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When Dr. Robert Holden, dean of the IU School of Medicine, made his inaugural State of the School address in September 1996, he warned that the country was in for a shock. Never in history, he said, were so many people simultaneously experiencing old age. What that would do in terms of preventive care, aging care, cancer care and public health services would be monumental. He was talking particularly about the baby boomers, that vast group of Americans approaching the last third of life.
Well, those of us who are certified boomers–arriving as we did on the greener side of world war–have never undertaken anything without fanfare of one sort or another. It is, after all, all about us---nearly 76 million Americans who will advance toward retirement in the next two decades.
The first wave of us arrived in 1946, the year Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care transformed the art of parenting, electric clothes dryers were introduced into homes, and Winston Churchill first referred to "the iron curtain." The last batch of boomers made its entrance in 1964, a year after the presidential assassination in Dallas, Texas. Also that year, three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. And Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution granting greater presidential freedom in authorizing combat actions in Vietnam.
As one of the first wave, I spent my childhood in a typical Eisenhower-era Hoosier home. My preschool days were heady, and I loved Saturday mornings, primarily because of my association with Winky-Dink. My mother would turn on our spanking new television console in the living room and spread a green plastic wrap over the static-ridden, black-and-white screen. I could then take part in what was arguably the world’s first interactive video game.
Winky-Dink had the same squeaky voice as Betty Boop and was accompanied on great adventures by his dog, Woofer. Standing directly in front of the television with a fistful of crayons, I and my age cohorts across America would be invited to draw bridges, pathways, parachutes and other paraphernalia onto the magic screen, which I did with a vengeance. Thus I, the most powerful interventionalist of Saturday morning TV, would rescue Winky-Dink and Woofer, providing a waxy blueprint for safe passage and further on-screen adventure. If nothing else, this early cartoon gave us boomers a collective indication that we had some part in strategizing destiny.
And while the adventure of aging will require a good deal more than crayons and a magic screen, some futurists are offering cheery forecasts. Among them is Marc Freeman, whose new book, PrimeTime: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America, suggests that boomers are not likely to aspire to "sun city" environments for years of gentle leisure, but are far more likely to remain socially and culturally active in less isolating communities. Interestingly, his forecast parallels the upswing in a service-learning revolution that is transforming higher education.
Just how our generation will impact society as persons age 65 and over become the dominant age group remains to be seen. But one thing we do know: we’re getting ready for the journey, fastening our safety nets and expecting good company from both the generation ahead (yes, the fastest growing group in America are individuals 85 and older) and the generation just behind. Any number of Indiana University researchers are helping to map the journey, a few of whom you will meet in today’s IU Home Pages.
See today’s Links section–
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