Seniors: Readers React to Discontinuance of Feldman Column

I am a reader of the L.A. Times, daily and Sunday, and have been reading your paper for at least 50 years.

I was horrified to learn (Westside, May 28) that the Westside Sunday supplement will no longer feature Linda Feldman’s column on seniors and senior activities.

I think it is disgraceful for a paper of your category not to have a column on seniors in spite of the fact that we have an aging population.

I have enjoyed Linda Feldman’s column for years and hope that you will see the light and continue to run her column again very soon.

I know that I speak for many seniors of my acquaintance who feel the way I do.

Your paper needs a column about seniors if you want to continue being a first-class paper, and a modern one at that. JULIUS LEVINE Beverly Hills

I was returning from the White House Conference on Aging in Washington recently very pleased with the result of the conference and the report in your paper by Linda Feldman and Robert A. Rosenblatt and thinking about my wish to see more information on it in the days to come. Instead, I was dismayed to read shortly thereafter that the Seniors column by your excellent reporter, Linda Feldman, would no longer be appearing in the Westside section of your paper. “No room” was the reason given for eliminating an interesting, avidly read column.

“No room” is so often heard by retirees from the next generation who seem to want us out of their way.

The weekly column was anxiously awaited by seniors on the Westside. It served to introduce a senior resident among the hundreds of thousands of us who, like many others, had left a mark on society during our working life or who, even after retirement, had helped organize a better, more active life for those of us who are retired. In each of the articles we could see something of our own lives reflected.

Hundreds of thousands of retirees live here on the Westside, and the columns served to state what our generation did for this country and served to remind the youngsters who followed us that the things they now enjoy were created by those of us who preceded them. This is good, and all of us need to remember.

I hope that the editors of the Westside section will rethink their action and return the articles in expanded form because “no room” should be replaced in our sense of values by “we must not forget.” DANIEL COHEN Senior Assemblyman, California Senior Legislature Santa Monica

Older people are irrelevant, right? Why else would The Times decide to discontinue Linda Feldman’s fascinating column, “Seniors,” in its Sunday edition? Remarkably well-written, it told of people who had found new beginnings in their aging years.

“Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.”

Uh-huh. AARON RUBEN Beverly Hills