design, meat... even vegetables. The fillings are as numerous as your imagination can dream up. The pan is stainless steel inside and out for easy clean up A radiant inner core spreads heat evenly for best results. The Crepes-Plus Pan is not a one-purpose pan! It's great for every little thing. Perfect for pack­ ages of frozen food. Fries breakfast eggs. I he Important Plus sautees meats VYCITAL'S HARDWARE 1212 N. GREEN ST., |SS j and youngest Marines present. And Stone is sure to regale listeners with his tales of the Great White Fleet. On that voyage, which took him through the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of South America, he crossed the Equator four times. It was on that trip, too, that he tousled the hair of a young Japanese prince who was later to become Emperor Hirohito. Stone was one of 240 Americans invited to tea at the Imperial Palace in Tokvo. Former Marine Baker, of 1505 Morgan Avenue, LaGrange Park, said he left his southern Illinois home to enlist in the corps, because, like the recruiting poster promised, he wanted to see the world. "It was a rough go in the trenches," Baker said, "but it was a fine experience. The Marines are a real fine outfit." Through the decades since their release from active duty, both Stone and Baker have maintained their ties with the Marine family through membership in veteran's organizations. On Nov. 1, they both will be able to gather around them Marines of the Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam, and tell New corps what the Old corps was really like. Registration For Selective Service Changed This Year The law that requires men to register with the Selective Service system is still in full force and effect. For many years, young men were required to register within a few days of their eighteenth birthday. The registration procedures were changed April 1, 1975. Now, instead of registering within a few days of the eighteenth birthday, youths will be required to register during a single annual registration period. Since April 1, 1975, no one is beng registered during the remainder of 1975. The first annual registration will be conducted during a few days in early 1976. The plans for annual registration are not yet complete. At that time, a Presidential Proclamation will announce a new registration procedure. A nation-wide publicity campaign will be launched giving in­ formation on the places to register. PRETTY GULLS...22- year-old Holly Kimmel, a University of Miami coed from Chatham, N.J., goes tip-toe on the beach as she feeds bread crumbs to her feathered friends and gets a sun tan at the same time. Inflation news best in three years. DIAL-A-DEVOTION PHONE Hear God's Word Wherever You Are. SPONSORED BY: GL'ETTLER'S SERVICE STATION \