When Greatest seniors were asked what movie touched them most as youths, many answered Lost Horizon, a Depression-era film with a disturbing message about aging: that it is hideously and ugly, something that shouldn't happen in a civic-minded community. In a 1946 poll, the Greatest showed the highest generational support for human euthanasia. Through the 1950s, the Greatest often looked upon the old Lost Generation as tired, defeatist, and anti-progress. They vowed not to grow old the same way. Later on, when they entered elderhood themselves, they attacked what they termed the "myths" of a lonely, Lost-like old age--and worked hard to be ever-optimistic, ever-energetic "senior citizens."60
The Greatest rankled at younger people who assumed they were unhappy; indeed, a majority insisted that their elder phase of life was the best. Where Missionaries are remembered for dressing dark (as though in church), the Greatest made a point of dressing bright (as though at play). As they listened to old "swing" music on "Music of Your Life" radio, they dwelled in what they freely admitted was a "square," even "corny" culture--a culture that admitted neither to loneliness nor to suffering. Modern Maturity Magazine would not accept ads that mentioned "pain, inflammation, suffer, hurt, ache, and flare-up" because, said a publishing director, "it's pretty hard to present" these things "in an upbeat way."61
Entering old age, the Greatest remained the most upbeat (or, as they would have put it, "copacetic") generation of their time. Between 1957 and 1976, the share of elderly scoring "very high" on a psychological scale of anxiety fell from 22 to 15 percent (while the corresponding share for younger brackets rose sharply). Polls in the 1980s showed people over age 65 comprising America's "happiest" age bracket. In a 1990 poll taken of the surviving Harvard Class of 1940--whose median net worth was $865,000 ($1.2 million in 2002 dollars)--88 percent insisted that they were "fairly or very happy." Their happiness was of this world, not the next: 41 percent reported that they were "not religious at all."62
The life expectancy of the Greatest at age 65 rose by 20 percent over that of their Lost next-elders.63
Under prodding from younger generations, the Greatest separated into an elder version of the same peer society they had first built in their youth. After leaving the labor force at a younger age than any earlier generation, they entered an active and publicly subsidized retirement. Part of the implicit terms under which the Greatest-Boom generation gap eased in the early 1970s was through an understanding by which the post-Vietnam fiscal "peace dividend" was spent almost entirely on Greatest retirees. In 1972, the first election in which gray-lobby activism became critical, candidates Wilbur Mills and Richard Nixon abandoned their prior opposition to COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) inflation indexing. Congress added an extra 20 percent benefit hike, producing a two-year jump in intergenerational transfer payments that dwarfed the total size of Great Society poverty programs.64
In the 1970s and 1980s, while the Greatest noted the Boomers' weaker commitment to the spirit of community, these seniors themselves surrendered to much of the self-orientation they saw around them. Only a few (like Maggie Kuhn's Gray Panthers) adopted the confrontational "me first" Boomer tone. Instead the "we first" senior citizen movement applied the same patience, organizational know-how, and teamwork that the Greatest had always carried through life--though with a new agenda and with bottom-line results that few other generations could ever hope for.
