As we observe National Nursing Home Week, let us remember that nursing home residents need more than the quality medical and social services nursing homes provide. They also need contact with the people and activities in their communities.
Living in our modern world, we often feel troubled by the rapid pace of social change. Yet, as a society, we tend to ignore one of our most valuable reservoirs of strength, comfort and stability: our older citizens. Their lives, their conversation, and their companionship can give us new perspectives and new insight into events known to us only through books but to them through personal experience.
When our younger and older generations share their understanding, we all benefit. I hope you will visit a nearby nursing home this week and return often. By keeping in touch with our elders, we enlarge our own lives as well as theirs.
RONALD REAGAN
Ronald Reagan, Message on the Observance of National Nursing Home Week, May 13-19, 1984 Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/261150