No Retirement From Life - Maggie Kuhn

1905–95

Maggie Kuhn is known for what she did after retirement. At sixty-five, after decades of service, she was forced to retire from the Presbyterian Church. An activist, she had taught at a YWCA before working for the church. She had always encouraged women to get involved in social and work issues. She spoke about sexuality at a time when women weren’t encouraged to admit that sexuality was important to them. In various eras, she vocally opposed segregation, McCarthyism, and war.

Once she retired, Maggie took on another issue—ageism. With other retirees, she cofounded the Gray Panthers in 1970 with a firm belief that older citizens had the responsibility to be fully involved in all aspects of life. Yet this was more than a special-interest lobby. Maggie felt strongly about working side by side with younger people to effect change in all areas—not just areas that affected older Americans. The Gray Panthers’ motto is “Age and Youth in Action.”

While she fought for justice for people of all ages, Maggie became a voice for the older generation. She once said our society “scrap-piles old people as it does automobiles” with policies like mandatory retirement. Old age is not a disease, she maintained. Senior citizens are far from useless. “We elders have all sorts of skills and knowledge,” she said in the 1970s, “and I submit that if we got our heads together, there wouldn’t be a single problem that could not be solved.”

Maggie helped pioneer changes in the way older Americans thought about themselves and the way society viewed the elderly. She didn’t think retirement from a job should mean retirement from life, and she embodied that principle herself. Through the Gray Panthers, the work she did after retirement has had a very positive effect on society.

Let’s not lose sight of what people at every stage of life can contribute to society, to our families, and to the church. When you look around your family and your church, do you see the older members encouraged and invited to contribute as much as they possibly can? Is there someone you can invite to contribute more of the experience and wisdom that they’ve gained over the years?

Wisdom belongs to the aged, and understanding to the old.

Job 12:12