Champ of the Elderly

Mandatory retirement is an extravagant waste of people pie. I've seen the tragedy and poignancy of people being pushed out of their jobs, having their health falter because there is nothing to live for. Economically, socially and spiritually, it's wrong." The words alone would qualify Claude Denson Pepper as Congress's leading foe of mandatory retirement; the fact that the Representative from Miami is 77 years old makes him an undeniable Capitol Hill champion of the old.

Nowadays Pepper must face the same test that all elderly people who are working do: Can he handle the job? Chairing the Select Committee on Aging, Pepper is guiding through Congress the bill changing the mandatory-retirement laws. He is attacking this task as zestfully as he has countless others in his 28 years on the Hill. He has repeatedly raised the retirement issue in speeches and numerous articles on op-ed pages across the country.

For Pepper, the bill must vividly recall another piece of legislation for the aging that came earlier in his career. When he ran for his first full Senate term in 1938, Pepper urged the passage of the "Townsend Plan," which called for a $200-a-month payment to everyone over 60 who agreed to retire, regardless of need. Though the plan was defeated, political pressure for it was in part responsible for the passage in 1935 of the public assistance and old-age insurance provisions of the Social Security Act.

Pepper was a strong supporter of Roosevelt's progressive legislative programs. He pushed for the creation of lend-lease and became an early advocate of American preparedness--through compulsory military service--against Germany. Pepper's liberal domestic record and his sympathy for the war-battered Russians made him the target of right-wingers in 1950. In a McCarthy era Senate campaign against his former protege, George Smathers, he was branded "Red" Pepper and a "spellbinding pinko."

Smathers told rural Florida voters that Pepper was "a known extravert," a man who "practiced celibacy" before marriage and who indulged in "nepotism with his sister-in-law."

Smathers won and forced Pepper from political office until 1962, when redistricting in the Miami area created a new congressional opportunity. Pepper ran and won, becoming a freshman Congressman at the tender age of 62. In his 15 years in the House, Pepper has missed few floor votes. He has continued, on balance, to support social action programs. As MIMS a staffer explains, "He still believes, as he did during the New Deal, that the Government can correct injustices and right wrongs."

Pepper continues to put in testing twelve-hour days. Open-heart surgery last year hardly caused him to pause.

Two months ago, he officially indicated that he will run for his House seat again in 1978. Says he proudly: "I haven't noticed any perceptible diminution of my abilities to do a job I have done for a long, long time." (One concession to his age: a hairpiece purchased early this year.) About possible retirement for himself, Pepper jokes, "I tell people I'm planning on the year 2000, but I could change my mind if I feel well. They can't sell a fellow out when he still moves with considerable alacrity."

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