Champion of The Elderly

By Ed Magnuson

At 82, Claude Pepper is at the peak of his career

"There are only two Democrats who really bug Reagan," says a presidential aide. "One is Tip O'Neill, and the other is that Congressman who keeps talking about Social Security."

That Congressman watches the world through trifocals. He wears a pacemaker in his chest to quicken his heartbeat when it slows. One of his heart valves is synthetic; it replaced the natural one that developed a calcium deposit. He is nearly deaf without his hearing aids. A bulbous nose dominates his rumpled face, which looks forever melancholy even when its owner is not. He is 82 years old.

But Claude Denson Pepper is like a vintage automobile with new parts: he gets better and more powerful with age. By an odd convergence of historical trends, Pepper's unshakable New Deal liberalism is in phase with the graying of America, even at a time when conservatism marches forcefully through Washington's corridors of power. Some 36 million Social Security recipients, and millions more who are nearing retirement, count on Claude Pepper to protect their rights and wellbeing. And Pepper has doggedly done so.

That should be especially evident this week; President Reagan is scheduled to sign a historic package of Social Security reforms designed to save the system from insolvency. The undisputed champion of the elderly, Pepper had held the fate of the delicately balanced compromise in his hands. He had fought against all cuts in benefits, gave ground only grudgingly when concessions had to be made to keep the legislation alive, and responsibly withheld the veto many of his more zealous followers had wanted him to wield. Says Pepper, accurately and with no false modesty: "If I had not voted for it, then there would not have been a package, and there would have been complete chaos."

After 14 years as a U.S. Senator from Florida and 20 years as a Congressman from the Miami area, Pepper is at the peak of his astonishingly tireless and durable career. He demonstrated his political punch in the 1982 congressional elections, stumping with surprising energy in 26 states. Of the 73 House Democrats he supported, 54 won. The difference he made varied, of course, from race to race. But his presence never hurt. "Claude was the most sought-after speaker by Democratic candidates in 1982," recalls House Majority Leader Jim Wright. "At one rally for elderly people, we expected 200, but 800 showed up and waited for an hour and a quarter to hear him." Adds California Congressman Tony Coelho, Democratic congressional campaign committee chairman: "No single person had more of an impact on the 1982 elections. His mug was all over this country--on posters, on banners, on TV and billboards. He was a symbol to the elderly and the helpless."

While Pepper's critics contend that he exploited the Administration's hastily prepared and ruefully withdrawn initial proposals for cutting Social Security benefits, he is liked and respected by House colleagues of both parties. Last January he became chairman of the House Rules Committee, which can determine not only the timing of legislation but sometimes whether a bill comes to a vote at all. He reluctantly relinquished his chairmanship of the House Select Committee on Aging. "It was wrenching," he says. "Like choosing between a brother and a sister."

"His very person debunks the myths about aging," says Jack Ossofsky of the National Council on the Aging. "Concern about the elderly, the poor and the frail has characterized his entire career."

He intends to do more. A bill sponsored by Pepper and passed in 1978 eliminated any mandatory retirement age for most federal employees and raised it from 65 to 70 for workers in private industry. He has a new bill in the House hopper to remove any such age limits at all. "The only mandatory retirement," he says, "is when you can't do the work any more."

The Senator turned Congressman (everyone still calls him Senator, even though he has not been one since 1951), has an urgent interest in cancer research. In 1937 he sponsored a bill that created the National Cancer Institute. Now he wants the Government to provide an extra $100 million in each of the next five years for work on the disease. "You know, I lost my wife Mildred to cancer in 1979," he says quietly. "Last month I spoke at a wake for Don Petit of my staff, who died of cancer in Florida. A woman on my staff is suffering from bone cancer and was told she'll probably never be able to walk again. Well, we've got to do more to try to stop this disease."

But will not all such social programs cost too much in an age of soaring budget deficits? Others may bend to political fashion, but Pepper never wavers: "I would rather live with $200 billion deficits and have more people living, than the reverse. And if we don't spend the money fighting cancer and arthritis and poverty and poor housing and all the rest, they'll just spend it on the military or something else." In Pepper's view, that settles that.

"He's reversed the aging process," says Florida Senator Lawton Chiles. "He has more political power than ever."

