Interview with Betty Letzig

December 5, 2000

	Betty Letzig and intern Coralie Gross in GAA's office, December 2000.

Betty Letzig, a United Methodist Deaconess and now Consultant to the new York-based general Board of Global ministries, recently gave Global Action on Aging some of her impressions about the first World Assembly on Ageing held in Vienna in 1982.

Betty’s lifelong interest in older people began when she was a teenager growing up on a Missouri dairy farm. As she made dairy deliveries in rural Hardin, not far from Kansas City, Betty had daily contact with many of the town’s residents, both men and women-including many who were older. She employed these conversations and valued their families’ outlook on life. Their concerns and talents helped her understand the rich human kindness that hard farm work had produced.

Later, as she began her professional life in 1950, she served in local churches as a Rural Worker, now known as Church and Community Ministries, and became involved in both Church and Community issues and programs. Because several local churches had food and nutrition programs for older people, she saw how much older people enjoyed the chance to talk and visit in each other’s company. Betty observed that socializing was just as important as the food that was served. She began to define “retirement” in a new way, coming to understand that older persons wanted to “do what was possible within the scope of their abilities’.

These early experiences shaped Betty’s experience as she took on new professional assignments in the national church, following a one year exchanged program in England. By 1962 she arrived in New York as staff in the Commission on Deaconess Work Office in the Methodist Board of Missions.

Throughout the 1960’s, Betty recalled that citizens across the US pushed the US government to respond to many challenges – to end racially segregated schools, voting, housing, and health care; to provide public health insurance for older persons; to secure earlier and better education for children, as well as to end the War in Vietnam.

During this time, The Methodist Church and other religious organizations led the way in advocating for “a great society”. The new thinking affected the notion of aging as well. Older people and their religious advocates began to talk about “spiritual well-being” in old age in addition to having sufficient food, housing, education and health care. Betty, in her work with the National Interfaith Coalition on Aging (NICA), shaped the ideas around “spiritual well-being” and transformed it into a new approach to older religious persons.

The First White House Conference on Aging highlighted older persons’ needs and documented the invisibility of older persons in the curriculum of seminaries, lay and medical schools. Through Betty’s participation in NICA, she became an advocate for including geriatric studies in seminary training and helped develop the GIST (Geriatrics in Seminary Training) program funding for this effort from the Commission on Ageing.

Following the initiative of the US and other developed countries’ concern about aging, the United Nations called for the First World Assembly on Ageing in 1982. Betty, now working as a National Division Executive Secretary in the office of Coalitions for Human Development, had joined the Nongovernmental Organization Committee (NGO) on aging based at the United Nations. Several organizations asked Betty to represent them among the NGO’s at the World Assembly: the National Division of the General Board of Global Ministries, the World Council of Churches, and the national Interfaith Coalition on Aging. Betty enthusiastically accepted. Her life had prepared her for this moment.

After arriving in the host city of Vienna in July 1982, Betty recalls that the NGO Committee on Aging had little trouble lobbying Delegates. She said that developing countries, such as Mata and others from Southeast Asia, could raise issues more persuasively than the developed countries, especially in regard to religious freedom and spiritual well -being. The NGO’s, including the Salvation Army and the AARP (American Association of retired Persons), lobbied the developing countries intensively. Betty, representing three major organizations, became a leading spokesperson at the World Assembly.

As a result of good teamwork and strategy, the NGO community won three major points. First, the notion of discrimination was broadened to sex, religion and race. Second, the terms “religious” and “spiritual” were fully integrated in social policies. And third, a sense of spiritual well - being was recognized as being as important as material well-being. The various agencies of the United Nations committed themselves to addressing these concerns.

At the assembly’s conclusion, the government delegates, NGO’s and the Vienna hosts planted a tree in Vienna’s Rathaus Park in front of the Vienna City hall, as a symbol of longevity, self-reliance, continued growth and a community-meeting place. Betty, in NGO leadership, looked on as Vienna Mayor Leopold Gratz; a five-year Filipino child, Robert Hengl; and the UN Assistant General-Secretary of the UN center for Social Development and humanitarian Affairs, Letitia Shahani, turned the spade of dirt to plant the tree.

As they left Vienna in 1982, NGO’s like Betty Letzig, held high expectations for accelerated progress for older persons worldwide. Unfortunately, many hopes were not realized, particularly in the United States. Every nation was supposed to implement the plan and report afterward but cohesive planning and international implementation fell behind. The United Nations had made strong statements and acknowledged key issues about global aging. Butt the ambitious dreams could not be met with the tiny UN Secretariat on Aging, the growing divide between rich and poor nations, and the heightened military spending in many nations as the Cold War continued.

Nevertheless, the NGO Committee on Aging emerged as an important voice for older persons at the United Nations. The National Interfaith Coalition on Aging elected Betty Letzig as its President where she continued to encourage and promote many progressive ideas about aging that had infused the First World Assembly on aging. Under her leadership, the NICA initiated the national Volunteer Interfaith Caregivers project, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This project, still expanding in 2001 to additional communities across America, mobilizes interfaith volunteers, primarily older persons, to be caregivers of others who need care.

Considering her experience, what does Betty Letzig think about the Second World Assembly on Ageing, which will take place in 2002, in Madrid, Spain? She’s clear on the need: “More attention should be paid to the elderly, particularly in areas of the world where wars, hunger and other terrible situations are raging”. Also, older persons, wherever they live, need a better way to secure health care and income support. Generally speaking, “the role older people play in our society should be reassessed so as to assure them the right to work and to be paid as volunteers with the necessary support”.