The Anniston Star from Anniston, Alabama • Page 57

tt Atinistnn fttar y. Sunday, Apr. 7, ms A Piedmont man SrHTSflE gway 1 reiearnin 6 around his town Telephone rules should be set and heeded by all By SUE-XJDNDRACEK Star Consumer Writer 1 QUESTION: Please help us. Please say something to older citizens who live alone and use the telephone too much. When they make eight or nine phone calls a day and talk to each person 15-30 minutes, that takes up most of the day.

It makes it hard for families and friends to check up on them. My elderly mother has started disconnecting her phone to avoid getting some calls. That makes it difficult for her immediate family to get her. Several of her friends will even call neighbors if she doesn't answer the telephone. My mother is in her late 70s and hardly able to wait on herself.

She doesn't need to be answering the telephone so much and the line needs to stay free so I can reach her when necessary. M.M., Anniston. Star Photo by Ktn Elkim Mrs. Ivey helps husband walk down street living, not the dead. But Barker came back and carried Ivey to the medics at a nearby barn.

FOR A MONTH, Ivey lay unconscious. He woke up in an Army hospital in Valley Forge, and eventually spent 2V2 years in Army hospitals. His nose was rebuilt, a metal plate was placed in his skull, and he learned how to read Braille and use a walking cane. At first, he resisted rehabilitation. His head was pounding and instruction only reminded him that he would never see again.

Fortunately, there was a change of heart, which Ivey attributes to his stable personality. "It was like a curtain opening on a play," Ivey says. "Suddenly, I said, 'Here I am. I'm blind. But I have nothing to be ashamed of.

Now get out of bed and be a blessing instead of a Ivey returned home to Piedmont where before the war he worked for Stan dard Coosa Thatcher. Textile work was out, but Ivey retrained himself and until 1954 operated a newsstand and florist shop. In 1954, he entered Jacksonville State University and after graduating with a degree in secondary education moved to Talladega where from 1959 until December 1983 he worked at By MURPHY EVANS Star Staff Writer PIEDMONT -Nowadays, Travis Ivey is feeling his way back into Piedmont. Ivey returned in March 1984, but things have changed so much in 25 years that he occasionally has trouble recpgnizing the place. "Urban renewal changed things a lot," Ivey says.

"I learn something new everyday. Just this morning I reckon I was lost. I took a wrong turn off Center Avenue, so I started backtracking." "I've got to develop a landmark," Ivey says. "There is a wire down here and I've got to find it and learn where I am in relation to it." Ivey is one of the estimated 1,600 GIs blinded during World War II. On April 19, 1945, about two weeks before Germany surrendered, Ivey was struck by shrapnel from an aerial rocket while riding on the back of a tank.

"We were pulling out of Ansbach under the cover of darkness, and I got hit just at sunset," Ivey says. "The last pretty thing I saw was that sunset." Ironically, L.V. Barker of Saks was the litter carrier who carried Ivey to the aid station. Barker later told Ivey that shortly after he arrived on the scene he turned away from Ivey's motionless body, because his first duty was to the Over-50s a growing minority ANSWER: You've just said it, but we'll add a comment to the elderly and to you. Telephone calls made to anyone should be kept as short as possible, even friendly chats (which people who must stay near home no matter what their age look forward to).

If callers enjoy visiting over the telephone, they might keep in mind that others may be trying to reach them, end their conversation after 10 minutes or so, wait another 15 minutes, and call the same party again. Perhaps you might ask your mother and her friends to keep her phone open at various times during the day and after a certain hour at night so that you might reach her then. It is not wise for elderly people who live alone to disconnect their telephones. Not only does their failure to answer the telephone cause concern for friends, neighbors and family, it is unsafe for them. Sisters wonder about Medicare QUESTION: My mother pays less than her sister does for her Medicare medical insurance and they wonder why.

They asked me to find out. Can you help me? E.M., Anniston. ANSWER: According to information from the Social Security Administration, the basic monthly premium for the medical insurance part of Medicare is $15.50. If your mother's sister didn't sign up for it when she first became eligible, or if she had it at one time and then canceled it, she must pay a higher premium. If you have further questions about this or any other matter concerning Medicare call the local Social Security Administration Office at 237-1647.

Check on diabetic symptoms QUESTION: Please list some of the signs of diabetes. I'm afraid I may have that disease, based on the little information I remember from living with a close relative who had it. T.N., Oxford. .0 ANSWER: Rather than list those symptoms here, we suggest you call the Tel-Med Tape Library at( 237-9330. When the operator answers, simply state that you want to hear tape number 11.