While Pepper's body has required a few repairs, his mind remains sharp. His memory is so keen that he can be introduced to seven people at lunch and thereafter address them unerringly by name. He recalls conversations with F.D.R. more than four decades ago in vivid detail. Pepper is most impressive on the podium. He never reads from a text, rarely uses notes, yet the words roll out in graceful sentences. The loose skin on his chin and neck fairly quivers with indignation and a clenched fist punches the air when he berates "an Administration that wants to cut $11 billion from Medicare." When he recounts stories of poor people hurt by budget trims, Pepper sometimes gets misty-eyed. So do his listeners. Congressman Coelho was present on one such occasion during the 1982 campaign. "Claude's eyes teared over, and by the time he finished speaking, 70% of the audience were teary-eyed. It was just a tremendous emotional experience."

Neither exercise nor diet explains Pepper's mental agility and physical stamina. He loves golf but gets out on the course only sporadically, recently shooting 48 over nine holes at Coral Gables Country Club and winning 75-c- from his opponents. He admits that he does not even walk as much as he would like, although when he does, he says, "I walk fast." He eats heartily and is a bit overweight (5 ft. 7 1/2 in., 180 Ibs.). His one dietary idiosyncrasy: he has soup and crackers with each meal, even breakfast.

Pepper gave up smoking in 1933. Strangers often view his red, veiny nose as a sign of heavy drinking, but he denies it. Except for one or two glasses of white wine with lunch and dinner, he abstains from alcohol. In the House dining room, waitresses automatically bring Pepper his soup, crackers and a carafe of wine. No connoisseur, he never asks for anything fancier than chablis.

If there is a key to Pepper's vitality, it is that he enjoys his work and has never lost his passionate concern for people and issues. His home telephone numbers are listed in both the Washington and Miami directories, and constituents often call, seeking help with red tape or support for legislation. He keeps regular office hours in both cities and meets with anyone who asks to see him.

After a speech to retirees or other older folks, Pepper lingers to bask in the affection of his admirers. He moves slowly among them, sometimes bussing a few of the women who do not kiss him first. He eagerly grasps the outstretched hands of the men. His rapport with the elderly is such that his office is inundated with their messages whenever an issue that concerns them is pending in Washington. During the Social Security debate last month, some 3,000 letters and 100 phone calls sought his attention each week. Says Pepper about the elderly: "They deserve much--and need much. I am helping them."

On a typical weekday in Washington, Pepper rises by 6:30, reads the Post and keeps a breakfast appointment at 8. He drives himself around in a long Lincoln Town Car, carries his own bag through airports, normally travels alone. A housekeeper cares for his waterfront condominium in Miami, and a staff aide, James Brennan, 66, shares his northwest Washington apartment. The two often dine out together. Then Pepper watches the 11 o'clock news, skims the New York Times and goes to bed by midnight.

His weekends are scarcely less regimented. Not long ago, he traveled to Austin for a Saturday speech, then flew to Miami for a funeral on Sunday. He took a 10 o'clock flight that night to Boston, getting to bed in Cambridge at 3 a.m. A limousine picked him up at 7:45 a.m. Monday for breakfast with Harvard President Derek Bok. (A gentle flirt with women, Pepper probably would have preferred eggs and bacon with Bo Derek.) He held a series of press conferences, spoke for an hour to a Harvard Medical School gerontology class, then returned to Washington for an afternoon of House business. That night, Pepper made another speech.

Often described as a millionaire (he says he would qualify only if some Florida beach land he owns were sold for his asking price of $600,000), Pepper has no qualms about drawing some $650 a month in Social Security benefits that he qualified for at the age of 72. And he says he will not mind paying tax on this pension, as required under the new law for high income earners. Says he: "Social Security is an insurance program to which I have contributed. It isn't welfare."

The Peppers had no children, and he has long referred to his staff as "my family." But he has been lonely without Mildred. He sadly recalls the day when he and his wife sat at a small table in their Miami home after she had begun treatments for cancer. "Well, Claude," said Mildred, his wife of more than 40 years, "it looks as if we may be coming to the end of the road." He embraced her and said through tears, "Don't talk like that, Mildred. I can't think of life without you." In their Washington apartment, there is still a note in his wife's handwriting attached to a shower curtain. It reads: "After your shower, please close this curtain."

"He has flair," says Anne Ackerman, 69, a Democratic leader in Miami's Dade County. "He has style. He epitomizes what a public servant should be. Claude Pepper represents an America that is a civilization rather than just a country with borders. He is what you want life to be."

