Letter: Check would help seniors

Wednesday, June 20, 2001 | 9:07 a.m.

In response to Joseph Conte's June 15 letter about the notch babies: We are a lost cause. Most of us were born shortly after World War I. We lived through the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Then came World War II. We worked in defense plants, raised our families. Then came the Korean police action and the Vietnam War.

Now our families are grown and they are baby boomers, and we are old. As Dan Rostenkowski said, give the notch babies a few years and we won't need to worry about them any more.

I have written to Sen. Harry Reid's office in Washington and several other people in the government. They all have a secretary send a nice form letter, basically saying that because of a government error in calculations, the people born between 1917 and 1926 aren't receiving as much as they should in Social Security benefits. I see so many senior citizens living in near poverty, and a $5,000 check would help them have a little comfort zone in their final days.

Check the obituaries every day and you know Rostenkowski was right. Live every day and be glad when you wake up the next morning.

JEAN MCNEELY