Most of us warehouse a whole collection of cards: credit cards, debit card, driver’s license, membership cards, ID cards, business cards, insurance cards, business cards. Among the ones contained in my own stash, I have two big favorites. My social security card and my public library card.
Both of them are a bit tattered and dog-eared, but until I win the big Mega-Ball lottery, they’re my idea of a couple of wildly valuable assets.
When I was born in 1931, Social Security didn’t exist, but it was introduced four years later. At that time, because of the Great Depression, many elderly people were living in destitution. If it weren’t for family, my Grandma ‘Lizzie’ and Grandpa ‘Knute’ would have been among them.
This is from a poster used to support the enactment of Social Security.
By the time I graduated from high school, 3 million people were enrolled in the Social Security program. When any enrollee reached 65 years old, he was eligible to retire and collect $26 per month as income for the rest of his life.
The first benefits were paid out in 1937, and they’ve continued ever since. For most of our communities, it was a monumental economic relief.
Not all jobs were covered by Social Security. Excluded were agricultural jobs, domestic help, and healthcare jobs. I worked at a hospital for over 5 years from when I was 14 to 19 years old, part-time during the school year, and full-time during the summers, but hospital employees weren’t covered during any of those years.
There weren’t any child labor laws then, and most of the kids I knew also worked. Many of the girls were baby-sitters or mother’s helpers, or carried bedpans for the nurses, and most of the boys had paper routes or worked as box-boys. I also had a paper route as my first ‘job’. By age 14, though, I was employed as an elevator operator at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa till I was a high school junior, then as an information clerk, and in senior year and first two years of college was a registrar. None of those jobs were covered by Social Security or any other fringe benefits, but I didn’t know anybody who didn’t feel lucky if they had a job in any category. And we had no acquaintance with what “fringe benefits” were.
If you know someone whose childhood and teen-age years were spent during those post-Depression years, you probably know a person who has an intense work ethic – shaped by the insecurities we grew up with, and the rock-solid belief that things were going to get better if we all worked hard.
My social security card was first issued to me in 1950 in Washington, D.C. As a student in Washington D.C., I had applied for part-time work as an usher at the Sesquicentennial Amphitheater in Rock Creek Park. The outdoor production was to honor the 150th anniversary of the United States of America. Because it was a government-financed production, I was required to apply for Social Security.
And yes, I was required to take the famous “Loyalty Oath” of that era, designed to demonstrate to supporters of Sen. Joseph McCarthy that I wasn’t an evil Communist spy, and that I could safely usher to their seats the guests of the sesquicentennial celebration of the United States without cleverly extracting from them all of their Top Secret Information.
I loved the job, and I’m still proud to have worked, however humbly, for such a monumental celebration.
I wish you could have watched it with me in that incredible setting in Washington D.C
So that was my first introduction to the world of Social Security. Many years of other employment continued to contribute to my account. Because if those contributions, now, until I die, Social Security is providing me with income and Medicare health benefits to help support the rest of my life. I hope it will always be available for you, too.
And then, there’s my public library card . . . . . Anybody who has one, me included, is a very wealthy person! And the more we use it, the richer we get! But more about that, – another day.
Have a good week!
