Representatives of AARP and Divided We Fail come to Yuma

On Tuesday three representatives from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), and the All Arizona School Retirees Association (NRTA) showed up to Home Town Buffet with pins and shirts of a donkey and a elephant.

They were not in town to start a political debate, but instead came to inform Yuma area residents about AARP and its effort Divided We Fail.

MaryAnn Parkinson is a member of the NRTA, which is an association that helps retired teachers with health insurance and productive aging.

Parkinson said that NRTA was started by a retired high school principal named Ethel Persy Andrus who lived in California. Andrus founded NRTA in 1947 when she stopped at a house to see a retired teacher, and the residents told Andrus that the teacher lived out back in a chicken coop.

"There was no retirement in those days," said Parkinson. And as a result the teacher was forced to live in poverty.

After seeing the poverty that surrounded the teacher, Andrus "decided to found NRTA to help (teachers) with medical insurance and with their standard of living," said Parkinson.

NRTA worked out so well that retired people, who were not teachers, asked Andrus if she could help them, said Parkinson. Ten years after she created NRTA, Andrus founded AARP for all Americans.

The AARP Organization is made of people 50 and over. "We look after the interests of people 50 and over through advocacy, community service and volunteering," said Cynthia Fagyas, communications director for AARP in Arizona.

In 2007 AARP partnered with three other organizations to launch the Divided We Fail effort.

Divided We Fail is an effort designed to educate voters and build "an army of people committed to change and publicizing candidates' positions, so that all Americans can compare where they stand on ... critical issues, "according to Divided's literature.

"We are (non)partisan," said Virginia Brant a volunteer with AARP and a representative of the Divided program. "We deal with the issues and the issues are affordable health care and lifetime financial security for all Americans from cradle to passing," she said.

"We want affordable health care for all Americans, so that (our) children and grandchildren will not have to worry about health care," said Brant.

Brant said that Divided's logo is a donkey and an elephant which are merged into one entity which represents the organizations nonpartisanism.

"We need to vote ... for candidates that speak ... (specifically on) affordable health care and financial security for all," said Brant.

Gerry Ingram was at the meeting and knows personally how difficult life can be without good health care. "We have a daughter in a care center in La Mesa with a brain tumor," she said. "And we've seen first hand the struggles" that she has gone through.

Ingram said that it has been a struggle with her daughter's health insurance which would only approve certain doctors. And these doctors were not always knowledgable with the kind of treatments their daughter needed, said Ingram. It's "a challenge to get the help when it is not a 'normal' illness," she said.

This is why Ingram wants area residents to know that through associations and efforts like AARP and Divided We Fail they can have support and a voice in public policy. "We need to support each other," she said. "One person cannot do it alone. ... It means a lot more from a group than a single person."

Ingram's husband Bob, president of the Yuma County Retired School Employees Association (YCRSEA), was also at the meeting and said, "One voice alone is a voice in the wilderness, (and) there are things that need to be heard."



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Jennifer Lovell can be reached at
jlovell@yumasun.com or 539-6849.