Hold the phone and listen to "You May Have Diabetes and Not Know It." You might want to have paper and pen handy to jot down some of the symptoms mentioned on that tape. If they match some of the symptoms you've noticed, it would be a good thing for you to contact your physician. The Tel-Med Tape Library is free, offered as a public service by the Medical Center Memorial Foundation at the Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center. NEED SOME HELP? Then ask us your question. If we can't help you, we'll refer your letter to someone who can.

Give us your telephone number where we can reach you during regular working hours and your address. We may have to contact you for more information. We'll not use your name in the paper, if you ask that we use only your initials. If you want to send us important documents such as receipts, have copies made and send those. We can't be responsible for originals, even if you send us a self-addressed, stamped envelope for us to return them to you.

Send your question to "Your Question," P.O. Box 189, Anniston 36202. understand it, until someone told me, 'Mr. Ivey, he's got six fingers on each hand." Ivey is one of four blind people in Piedmont. He says he returned because he and his wife Gladys still hive family here.

At 64, he was somewhat reluctant to set down roots in a new place, considering the adjustment to the new streets, widened sidewalks and large, cement posts which came from urban renewal. Nevertheless, Ivey is already active in his church and is a member of Piedmont's Lion's Club. added: "We'll come to the point where there is no chronological age when you have to retire. We've got 70 in the law now, but President Reagan is 74, Congressman Claude Pepper is 84, and look at the Supreme Court Like our celebrity birthday celebrators, you and I enter these prime years much better off than our parents. Chances are that you are better educated, healthier, better off financially, and muph more mobile.

Dr. Charles E. Longino, University of Miami sociologist, has said: "It's beginning to look as though old people in America are getting younger." At her 50th birthday cele-bration in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, Gloria Steinem told her 750 guests that she had gone public with her 50th in order "to make a dent in the age barrier." Isn't that what all of us are doing? Day by day, in our own fashion, we're chipping away at that age barrier. the E.H. Gentry Trade School of the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind.

IVEY TAUGHT BASIC education, like Braille and mathematics, and inde-pendentliving skills to people who went blind later in life. "One, I had a little boy from south Alabama," Ivey "He was having trouble with arithmetic and I told him to use his fingers. "Every time, he was coming up with one or two more than I was. I couldn't 50th to Little Richard, if you see him. Add a special "welcome aboard" to the incomparable jazz artist, Herb Alpert, and his golden horn.

Say the same for singers Lou Rawls, John Denver, Bobby Vinton and the queen of country mi sic, indomitable Lon Lynn. In the introduction to heK. biography, A Coal Miner's Daughter, Ms. Lynn tells readers: "I ain't got much education, but I got some sense." Most people who've lived half a century come through the experience with a measure of common sense, the product of weathering, enduring a hard time or two. I pass along this observation from Wilbur Gohen, former secretary of the Health and Human Services department: "The growing irrelevance of chronological age is one of the most important social trends since Social Security was passed 50 years ago." Cohen, now a professor at the University of Texas, By BARD LINDEMAN Luciano Pavarotti, the operatic tenor, sings most often in a tuxedo 4 holding a white linen handkerchief.

Jerry Lee Lewis is a rock-and-roller (country flavored) who has been known to play the piano with his feet. Now, in addition to the obvious fact that both are singers, and both have rabid fans the world over, what sipificant fact do these disparate male talents also possess? Here's a hint: it's the same statistic that is shared by Julie Andrews, Woody Allen and ever-present Phil Donahue. The answer: these talented, -vital and charismatic performers and achievers are among the two million Americans turning 50 this calendar year. They will join the 60.2 million of us over 50 and already proud marchers in the great Gray Army. Indeed, we represent 26 percent of the United States population; we're a significant minority that grows stronger every day.

over No back of the bus for us, either. Let's quickly check some of the othjer notable survivors who during 1985 will glide smoothly past the big "five-O" benchmark. Would you believe lovely Diahann Carroll, Paul Hornung, Steve Lawrence, Lee Remick, David Hartman, Sandy Koufax, Johnny Mathis, Robert Conrad, Richard Chamberlain, Gene Wilder and baseball's Frank Robinson, who gave no quarter on the base paths? YOU think of 50-plus women as holding power? Well, Ceraldine Ferraro turns 50 in 1985. Do you think of us as race car drivers? A. J.

Foyt will soon be 50. How about us as active rock-and-rollers? Say happy 0.