Nixon, Flemming & Martin on White House Conference on Aging

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Yeah.

Wow.

They're so good.

What can we tell you to start off with?

I just want to say very briefly to this gentleman, brothers, that we just didn't work.

That's right.

Well, and this is an opportunity to underscore the real interest and the development of programs in the aging post-arthritis background.

It's good to ask you for it.

And it is a way, I think, of giving this sort of undercurrent of criticism, thinking that maybe we have to do it enough in some order.

here we are listening and that we are joining this team that are people who will reflect the administration's interest and bring back to it through the conference the recommendations that emerge and make certain that these recommendations are fully considered and followed through.

And of course, the timing is significant.

90 seconds of weather.

I don't know if I'm rushing out there.

in fact, if you want to have young people to have the opportunity to continue to know.

I think a little of that is, well, I believe, as a matter of fact, and because of the, I love, and I think it's just a living disrespect for talking to our Chinese friends, what has kept a miserable continent together.

I mean, it's poor, it's, I mean, it bans all of us.

Why are they so, bringing so security to the Indians?

everybody laughs at it because of their great respect for Haiti.

They've given them continuity.

They've never had a government worth a damn.

They've never had a government.

They've never had any.

And yet they have softened up every invading force.

They continue to survive in every country in the world where the Chinese move.

Even though they're minorities, they're the most potent and powerful people.

All of it isn't because they are, shall we say, oriented toward age, but a lot of it is.

It's one thing the communist system has been able to destroy there.

Sure, they've taken the Red Guard and all the rest, but they're still in respect for the older people.

I think it's true.

We are so far away from it.

I don't think our young people, I tell our kids, you know,

You know, the grandmother comes around, they're both dead now, but they come around and they're a little pokey, and so forth and so on.

It's a little hard to handle, but by God, it's good for them to handle things.

It's good for them to learn a little tolerance, huh?

Want to learn to get that tolerance?

Yeah, well, the tolerance doesn't seem to isolate the older people.

Put them off.

Put them off in the sun cities, et cetera.

No, those aren't an expression.

But I'd be glad to see that in California.

The places that they, you know, like Leisure World and the rest, now they're mixed.

You know what Leisure World is?

It's a magnificent place.

It used to be all openers.

But now they've opened it up and now middle class, middle-aged people go and they all enjoy it.

They have a good time.

I like to mix them up.

The Dutch have done it, you know, in their housing.

That's another thing, one that we talked about.

The Moynihan has all the figures on that.

Where the Dutch...

in their housing first, because they're very advanced in housing, first had housing for the old, housing for the young people.

Now, they mix it up.

Deliberately.

But I think there are real themes of this government.

There's a real theme of life.

Get that spiritual quality, that we care about you, that you have something to offer.

A lot of them will go, I mean, the activists will say, ah, they're just giving us all this cosmetics in order to get away from the bread and butter thing.

But to measure these older people, even more than older people, if there is enough, you know, so they don't starve and the rest, you know what I mean, et cetera, and we'll measure if there's enough.

They're gonna be greatly concerned about the quality of life.

You think about it a lot, right?

I think.

Sure.

One of the problems is that

The whole group of older people contains so many older, older people today.

We've got 13,000, nearly over 100.

And that is very fast growing part of the population percentage.

All right, that's wonderful.

You see there, I was talking about the 298-year-old editors who were at the end.

New York yesterday, both still running their papers.

So it was that in the daily Oklahoma.

That's right.

But what it means is that there's a much greater span of life to provide something constructive and useful and interesting for them to do.

Also, which part of our population is growing amongst the older?

Yeah.

You really stop and think about it.

Sure.

Isn't that true?

Because of the whole span.

The proportion of our people that will be older in this country, in all the advanced countries, becomes greater.

It's true in Europe, though.

It is not truly going to be non-advanced countries where there are still, you know, like it's Latin America.

Everybody's below 18, practically, you know, half the people.

But that's a different situation now.

