ASKED if he minded growing older, the venerable and tireless Maurice Chevalier once remarked, "Not when I consider the alternative." But for thousands of American elderly, the alternative almost seems preferable. Condemned by society to a life "of decreasing usefulness, they wait out their days in idleness and, in many cases, poverty.

To examine the plight of the nation's elderly, TIME focuses its cover story this week on the nearly forgotten tenth of the U.S. population, the 20 million Americans who have passed the arbitrary milestone of 65 into the limbo of old age. The result is a long, hard and often shocking but occasionally hopeful look at what we are doing and failing to do for our elderly, and a guide to what we must do if we are to restore meaning to their lives.

Written by Contributing Editor Ruth Brine, and reported by both Ruth and Correspondent Ruth Mehrtens Galvin, the story was edited by Senior Editor Robert Shnayerson and researched by Virginia Adams. The idea was conceived when Ruth Brine moved to Manhattan's Upper West Side last fall. "I saw those rows and rows of motionless old people sitting all day long on the benches on the smelly traffic island that stretches all the way up Broadway," she recalls. "I also began to be aware that my friends were spending as much time discussing what to do about their parents as they were about their children."

The problem is a vexing one. As Ruth learned from her studies, social scientists and medical men are only beginning to study it systematically. In the past, says Ruth, "the subject has usually been shunned like necrophilia." Indeed, interviewing old people for the story, Ruth found many unwilling to talk about either themselves or their problems, while her own mother tried to talk her out of writing the story. " 'Do funny subjects,' she told me. 'No one wants to hear about old people.' "

TIME believes that its readers do and that the elderly, while not funny, constitute a subject both important and surprising. Ruth's mother, for example, is 79, and, says Ruth, "she is having a grand time learning the electric guitar and brushing up on her Spanish for her first trip to Mexico."

The Cover: Color photograph of Miss Eugenie Langle, 78, by Pete Turner.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.