Part of Pepper's style is his droll humor. Some of his jokes may be as old as he is, but his deadpan delivery delights his audiences. Arriving late for a speech, he tells his listeners about two men in colonial days who were set to duel at dawn. Only one of the antagonists showed up. The other sent a note by messenger. It read: "I'm running a little late this morning. Please go ahead without me."

Another Pepper story, which Reagan has taken to telling on occasion, involves a bishop and a Congressman who arrive in heaven together. St. Peter shows the Congressman a lavish suite of rooms, while assigning the bishop a small one with no view. When the bishop complains that his lifetime of service to the church rates something better, St. Peter replies: "Don't feel bad, Bishop. You know, we have thousands of bishops up here, but this is the first Congressman we ever got."

Neatness is another Pepper trademark. He wears a fresh suit, usually with vest, every day. His sparse white hair (he stopped wearing a toupee in 1980 after it blew off as he greeted President Jimmy Carter at the Miami Airport) is carefully combed. Presiding at a recent House Rules Committee hearing, he leaned back, motioned to an aide and whispered in his ear. The aide rushed to straighten a portrait on a side wall. Pepper nodded his approval.

"In Alabama, we lived in a house that was little more than a place to sleep," recalls Claude's brother Frank, 65. "We did not have a car. I can remember hearing him come home late at night, rehearsing speeches he was going to give when he became a U.S. Senator."

Pepper cannot really explain how he managed to grow up uninfected by the redneck racism prevalent in the Alabama farm country where he was born in 1900. "Why, I was full grown," says Pepper, the eldest of four children, "before I ever traveled on a paved road." Whatever the reason, he felt the stir of ambition early on: at the tender age often, he carved the words CLAUDE PEPPER, UNITED STATES SENATOR on a tree.

Pepper entered the University of Alabama in the fall of 1918. To help pay his way, he worked from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. hauling coal and ashes at a power plant. He starred on the debating team, ran on the track squad, made Phi Beta Kappa, but lost his first election: for student-body president. When his oratorical skills took him to a contest in Chapel Hill, N.C., "it was the farthest north I had ever been."

The North beckoned, however. "Why shouldn't I go to the best law school there is?" he asked himself. He applied to Harvard, was admitted and got tuition, books and $100 a month support money from the Veterans Administration. The reason: during his brief Army service, spent training at the University of Alabama, he suffered an injury that developed into a double hernia. Pepper's appreciation for both education and a benevolent Uncle Sam was never to leave him: "I get so burned up when anybody tries to cut back on the money available to help needy students."

After Harvard, Pepper taught law for a year at the University of Arkansas, then set up practice in Perry, Fla. In the next eleven years, he handled some 30 murder cases, taking one of them successfully all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Active in Democratic politics, Pepper, at 28, became a member of the Florida Democratic executive committee. He won at the polls for the first of 15 times: he was elected to the Florida house of representatives. One of his first bills showed his early concern for the elderly. It would let anyone over 65 fish without a license.

But his sense of racial fairness may have cost him his seat two years later. He was defeated after voting against a resolution that criticized Mrs. Herbert Hoover for inviting the wife of a black Congressman to the White House. Recalls Pepper: "I thought my political career had died aborning."

He resumed his law practice, opening an office in Tallahassee and bringing his parents to live with him in 1931. The Depression had proved ruinous to his father. Pepper learned firsthand the problems of the elderly, caring for his father until he died in 1945 at the age of 72 and his mother until her death in 1961 at 84.

But Pepper yearned to return to politics. He made a brash bid in 1934 to unseat U.S. Senator Park Trammell in the Democratic primary. F.D.R. was in the White House, and Pepper's campaign slogan was wordy but effective: "The Welfare of the Common Man Is the Cornerstone of the New Deal." Virtually unknown, he nevertheless forced a run-off and lost by a mere 4,050 votes. When both of the state's Senators died within weeks of each other in 1936, Pepper filed for one of the vacancies. His earlier showing scared off challengers, and at 36, he was lee ted to the Senate unopposed. Says Pepper, a Baptist: "I realized then that providence can handle my affairs much better than I can."

Roosevelt sought the freshman Senator's support for his power-grabbing and ultimately unsuccessful plan to pack the Supreme Court with additional Justices. Pepper had reservations, but, far from timid, he said he would go along if F.D.R. would help him win election to his first full six-year term in 1938. "I will, and that's a commitment," promised the President, who kept his word.