Greatest first-wavers sparked the modern senior-citizen movement, and Greatest last-wavers benefited the most from it. The Social Security retirement age was lowered to 62 for men in 1962. Medicare was founded in 1965. The largest rise in Social Security benefit levels occurred between 1972 and 1981. The membership of elder organizations (and the circulation of "senior" newspapers) grew sixtyfold between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. By 1990, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) had become the largest and wealthiest advocacy organization in the nation's history.65
"You've already paid most of your dues. Now start collecting the benefits," read a 1988 AARP membership appeal. So they did: Half of all federal spending was consumed by pensions, other elderly entitlements, and interest on the national debt--the last representing the burden of current unfunded consumption on future taxpayers. During the 1980s, retiree benefits remained the one area of government that no Greatest President or Silent Congress dared to touch. Likewise, deficit spending became the one fiscal device that found few visceral critics among the generation that had come of age during the New Deal.66
Relative to younger generations, the Greatest were by far the most affluent elders of the Twentieth Century. Where Lost Generation elders (in 1960) had the highest poverty rate of any age bracket, the Greatest had the lowest, when all public benefits were included as income. Greatest elders towered over younger adults in rates of home ownership and health-insurance coverage, and in average dollars of discretionary income and household net worth. In 1988, 47 percent of Greatest "almost never" worried about finances, making theirs the least worrying of generations in the Twentieth Century.67
Through the 1950s and early 1960s--when the Lost Generation were reaching age 65--federal benefits per elderly person rose less rapidly than the average wage. From 1965 to 1989--as the Greatest reached age 65--federal benefits per elderly person rose 15 times more rapidly than wages (300 percent versus less than 20 percent). In 1989, total federal benefits averaged over $14,000 per elderly household. Social Security and Medicare benefits paid back most Greatest for the entire value of their prior payroll tax contributions (including employer contributions and interest) within four years after retiring. The 1990 deficit reduction law imposed a 1991 maximum of $41 in extra Medicare charges per Greatest beneficiary, and up to $2,137 in extra Medicare taxes per younger worker.68
Where Lost Generation elders had once preferred to attack public spending to leave taxes alone, Greatest elders leaned the other way and provided the core of the modern tax revolt, from Ronald Reagan and Howard Jarvis (of California's tax-eliminating Proposition 13) to the rank-and-file memberships of national antitax lobbies.69
Their affluence enabled them to separate socially into America's first "seniors only" communities, often far away from their grown-up children. There the Greatest showed a vigor and cheerfulness that brought to mind the best of their 1950s-era culture. America's first (and largest) retirement community, Sun City, was founded in 1960; there, observed Boomer gerentologist Ken Dychtwald, "it's hard to find time to talk to people; they're too active and busy." "Sun City is secure," he concluded. "A resident may stroll the streets without fear of surprise, of unpleasantness, or unsightliness. The streets are uncommonly clean." And, added one resident, "I don't know where I could go that I could get so involved with the community."70
Similarly, the Greatest material well-being enabled them to continue in their accustomed roles as trustees of wealth, givers of gifts, accepters of collect phone calls--and providers (or backstops) for their extended families. No elder generation had ever been so relied upon to foot the bill for family indulgences. In 1987 and 1988, grandparents accounted for 25 percent of all toy purchases--and a rapidly growing share of the grandchildren's educational expenses.71
Nor had any elder generation made more down payments to enable its grown children to buy houses, which, back in the 1950s, the Greatest easily afforded without parental help. (For the young adult beneficiaries of this generosity, reported Time Magazine, the "G.I. benefit" had come to mean "Good In-laws.") Among elder Greatest whose children had divorced, 30 percent reported that the newly single son or daughter had arrived on their doorstep. But if Silent and Boom children frequently asked for Greatest assistance with economic problems, they did not seek elder help nearly so often on questions of values or basic life direction.72
The Greatest role as powerful stewards of American material life left them feeling more friendly than wise--more comfortable keeping active themselves than inspiring the young to action. "In our time as children, grandparents were the teachers, advisors, counselors," Eda LeShan remembered of a social function from which her own peers "have been robbed completely." As anthropologist Dorian Apple found in cultures throughout the world, "indulgent grandparents are associated with societies . . . where grandparents are dissociated with authority."73
Erik Erikson's wife and collaborator, Joan, observed how "when we looked at a lifecycle in our forties, we looked to old people for wisdom." Now, she lamented, "lots of old people don't get wise." Whatever wisdom the Greatest did have to offer, they lacked the pulpit to proclaim it, owing to their early retirement and the subsequent Boom takeover of positions in the media. A 1989 survey found not a single prominent journalist over age 65 at work in an American newsroom.74
In public life, the last prominent Greatest asserted power more than principle--"better with deeds than with plans or words," to use (the Silent Generation) Senator Lautenberg's 1990 description of George H. W. Bush [41], then busy ordering ships and planes and tanks to the Persian Gulf. In family life, their worldly style of grandparenting left them troubled by what Dychtwald described as a "lack of respect and appreciation." From the Oval Office to the family dinner table, elder Greatest often felt that they didn't get enough personal deference from young people--certainly not what they remembered offering to their own elder Missionary parents.75