Older Men

WASHINGTON -- In sultry noontime heat and humidity on Aug. 13, the short black woman in the starched white uniform stood ramrod straight at a podium and thanked the small group of older black men seated on metal benches before her."You have all made it possible for me to be here before you today with the admiral's stripe," said Rear Adm. Lillian B. Fishburne, the first black woman appointed by the secretary of the Navy to flag-officer status.The pride of Fishburne, 50, was unmistakable. So was that of the older men, mostly in their mid-70s, assembled at the U.S. Navy Memorial, an uninspired and cold monument across the street from the U.S. Justice Department and the National Archives.

For years, it seemed, senior citizens centers could have hung out a "For Women Only" sign.Not anymore.From billiards to barbers, centers for seniors have launched all-out drives to lure more men by gearing more programs to them. Civil War history? Mostly men.Computer labs? Mostly men.Flavored vinegar-making courses? Half men.In a state where about 44 percent of the 55-and-over population is male, an estimated 30 percent of attendees at senior citizen center programs are men, say local officials for aging.

The Rev. Michael Manning's new business card identifies him as a priest in Hamilton Square, N.J. What he might add is that the parish he will serve as associate pastor, starting on Friday, lies an easy drive from where he once practiced medicine on Staten Island and people called him Dr. Manning.A newly ordained priest, he is, in his words, "the doctor who's been through seminary," a man who traded a physician's coat for a Roman collar.That transformation makes Manning, 46, a member of what the church calls its "Class of '97," the approximately 500 men being ordained as priests this spring across America.

A 90-year-old man sits and thinks and finds himself caught in the melancholy of memory. The last of the old gang has died, so he starts seeing faces and bygone street scenes. He can vividly describe East Baltimore in the 1930s. He hears the youthful voices of absent friends. He wants to tell someone about it.Another man, in his 80s, decides it's time to leave his house for a retirement village, and he starts selling furniture and packing necessities and valuables. He can only take so much with him, and that means discarding much of what he has accumulated in a lifetime -- books and photographs, maps and magazines, newspapers and home movies.

Men may be justified, though incorrect, in thinking that they are invulnerable to osteoporosis.This bone-wasting disease occurs slowly and silently and has been labeled "a woman's disease" because women are far more vulnerable to it and the fractures it causes. Half of all women develop it, and one woman in two over the age of 65 suffers one or more bone fractures because of it.But men get osteoporosis, too, and 20 percent of American men will suffer at least one fracture because their bones have become too thin and weak to withstand the normal stresses of life.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Howard Summers would have been a great guest on the old TV quiz show, "I've Got a Secret."Mr. Summers, a 57-year-old product development engineer who was the victim of a job reshuffle at the Silicon Valley Group, has carefully stripped his resume of anything that would reveal his age.College graduation and employment dates are gone. His cover letters don't mention that he has 35 years of experience. Instead, he says he's been working only 15 years.After attending self-esteem workshops, Mr. Summers now concentrates on positive thinking exercises as he drives to interviews.

Paris.--The youngest of the four veterans of the U.S. 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment who jumped over southern France Monday, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the wartime landings there, is 71 years old. The oldest is 80. That is pretty impressive.The French authorities would not let them jump over land because erratic summer winds and the sun-baked earth make it too dangerous.The American airborne veterans who jumped in Normandy in June were landing on rain-soaked ground, but one of them nonetheless was injured.

WHEN ARE YOU going to write something about the black men who are taking care of their kids?" asked my friend Rodney as he clutched his 2-year-old daughter. "When am I gonna see that in the paper?"He was challenging me to examine my own feelings about African-American men and their parenting skills. I have read the stories and seen the television reports about the destruction of the black family. Young black women who look as though they should be playing with dolls are pushing the strollers of their children.

Shot by a classmate he had bested in a fight back in 1991, Erik Patrick Chestnut wrote a short poem about the futility of violence as he recovered. It read, in part:Kill one brother, kill one more;Some don't even know what they're killing for.Is it for a gang, maybe some bad slang;You may have lost your life over a silly drug thang.Two months after he wrote those lines, young Chestnut was dead -- shot this time by a 14-year-old runner for drug dealers in a chance confrontation at a Woodlawn pay phone.

For women over 50, looking for Mr. Right can be like looking for a winning ticket on the floor of a race track.They buy personal ads. They join singles groups. They hire dating services.But the odds are against them."Women live longer, and the single men in that age range usually prefer women younger than themselves -- sometimes much younger," says Donna Shugrue, manager of Perfectly Matched, a Colorado Springs, Colo., dating service. "If we had a man over 50 wanting to date in his own age range, we'd get very excited."