Pepper, in turn, became one of F.D.R.'s stalwart supporters on Capitol Hill. When resistance to New Deal economic programs grew in the Senate, the Florida newcomer rose to scold his elders: "We haven't gone too far, we haven't gone far enough. This is not the Promised Land. Are we going to commit the same folly that the children of Israel did?" His colleagues rose in an ovation. Newspaper Columnist Drew Pearson called the speech "one of the greatest of its kind ever heard in the Senate chamber."

Pepper easily won re-election in 1938 after defeating a former Florida Governor in the primary by more than 100,000 votes. But his liberalism was antagonizing businessmen in the state, who vowed to turn him out of office. Pepper had been instrumental in passing the nation's first minimum wage law, which guaranteed workers 25-c- an hour. "Business never forgave me," he says. It was the last major piece of New Deal legislation.

His views on foreign affairs also undermined his Florida support. He and his wife Mildred visited Berlin after his 1938 reelection, and the Senator was alarmed by what he recalls with wry understatement as "the mutterings of war." Pepper joined the push for a military draft and came up with an innovation of his own. He was convinced that the only way the U.S. could stay out of the war in Europe was to help the Allies win it. Since they were awaiting warplanes on order from the U.S., Pepper reasoned, why not send them aircraft out of the U.S. Air Force, replacing these planes later as the orders came off production lines? This idea, rejected at first in the Senate, became the Lend-Lease program, which provided Britain, in particular, with crucial ships, warplanes and other war materiel.

For his efforts, Pepper was hanged in effigy at the Capitol in August 1940, by women who opposed his "warmongering." He still has the coconut head and stuffed denims that the women had fashioned to look like him.

Pepper won re-election in 1944 but, mainly because of his liberal views, speaking invitations in Florida dropped off as civic clubs and local Chambers of Commerce blackballed him. Business leaders were building a campaign war chest to beat him in 1950. He played right into the hands of his foes. Traveling abroad in 1945, Pepper met Joseph Stalin and naively described the Soviet dictator as "a man Americans can trust."

The following year, Pepper accepted an invitation to attend a left-wing political rally in New York's Madison Square Garden. Waiting backstage with Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace and others, Pepper was asked to pose for a group photo. As he did so, Paul Robeson, the opera singer who was widely considered a Communist, took a position beside him. The resulting photo of Pepper looking chummy with a black Soviet sympathizer was to prove a political disaster for him back home.

Pepper also incurred the potent wrath of Harry Truman by joining a dump-Truman movement at the 1948 Democratic convention. Pepper felt that Truman had abandoned Roosevelt's domestic programs. Pepper and others tried to persuade World War II Hero Dwight Eisenhower to run as a Democrat. They got word that Ike would not seek the nomination, but would accept it. Thus Pepper led a Florida delegation pledged largely to Ike, gaining headlines that made Truman furious. Ike left Pepper out in the cold by sending him a telegram withdrawing his name from consideration.

Truman did not forget. Shortly after upsetting Republican Thomas Dewey in the election, he summoned George Smathers, then a Florida Congressman, to the White House. Pepper had helped Smathers get elected. "I want you to do me a favor," Smathers recalls Truman's saying. "I want you to beat that son-of-a-bitch Claude Pepper."

That 1950 senatorial election was one of the dirtiest on record. The Robeson-Pepper photo was circulated widely. So too was a book called The Red Record of Senator Claude Pepper, which distorted his attitude toward the Soviet Union. He was stuck with the label Red Pepper.

But the campaign is chiefly remembered for remarks attributed to Smathers--and later denied by him--in TIME. Quoting Northern newspapers, the magazine said Smathers used fancy language to convey sinister meanings to benighted rural listeners: "Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extravert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr.Pepper before his marriage habitually practiced celibacy."

Pepper was defeated by 67,000 votes. "On election night people came up to our house in cars, shouting obscenities, cheering the fact that I had been defeated," Pepper recalls. "They wanted to destroy me, and just about did."

(Pepper is not a man to carry a grudge, but it was not until last year that he fully forgave Smathers. When an aide suggested asking Smathers' law firm for a campaign contribution, Pepper reluctantly agreed and was surprised when he got a $350 check in reply. Shortly thereafter, Pepper walked up to Smathers, who was lunching in the House dining room, and said without smiling: "You know that check you sent in for my campaign? Well, it bounced." It had not, of course, and when Smathers realized that Pepper was joking, both knew that their enmity was over.)

