Problems of the Aged and Aging

The PRESIDENT,

The White House,

Washington, D.C.

APRIL 17, 1962.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: Mrs. Eona Harger, director of New Jersey's Division on Aging, is testifying this week before a subcommittee of the Committee on Labor and Education in the House.

Her testimony will strongly urge the enactment of the Fogarty-McNamara bill for the creation of a U.S. Commission on Aging. Her reasoning will, I am advised, reflect that of others responsible for the direction of activities in aging in several of our more populous States where the elderly are important in all considerations.

I am concerned that the administration not reply in the negative to the proposition that we focus overall responsibility for policy planning and interdepartmental coordination of activities in aging in a single commission attached to the White House. To say "No" to this proposal at this time could be badly misconstrued by our older people and by those in the States who are concerned with their well-being.

I do hope the administration will urge the prompt passage of this legislation.
Faithfully yours,
HARRISON A. WILLIAMS, Jr.,

U.S. Senator.

APRIL 17, 1962.

THE PRESIDENT,
The White House,

Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: My esteemed colleague, Representative Bailey, is currently holding hearings on Representative Fogarty's bill, H.R. 10014, which would create a U.S. Commission on Aging. This is a companion bill to S. 2779 which I have had the pleasure of cosponsoring in the Senate.

I sincerely hope the administration will warmly endorse this measure and thereby further strengthen our Democratic Party's identification with the cause of our older citizens.

During the hearings I recently attended in many different parts of the country, witness after witness bemoaned the absence at the Federal level of any single source to which they could turn for information and guidance with respect to our many programs for the aged. Creation of the proposed Commission would fill this important gap.

More important, however, is the fact that it would demonstrate our intention to lift the focus of Federal activities in aging to so high a level as to command the attention of all relevant agencies and bring about what our older people will regard as really meaningful programs. Certainly they will be sorely disappointed should the administration deny them and their problems this recognition. We, who will shortly be out on the hustings, would find it most difficult to explain.

When we were colleagues on the Subcommittee on Aging, I learned that you were thoroughly aware of our responsibilities to our older people. I hope you will agree that by enacting this legislation we will be proving our intention to discharge those responsibilities, not in one area alone or in this year alone. hut in all the many fields of aging and from this time forward. With the best of good wishes, Respectfully yours,

JENNINGS RANDOLPH,

U.S. Senator. APRIL 16, 1962.

THE PRESIDENT,

The White House,

Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: It has come to my attention that Congressman Bailey's subcommittee is holding hearings on the McNamara-Fogarty bills, S. 2779 and H.R. 10014, to establish a Commission on Aging, and that the administration will make its views known on Thursday of this week as to whether or not it is in support of this legislation.

The problems of our senior citizens are of vital concern to all of us, and I sincerely hope that you will find it possible to lend strong support to the basic concept in the pending legislation. In my opinion it is most important that we demonstrate real concern with these problems, and I can think of no better way of demonstrating this fact than by supporting legislation which would place the central direction of activities in the field of the aging at the White House level.

In view of the foregoing I cannot too strongly urge that we focus overall responsibility for policy planning and interdepartmental coordination of activities in aging in a single commission attached to the White House.