10 Minutes With Robert Butler

By Dave Newton

It's how Robert Butler answered my first question — How much time do we have to talk?

O.K.

You can't expect to get an hour with the foremost aging authority in America. But ten minutes with Robert Butler is worth an hour with anyone else. In any case, he gave me fifteen.

Butler on Baby Boomers: "They're a mess."

Strong words. Yet the voice is calm, the phrases measured. More than anyone, maybe, Robert Butler has earned the right to speak forcefully to Americans about aging. His is the voice of experience.

Born in 1927, raised by grandparents, he saw their plight firsthand, lived it, lost his second "father" far too soon. He has spent his life standing up for them. In his ninth decade, he stands atop the medical-social movement he helped create.

In his twenties, he conducted one of the first long-term studies of healthy elders, at the National Institutes of Health in Baltimore. His book, "Human Aging," written with Myrna Lewis, who became his wife and co-author, is a landmark in the field, challenging, among other false beliefs, the inevitability of senility. He became the first director of the National Institute of Aging at NIH.

Robert Butler coined the word — "ageism" — in 1968. His Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 volume is called "Why Survive? Being Old in America," a title that still jolts. He still doesn't mince words.

BUTLER: Nobody wants to talk about aging. It didn't come up in the Presidential campaign. Hasn't been mentioned in healthcare reform.

DN: How does it make you feel, after all your accomplishments, to find American attitudes toward aging pretty much the same as when the average lifespan was 47?

BUTLER: Well, it's disappointing. But then you have to remember that a lot has changed, nevertheless. When I started we didn't have Medicare. Nobody was studying Alzheimer's Disease...

DN: But everybody treats us like we're going to die any minute. I think we still need something like a revolution — at a time of life when most of us don't feel like joining one.

BUTLER: Why not?

DN: Well...

BUTLER: It's a perfect time for one. The oldest Boomers are 63...and out hunting for jobs...for instance, the nursing shortage is disappearing — older nurses are going back to work to support their families. But a lot of good things are happening. There's Experience Corps, getting retired people to help teach reading in schools...ReServe, in New York, finds paying jobs for retired executives with non-profits. If you want revolutionary fervor, there's the Gray Panthers — they didn't just disappear when Maggie Kuhn died. And don't forget AARP. Imagine where we'd all be now if they hadn't defended Social Security against privatization.

DN: Of course, you're ahead of the curve as usual -- you've already declared "The Longevity Revolution," your 2008 book. You were releasing that as I was reading Betty Friedan's "The Fountain of Age," which you inspired her to write in the Nineties. Maybe we can use the World Wide Web to accelerate your revolution.

BUTLER: If you can get it rolling, you can count on me.

DN: I have one more softball question — one of my partners wants to know what you do for exercise.

BUTLER: Well, I'm a member of a walking club. We meet Saturday and Sunday mornings and walk five or six miles, then have a good breakfast together. We're from different fields, so it's always a lively conversation and I learn a lot. During the week, I have a treadmill in my office, because I don't have time to get out and walk. And I have a personal trainer, working on balance and upper body strength...keep those quadraceps in shape. What do you do?

DN: I walk, swim in the summertime. Not enough yet. I just try to keep moving.

BUTLER: Good. When I started studying biology, that's the first thing I learned. Life is movement.

This fall Robert Butler will move his International Longevity Center from its downtown building to Columbia University, where he began — he sees it as an excellent move for the organization. It's also, perhaps, a sign of changing, leaner times.

Doing more with less is creative. Robert Butler and thousands of others he's inspired have accomplished much in the past century to provide us with support and care in age.

We can expect more from Dr. Butler, but the next phase of the longevity revolution is clear — we must fight for the rest ourselves. It's time to join the movement, demand full participation in society, and live our long lives fully.