Once again, Pepper returned to his law practice. He tried a senatorial comeback in 1958, but was beaten in the Democratic primary. By 1962 he was earning more than $150,000 a year, representing mainly corporate clients. But when a new Miami congressional district was created that year, he jumped back into the political swim. He missed politics, and Mildred missed the capital's social whirl. Says Brother Joe, 73, about Claude's law practice: "He was very successful. But he was miserable, just plain miserable."

Pepper did not consider it demeaning to step down from Senator to Congressman, although he concedes that "most people go the other way." If he had somehow stayed in the Senate, he figures he would have become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and might have wound up serving longer than anyone else. "But that committee doesn't save many souls," he adds. "I know I'm doing more good now."

At a Veterans Administration hospital in Miami, a patient in a wheelchair watches Pepper greeting the bedridden and says: "I'm a Republican. But I always vote for Senator Pepper. He doesn't care if you're an old Republican or an old Democrat. Just so you 're old."

Pepper is far from a one-issue legislator. In 1945 he sponsored a resolution that led to the creation of the World Health Organization and, in the late '40s, bills establishing five of the National Institutes of Health. Not only does he favor a freeze on nuclear arms now, but he advocated one after the end of World War II. Still, nothing offends his sense of justice quite as much as modern society's tendency to view the elderly as a burden or a stereotyped group. He does not feel complimented when someone tells him: "My, you don't look your age." Inwardly, he grumps, "How am I expected to look? Toothless and doddering, a caricature of my younger self?" Pepper assails "ageism" as "just as wrong as racism or sexism."

At a recent Miami dinner in his honor, Pepper spoke eloquently about growing older. "The aging process is so slow, so gradual, that all you notice is a slight diminishing of some of your faculties," he said solemnly. What the elderly want is "to be thought of as just other people. They need love. They need compassion." He concedes that attitudes toward the aging are improving and predicts that this will get much better when, as demographers predict, the elderly constitute an even larger share of the nation's population.

If Pepper could wave "a legislative wand," he says he would "enact a Medicare bill under which the entire cost would be borne by the Government instead of just the 45% now." He would provide home health care, claiming that it would often save the Government the higher cost of putting people who need not be there in hospitals. And he would provide more preventive health coverage, in hopes of checking illness and prolonging life. Overall, Pepper is optimistic, even without his wand, because he feels that pressure is growing on the Administration to stop cutting social programs. "The Reagan era will come to an end. Already we're moving toward compassion in Government again."

When Pepper's admirers worry about his advancing years and how long he expects to be on Capitol Hill, he sometimes admits that he has retirement plans. "I've set the year," he drawls. As his listeners' concern grows, he adds without a smile: "The year 2000. But I reserve the right to change my mind."

In fact, Pepper has big plans for next year. He intends to lead a drive to elect some 500 delegates who are at least 65 years old to the 1984 Democratic National Convention. That would be about 12% of the total, and he wants to use their leverage to influence the choice of a nominee and the candidate's stand on issues dear to the elderly.

Already, the contenders for the nomination are seeking Pepper's support. Senator Alan Cranston has even listed Pepper as a possible running mate if the Californian were to succeed in his long-shot pursuit of the nomination. Such a Democratic ticket, with a combined age of 154 at election time, would accomplish the impossible: it would make a Republican team of Reagan and Vice President George Bush (combined age 133) look young.

Some of Pepper's most avid fans even urge him to run for President. He clearly considers himself just as physically fit as, and more capable than, the present occupant of the Oval Office. Claims Pepper about 1984: "I'll be better able to throw my hat in the ring at 83 than Ronald Reagan will be at 73." In less quixotic moments, Pepper admits that he is, at best, suited to the No. 2 spot. "It's easy to replace a Vice President," he says, in a rare recognition of his own mortality.

At an age when most people are savoring old memories, Claude Pepper never looks back. His latest legislative proposal is to create a House Committee on the Future of the U.S. He, of course, would like to stick around to help shape its vision, and to see that the recommendations are carried out. In the meantime, he plans to lead his graying army to greater triumphs--and to keep bugging Ronald Reagan.

An elderly woman spots Pepper on a Miami sidewalk and throws her arms around his neck. "I just want to thank you," she says, "for what you are doing for us. " --By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Hays Corey/Washington

With reporting by Hays Corey/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.