William Penn Life, 1969 (4. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1969-12-01 / 12. szám
Premium Collections At District Offices To Be Discontinued We wish to call to the attention of those members who have been accustomed to making their payments at one of our District Offices that in accordance with Board of Directors’ ruling this practice will be discontinued commencing January, 1970. The Resolution, which previously appeared in the October issue of William Penn Life is as follows: “WHEREAS the Board has authorized for limited time, collections of dues at the various District Offices, for the members to become accustomed to the computerized billing and collection system, and WHEREAS, more than two years have now elapsed since the computer operation was introduced, and WHEREAS it is an imposition and inconvenience for members to personally go to the District Office to pay NOW THEREFORE be and it is hereby resolved that effective January 1, 1970 the Office Clerks advise members coming to the Offce to pay premiums, to send their premiums directly to Pittsburgh. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that District Office clerks provide to these members an envelope and instruct the members how to include check or money order and payment due notice when sending payments to Pittsburgh.” Only about 1% of the entire membership is still paying at the District Offices, it is to these few members that we direct our sincere request for cooperation, this new ruling will benefit both the members and the Association, for we know that for many to go to the District Office is time consuming and costly, because of the distance needed to drive, or in some cases uses public transportation which today is expensive. Clerks in the offices have been instructed not to make exceptions to the rule, therefore, please do not expect them to disregard the rule about no more premium collections at the District Offices. IMPORTANT NOTICE If you are receiving more than one copy of the WILLIAM PENN LIFE at one address, please tear off the mailing label of the excess copies and return immediately to the Home Office so that we can correct our mailing address list. It is the intent of the Board of Directors that only one issue per month reach a family at the same address. Your cooperation will be appreciated. All Right, Youth, Make Something Of It! By JOHN ED PEARCE John Ed Pearce, a member of the Courier- Journal’s editorial staff, is the father of five children ranging in age from three to twenty-three. He's a father. He lived through a depression and the world's worst war. He thinks the younger generation has more going for it than any other and that it has inherited a basically sound world. So, he's saying . . . I have heard and read a great deal lately from you young people about your disillusionment with your world, your society, my generation. You complain that you have been dumped into a society of war, poverty, injustice and prejudice. We have been so materialistic, you say, so intent on “making it” that we have forgotten the real values of life—love, fairness, peace and brotherhood. As a result of our greed and timid conformity we have missed life, and in the process have left you a mess that can only be righted by destroying it and building better on the rubble. I don’t see it quite that way. Let me, as Dick Nixon says, make this clear: I offer no apologies for my generation. I am proud of it, and of what we have built on the foundation left us. I hope you will do as well. You will if you will leaven your zeal with a little humor, your egotism with a little history, and ask why your insistence on universal love seems so often to express itself in hate for those who differ with you. The generations from which you inherit, including mine, have given you a basically sound world; imperfect, full of flaws springing from human imperfections, but strong, dynamic and exciting. For us, in many ways, these are indeed the best and worst of times. But the worst is on the surface; the best is underneath, solid and enduring. It is strange that yours should be the most favored generation in history and yet the most self-pitying, but a sense of self-tragedy is common to the young. When I was your age, I recall, we felt rather sorry for ourselves, victimized by depression, forced to fight when we didn’t want to. But if you think we value too highly the security of material possessions, let me remind you of this. We were born in the aftermath of one great conflict, grew up in history’s greatest depression, and graduated in time to fight man’s grisliest war. Getting out, we had one thing uppermost in mind—we wanted better, for ourselves and for you. We got it. You speak of poverty. But we have known it, and not just from visits to Mississippi or Harlem. We remember when the fear of hunger hung heavy in every home. We remember the eyes of the homeless, the defeated faces in the breadlines, the soup kitchens, the Okies, the shuffling beggars in the streets, the endless parade of tramps at the back door begging for work or food; men with embarrassed eyes, men once able and self-sufficient whose hunger had eaten away their pride. We remember the winter deaths in the slums and sharecroppers’ shacks and mountain hollows, deaths from cold and hunger that left infant bodies too weak to stave off disease. You are angered—and you should be —that four per cent of our people are unemployed, and a few are chronically hungry. You are incensed—and you should be—because some Negroes in the South have worms, lack medicine, live in wretched hovels and suffer malnutrition. But we remember when intestinal worms were commonplace among the 6