Our country, where people are not able to put the birth control beds, stop at two, et cetera, et cetera.

People are pulled back, and you keep people going.

But you know that really, the thing that's the saddest thing that you've done is to go to these rest homes,

And I know that they have to have them.

I know that, you know, their families can't keep them and so forth and so on.

But that thing is not the care they receive.

Usually they aren't bad.

And they're improving all the time.

But they're so bad lonely.

They're so bad lonely.

I've talked to these people.

And if we could get the feeling among people, young people, that, you know, it's good for you to go out and see your mom or your grandfather or your maiden name or whatever it is.

You go out and do it, and it's good for your soul.

It really is.

I think a little of that, we talk about, what can I do to help?

And everybody says, well, let's go to the ghetto and help the poor, the poor, the black, the Mexican.

That's a person starving in life.

Also, let's remember, you can do something for these people, too.

When I was in New York, I went to Boston.

I went every Wednesday afternoon, all afternoon, to meet with a group of old men.

Did you live alone in the rooming houses of South End of Boston?

It was a great thing, really.

Your volunteer action agency provides a vehicle through which a great deal might be done in this.

There's going to be a reception.

I'm going to have a reception to the volunteer action agency in about a week or two.

I want to be sure that there is good representation of older people as well as the rest.

The head of this is the young guy who's the former president of Trinity College and the head of the American Stock Exchange.

Ed Richten.

Ed Richten, yeah.

Ed Richten.

Now, Ed Richten will be with Oregon because he is relatively young himself and kind of thinks he'd be with parents.

But I think Heatherington, it would be good to be sure that Arthur and John have a talk with him and tell him, I want some orientation on the volunteer action.

First, two reasons.

One, because older and retired people are prime candidates to participate in volunteer effort.

They love to help.

And second, because people who are unable to participate need the volunteers to go around.

I see you.

will volunteer, it gives them something to do.

And the older people need to have young people who volunteer to go see them.

Isn't that it?

That is something.

And if you can get that in your theme and see that Everton does have purpose.

It's an interesting way to deal with it.

We are very vulnerable at the moment.

At least there's been a lot of flack subsequent upon the transfer of

the Reloaded Grand Parents Program from John's agency to this one.

It has been interpreted as a mark of lack of interest, and so it's all the more important.

We've run into a lot of flak on that one.

The old John has been out going up on Monday, so I think we'll have to testify as well.

But of course.

Well, it was, yes, but it's the fact of the matter, and so this is over more reason.

I'm just underscoring the point that you may go wrong.

Let me say this, Arthur.

One thing that is very important is that you are extremely good, and you're articulate, and you speak well, and so forth.

Whenever you go out, whenever you go out, whenever you talk,

You just use a lot of license.

You say you and I talked about it.

You know how I feel about it.

Because I feel very strongly about this.

I think that, frankly, I just think it's good for the spirit of this country that we show the respect for our owners.

Second, I think that they had a lot to contribute that some of our younger people, including one of them who's getting old, cannot contribute.

But third, that here's a...

that here is the area where where it's sort of forgotten group we say all right now we've given you medicare we've given you old age housing and we give them social security and so now go after the pastures alone and leave us alone and let's let the youth the young people now we and and the fine societies when you look at the great societies of all time

They have had, of course, a strong ingredient of youth, its vitality and dynamism and imagination and experiment and all the rest.

But they've always had a balance of age with it.

That's what it is.

It's like a good protein.

I mean, it depends on your taste, but some like them.

The Europeans drink the 2 to 1, the 2 to 1, and we gag on them.

And we drink the 7 to 1.

Don't remember this.

Don't think, oh, I did just do well.

People will find out.

Forget it.

They're going to find out, too.

I think what we want to do, if you all could get together and say, three months before the conference, come in and say, well, here's what we've got in mind.

Then we'll sit down and look it over, and maybe we can get a little info.

Right now, we're going to do this.

Nixon, Flemming & Martin on White House Conference on Aging

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 23, 1971

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