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THE QUESTION MAY SEEM ODD, but it arose legitimately enough in discussions with my students in modern world classes near semester's end.1 Most were not majors and so their opinions could be considered a representative sample of general attitudes about history, and about this question in particular. My undergrads completely overlooked the practical difficulty of who qualifies under the term lady, most relying on a visual rule of thumb. Some may call forty year-olds elderly based on graying hair or a few wrinkles, producing cringes from those of us old enough to know better. The worship of youth in American culture doesn't clarify anything for them, either. We are encouraged to remain adolescents in behavior and self-image until old enough for a midlife crisis, when we are allowed to act like children again. We stubbornly refuse the senior discount for years after we are eligible, and support whole industries that promise to help us defy old age. Old means irrelevant or worse to many Americans who don't want to be either. The question of the role older citizens might play in public life will elude those who don't examine their own assumptions about age. Professional historians may view a question like the title in terms of a broader underlying debate: whether individuals make history at all, or are in fact subsumed by larger collective forces and institutions. The
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