Obesity Teen girls' popularity may affect their weights Where a teenage girl sees herself on her school's social ladder may sway her future weight, a study of more than 4,000 girls finds. Those who believed they were unpopular gained more weight over a two-year period than girls who viewed themselves as more popular. Researchers said the study shows how a girl's view of her social status has broader health consequences. The girls in the study were still growing -- their average age was 15 -- and all of them gained some weight.

LOS ANGELES -- Two women in their 70s were arrested this week after they allegedly befriended two homeless men, took out 19 life insurance policies on them and filed claims worth more than $2.2 million after the transients mysteriously died in hit-and-run pedestrian accidents in Los Angeles, police said. One of the men was hit by a car and killed in an alley in 1999, and the second victim was run down last June. Detectives said they connected the two cases several months ago during a chance meeting between two investigators in the LAPD's West Traffic Bureau squad room.

CHICAGO -- Now that science has concluded that the long-term risks of hormone replacement outweigh the benefits for postmenopausal women, men may get their day. A task force led by the Institute of Medicine and supported by the National Institute on Aging will evaluate the feasibility of conducting clinical trials of testosterone replacement in older men. The idea of convening a panel of experts arose in part because of growing concern that men are...

While women may have achieved a grim parity with men in contracting the AIDS virus worldwide, experts in the United States remain concerned about the disease's rebound among young gay men. Today's epidemic has not brought the devastation seen in the 1980s and early 1990s, when AIDS cut a swath through the gay community. But health officials and activists say they are alarmed by high rates among gay teen-agers and young adults - some of whom were not alive during the urgent safe-sex campaigns of those days.

ONE NIGHT long ago in Argentina, I witnessed a drama on the Avenida de Mayo, which stretches from the presidential palace to the brooding pile that houses the national congress. Hundreds of young men marched singing the forbidden anthems of the Peronists into an encounter with another group of men - older men, on horseback, armed with pistols and nightsticks. It was a lively fight: The air filled with vivid curses, acrid clouds of gas; ball bearings were released over the asphalt to upend the horses.

THANKS TO AN inflamed press, parents with children out of college - parents who might have been sighing with relief for the first time in 20 years - are realizing that they have to talk to their adult daughters about the dangers of having affairs with powerful, married, older men. The affair between Congressman Gary Condit - 53, married, with grown children and everything to lose - and the intern - 24, pretty, alone in a big city, star-struck and completely...

Will prosecuting older men protect girls against abuse? Prosecuting older men who have sex with girls who have not even reached the age of 16 would not just reduce the pregnancy rate in Maryland ("Md. looks to rape laws to cut teen birth rates," Feb. 5). More important, it would stop many young ladies from being used and abused by so-called men who view children as sex objects to be exploited. Regardless how physically developed these young women may be, they still have the mind of a child -- which is what makes them easy prey for older men. In my opinion, any man who would have sex with a child needs to be locked up. This might not eliminate the teen-age pregnancy problem.

Tare Evans was only 12 when she started going out with her first real boyfriend -- a boyfriend old enough to vote. He was 18 and, in her young mind, "a man," who would introduce her to the world. Turn him in for statutory rape? The Baltimore girl wouldn't have dreamed of telling her mother -- much less the police -- they were having sex. "Honestly, I figured a young boy wouldn't know much," said Evans, now 18 and a mother of two by a different man. "This is what I wanted to do. At least I thought it was what I wanted to do."

WASHINGTON -- In sultry noontime heat and humidity on Aug. 13, the short black woman in the starched white uniform stood ramrod straight at a podium and thanked the small group of older black men seated on metal benches before her."You have all made it possible for me to be here before you today with the admiral's stripe," said Rear Adm. Lillian B. Fishburne, the first black woman appointed by the secretary of the Navy to flag-officer status.The pride of Fishburne, 50, was unmistakable. So was that of the older men, mostly in their mid-70s, assembled at the U.S. Navy Memorial, an uninspired and cold monument across the street from the U.S. Justice Department and the National Archives.

For years, it seemed, senior citizens centers could have hung out a "For Women Only" sign.Not anymore.From billiards to barbers, centers for seniors have launched all-out drives to lure more men by gearing more programs to them. Civil War history? Mostly men.Computer labs? Mostly men.Flavored vinegar-making courses? Half men.In a state where about 44 percent of the 55-and-over population is male, an estimated 30 percent of attendees at senior citizen center programs are men, say local officials for aging.