To the Editor:

I have to admit that I subscribe online to the Northeastern News because I love reading Max Lederman’s features and columns on sports. Most of the time I agree with Max and admire his style and his fearlessness in taking on controversial subjects. However, in his column in the 6/29/05 edition of your paper, he went too far. While trying to justly decry the sexist and racist remarks of two sports figures (who happen to be in their 60s and 70s), he made generalized and insensitive remarks about older people. He called them “geezers” and “senile” and said about elders: “…you either forget all the nuggets of truth you once held, or no one cares about what you have to say.”

Whoa. I guess that means that I, at age 54, am probably nothing more than an Alzheimer’s patient waiting to happen. My poor husband. He turned 64 the day your paper came out. Should we bury him alive now?

When Max was barely out of Pampers, I worked as the editor of the Gray Panther Project Fund’s national newspaper. During those years, I was fortunate to work with Maggie Kuhn, the leader of the Gray Panthers and an amazing woman who battled age discrimination in all its forms from the day she was forcibly retired at age 65 until the day she died, a week short of her 90th birthday.

To fight the mandatory retirement laws that put her out of a job at 65, Maggie (and several other activists) founded Gray Pathers. The silver-haired fox immediately began rallying her troops, most of whom were at least as old as she was, to fight with guts, humor and tenacity against all the “isms” that pervaded American life in the last third of the 20th century, which included racism, sexism, militarism and, yes, Max, AGEISM.

Maggie never gave a hoot how old you were or what you looked liked on the outside. Either you were a compassionate, loving person who fought for social justice (in which case she adored you) or you weren’t (in which case she tried to help you see the error of your ways).

One of her favorite sayings was made into a poster, which I have somewhere in my house. There is a picture of Maggie, gnarled hands and whispy white hair falling from her bun, pointing a rose at the photographer. Below her picture reads, “The Age You Are Is The Best Age To Be.”

Amen. It is a fact that we are the age we are. Why do we need to fight it or try to hide it? Why not dance with the joy of knowing that you are who you are at every age?

So, Max, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your heart is in the right place, and you passionately believe in a world where discrimination based on one’s gender or the color of one’s skin does not exist. However, by singling out a group of people — elders, in this case — to blame for the affronteries of a few, is itself a form of discrimination.

I look forward to your response, son, and you better watch out for ghosts in the night. Maggie is probably trying to come back from the grave to give you a little smack upside the head for what she would surely have seen as ageist remarks coming from one of her favorite young people.

Remember the Gray Panther motto, “Age and youth in action”? Let’s be it, the two of us, and work together to end all discrimination in our society and around the world.

Abby Lederman (Max’s mom)