Leroy Kayser turned 95 in April and he’s doing just fine right now, thank you very much.
He was born just before the Great Depression and was a merchant mariner during World War II, working in the engine room of a troop carrier in the Mediterranean. He has lived through a couple of armed conflicts he didn’t think his country should have been tangled up in. He’s lost most of his sight in recent years but loves audio books, the company of his cat, and his wife, Julia, who, at 92, was also a child of the Depression.
During a long and pleasant telephone conversation last week, which happened to interrupt his afternoon listening to the sonnets of William Shakespeare, Mr. Kayser reflected on bygone eras in light of the current situation. “We know what it is to be without, and we sympathize with the rest of the people who are without now, in our country and around the world,” he said.
“You had holes in the soles of your shoes and you put cardboard in them until you could get some cents together and you could buy a new sole to glue on from Woolworth’s,” he recalled. “Every day on the way to school, you would pass by furniture in front of houses. Renters were evicted for non-payment of rent. On and on and on, until World War II, which really ended the Depression. Then, everyone was doing something for the war effort. . . . Everybody had a role to play, even if it was only a vagabond picking up old, discarded cans and turning them in.”
“We are trapped at home now, but we are not deprived of anything,” Mr. Kayser said, crediting One Stop Market in East Hampton, as well as the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center, for meeting all of the Kaysers’ physical needs, as their children live far away.
“East Hampton, for seniors, is the best place to live,” added Ms. Kayser, who wired telephones for ships during World War II and later worked for the Brooklyn district attorney. “The other places don’t have as much as we do, or do as much for the seniors. That’s really a credit to East Hampton.”
The Kaysers are among East Hampton’s formidable population of “older adults” — try to say “senior citizens” and you’ll quickly learn why you probably shouldn’t — whose generation is characterized, among many traits, by resilience. In short, they have lived through so much and are better for it now.
According to the American Community Survey, a series of annual reports that are released in between census years, more than 26 percent of the approximately 22,000 residents in East Hampton Town were 65 or older in 2018, the most recent year for which those data are available.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy became the first president to proclaim the month of May Senior Citizens Month, now known as Older Americans Month. When it was first recognized in 1963, only around 17 million living citizens had reached their 65th birthdays, and the next most famous generation — the baby boomers, of course, who far outnumbered previous generations — were still just kids.
Every president since Mr. Kennedy has issued a similar proclamation. “Older Americans are treasured members of our communities,” President Donald J. Trump declared in May of 2019. “They have poured their lives into our country in ways seen and unseen — often at great personal sacrifice. To current generations and to those of the future, they have given a country whose greatness is unparalleled and which is only growing stronger. During Older Americans Month, we honor these Americans, we remember their countless contributions, and we proudly renew our abiding commitment to their well-being.”
Dr. Nancy Peppard, a forensic gerontologist who lives in East Hampton, said that by and large, older adults here are faring well during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“They know how to cope with all this because they were the kids of the Great Depression. They learned how to cook and cope and use their time productively. They’re doing the same thing now,” Dr. Peppard said. “I check in with about 25 to 30 people that I know, almost daily, just to make sure they’re doing well. They’re all fabulous. . . . They’re listening to the government, they’re at home, not going out. They’re getting the services that they need, as far as we know.”
She explained that a phenomenon called the “cohort effect” will mean today’s children will have a similar mentality as they age. “They will take that emotional experience forward in their life and make people like me, a gerontologist, able to predict how they will react in certain future major events,” she said. “Think about how [9/11] affected your place in the world, how you feel about safety. That all gets around to the cohort effect. It molds everybody — it doesn’t make any difference who you are or where you are in the world.”
East Hampton Town has identified property on which to build a new hub for older Americans to replace the current senior citizens center on Springs-Fireplace Road, according to Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the town board liaison to the center. The committee in charge of the project has not met since Covid-19 arrived, she said, but that doesn’t mean the new senior center is on the back burner. Instead the heat has been on the townwide response to the pandemic, which has included pivoting the lunch program for older adults into a frozen food delivery service instead of in-person meals served five days a week.
“We miss our seniors. We can’t wait until the day comes when they can be back in our building,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said.
The town’s Human Services Department reached back into three years of records to develop a list of about 630 older adults here who might be in need of help. Almost half of them are now receiving the town’s frozen meals, according to Diane Patrizio, the department director. About 250 of them are receiving daily or weekly check-ins by phone with town staff, Ms. Patrizio said. The town is also keeping tabs on who has a live-in aide, those who live with family members, and many who seem to be fine without any help from the town whatsoever.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Ms. Patrizio said. “That’s what human services is. . . . Most people are really grateful they don’t have to leave home. That’s the beauty of East Hampton Town. It’s a lovely, small town where there are so many people who are helping.”