Of all the women I have met in my years of working with older people, none can quite equal Maggie Kuhn for personal dynamism. Big ambitions for changing society, willingness to defy convention, skill at manipulating politicians and media figures, courage in the face of physical decline – she had qualities of leadership that were altogether unique.

This physically small but soulfully impressive woman, who came to look like an ideal grandmother, accomplished a surprisingly large amount of her agenda. According to a new documentary on her life, “Maggie Kuhn changed the way we think about aging.”

Before Maggie, the film claims, “older people were not allowed to work, were not expected to socialize with people of other age groups, were not expected to have sex, were not expected to contribute to society.” Like other sweeping generalizations, this one cries out for qualification, but it bears enough truth to suggest what Maggie’s leadership meant.

Founder of the Gray Panthers, a name associated with militancy, Maggie Kuhn did not lack a sense of humor. In this spirit, she taught her followers how to growl. They were to stick out their tongues, turn toward another person, and make a deep sound from the throat. The new film shows an auditorium of people following Maggie’s instructions and growling with laughter.

A friend, Art Mazer, recalls another instance of Maggie’s humor when local Gray Panthers presented her at Boston City Hall. When introduced, Maggie had to rock back and forth a few times to get out of the low-slung chair in which she was sitting. Arrived at the podium she quipped: “That’s called the rock of ages.”

This film, entitled “Maggie Growls,” is scheduled for Boston-area showing on Monday, February 17th at 10 P.M. on the PBS channel 44. I recommend it for sheer human interest, and because the film recounts how one woman helped to change America in the period between her forced retirement in 1970 and her death in 1995 at age 90.

Maggie had radical ideas about how to improve American society. We needed to abolish compulsory retirement that put people on the shelf at 65. Our country desperately needed single-payer universal health care coverage. And we had to transform our basic ideas about older people and the experience of growing old.

A way of achieving this last goal was to help change the way older people were portrayed in the media. The “Media Watch” established by the Gray Panthers served for a time as an effective device to ensure change in television, movies, and advertising, change that has taken hold to a considerable extent.

It was not only her agenda that differed from most other people’s; so did her methods. She believed it a mistake for older people to push for change only with those of their own age. Rather, she wanted old people to join forces with the young.

Similarly, she thought old people should not advocate for changes primarily for themselves. Instead, she thought their advocacy would have much more credibility if they tried to bring about change benefiting the nation’s younger generations as well.

Despite her brilliance as a leader, Maggie was not successful in all her enterprises. Her organization, the Gray Panthers, never did turn into the alliance of old and young that she envisioned. I remember attending one national convention of the GPs, and immediately noting the absence of young people among the delegates.

And she never was able to develop effective leadership to direct the Panthers after her death. Even before 1995, her organization had lost its momentum and now has only a faint heartbeat. But it was never much of an organization; instead it was a movement with all the strengths and weaknesses of minimal structure. Never would it become an AARP, but Maggie would sooner have died rather than for that to happen.

And, of course, we still seem no closer to her goal of assured national health care for everyone. Even getting prescription drug coverage for Americans under Medicare has proven maddeningly elusive.

Maggie’s ideas about sexuality did not please everyone; in fact they shocked even many of the Panthers. She once recommended to an audience of older women the practice of lesbianism, and an embarrassed silence followed. She herself liked young men and once had an affair with one fifty years younger than herself.

When someone expressed to Maggie regret that she had no spouse or children, she replied, “I am completely happy with my life; I have no regrets.”

She suffered much pain in her latter days. I remember having dinner with her one evening and feeling some of that pain myself as I watched her eat with difficulty.

When the end came, she lay in bed in her house in Philadelphia. A friend watched her wake up, sit up in the bed and say “I am an advocate for justice and peace.” Then she went back to sleep and never woke up.

Richard Griffin