Social Security's 75th Anniversary On August 14

From the Sacramento Bee:

Evelyn Sekula's widowed grandmother struggled to survive during the Depression. Like millions of other elderly people, she had no pension and no savings.

"She had no income at all except for what my father gave her," said Sekula, 90, who lives at the Atria El Camino Gardens senior residence in Carmichael. "She was always looking for a way to make money. My father probably gave her $10 a month."

Today's older adults were children and teenagers when President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the face of aging on Aug. 14, 1935, when he signed the Social Security Act into law.

They remember the difficult years when old age took place in a bleak, Dickensian landscape of need dotted with poor houses for those whose families couldn't support them. And they remember the difference that Social Security made in ordinary people's lives.

They also remember their parents' fears that Social Security amounted to socialism. Yet on the edge of the program's 75th anniversary, most of them can't imagine retirement without the small cushion of funds and dignity that Social Security provides. ...

"If it wasn't for Social Security, I'd be living under a bridge," said Jeneva Hammonds, 84 ...

"Social Security was the first government program instituting the concept that we have a collective responsibility for each other," said American River College gerontology department Chairman Barbara Gillogly. "Before that, there was no real concept of retirement.

"Most people worked until they died or were too ill, and then they were at the mercy of their family and friends."