Walking by a neighbor’s house late Tuesday afternoon last week, I came across a group of lively older women just emerging. What they had been in Yvonne’s home I guessed: they were the people who meet every week in order to write letters to public of-ficials, newspapers, and other agencies.
They’ve been doing it since 1983, sixteen straight years of public-spirited action. From the beginning they had the good sense to keep a record of their proceedings. Some of their minutes have been donated to the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe.
How have they managed to keep going for so long? “We have a good time,” says Yvonne Pappenheim. Of the other members, she says, “They all feel it’s their thing.” They are not intimates, yet they feel a strong sense of camaraderie and they trust one another.
By now, they are eight in number, and range from 70 to 93 years of age. In an-swer to my question about what they had done that afternoon, one of their number told me they were writing about campaign finance reform.
Members of the group currently include the following: Evelyn Brew, Margaret Brown, Mildred Allen Reis, Marion Billings, Nancy Delaiti, Yvonne Pappenheim, Helen Grumman and Ruth Weizenbaum. Of these, the first six live in Cambridge, while Ms. Grummen is a resident of Newton and Ms. Weizenbaum comes from Concord.
Two members are legally blind but they stay well-informed through listening to the radio. The group follows the same routine each week. At three on Tuesday afternoon they gather and sit in the hostess’s living room discussing the issues for about an hour. Then, after coffee and cookies, they sit around the dining room table and prepare to write.
Each person writes whatever she chooses. On occasion they will all sign one common letter. Most of the time, however, they write as individuals. It also happens sometimes that nothing gets written.
Their convener and usually the hostess, Yvonne Pappenheim, explains: “Some-times things get confusing and we don’t write anything.” But this seems not to discourage them; they simply wait till the next time.
I admire them, however far their effectiveness extends. That they do it at all stirs my respect. They resist the temptation to plead age as an excuse for doing nothing. To them, concern for the common good remains a basic part of their self-definition as they grow older.
“All have the usual ailments of growing older,” Yvonne says, “but we never talk about it.” “We laugh a lot,” she adds, “It helps to forget your age – we are very lively as a group; it’s a matter of life over death.”
The issues they pursue – federal, state, and local – include a wide range. The test ban treaty, the School of the Americas, minimum wage, housing, the death penalty, come up frequently.
Ms. Pappenheim expresses the group rationale: “It’s important to take a stand; otherwise nothing will ever change.”
But sometimes the letters do not press for action. Instead, they are intended simp-ly to thank officials for taking action.
These determined women are remarkably patient. About some issues, they say, “We’ve been writing about this for years.” And occasionally, “By the time we get an an-swer, you can’t remember what in the world you wrote about.”
They recognize that one of the advantages of age, perhaps a wisdom that comes with it, is the realization that societal change inevitably takes time. “You have to keep hacking away,” says the convenor, “It’s the only ways things happen.”
Some victories do come their way. The women took heart recently when they dis-covered that funds for the School of the Americas were cut back.
I asked Ms. Pappenheim if, before writing, she ever gets angry. “The angrier you are, the better you write,” she answered. “Sometimes you have to get upset.”
Clearly, these enterprising women have not bought into the notion that age is simply a time for pulling back from concern for the world. They presumably do not see later life as a kind of natural monastery. The classical Hindu notion of retirement years as a stage when one takes to the forest and lives cut off from the larger world seems not to appeal to them.
I think it does members of this letter-writing group credit that they do not push only for legislation that favors older people. Instead, they feel concern for all of society, young people as well as old. This was also the genius of Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, who saw that advocates of a certain age commend their own cause better if they show concern about their juniors too.
They also show me that a link is possible between caring about society and paying attention to the good of one’s own soul. The spiritual ideal of combining action and con-templation may be within range after all.
Richard Griffin