If you think about aging in Florida, Claude Denson Pepper’s name is likely to come to mind. I interviewed many people about Pepper, and to a person, despite or perhaps because of his long political career, they had nothing but praise for him. The words most employed were “wonderful,” “devoted,” and even just “nice.”

Those of you old enough to know about him know he gained his name and fame as an advocate for elders while both a U.S. Senator and a U.S. Congressman before he died in 1989.

Pepper’s list of achievements is long, but his work includes legislation creating the National Institutes of Health, 12 of which were directly sponsored or cosponsored by Pepper. He was also critical to the creation of stronger Medicare and Social Security programs and was a principal sponsor of the Older Americans Act.

Former First Lady Adele Graham, wife of the late Governor Bob Graham, who served as Florida’s 38^th governor from 1979 to 1987, knew Pepper and worked with him.

“Being first lady, doors were open to us to see what was being done and how it could be improved,” the 87-year-old Adele Graham said. “As I was an advocate for the care of the elderly, of course, he was the one you wanted to have by your side. He was really caring and smart and greatly admired.”

Graham became a registered lobbyist for elder issues and attended the 1981 White House Conference on Aging along with Pepper.

“I was so honored to be able to go and attend and be among people who were on the same page of the need for care for older people,” she said. “And to go to the White House is always an important activity.”

Now, Graham is older and a resident of Oak Hammock, where she says her life “is reinforcing” all that she learned from Pepper.

“Now I am living the life that I had been studying as a younger woman,” she said.

During his governorship, Bob Graham appointed Margaret Lynn Duggar as Florida’s State Director on Aging. Duggar, today a nationally recognized aging expert, recalls spending time with Pepper during those days. 

The Grahams and Duggar recruited Pepper for a governor’s conference on aging so that Florida’s delegation would be even better prepared for the upcoming White House aging conference. But Duggar recalled one moment that told her what a special man Pepper was.

Duggar was to take Pepper to the airport and Pepper asked if she would run him by the cemetery, which is right behind the governor’s mansion.

“He said he would like to go there and visit (his late wife) Mildred’s grave,” she said. “He started walking around her grave. He had his hands grasped behind his back and occasionally, he would gesture as if he were talking. Then he came and got back in the car and thanked me by saying, ‘I always feel better after I talk to Mildred.’”

While his name may not ring a bell with younger people, perhaps it should, given that the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center Program at 15 universities carries his name because of his lifelong advocacy for the health, rights and independence of older Americans.    

“It creates a network of researchers who study aging,” said Todd Manini, director of the University of Florida’s Institute on Aging and the principal director at UF’s Claude Pepper Center. “The Pepper Centers are named for him because of the roles he played in improving health care in older adults, advocating for Medicare and Medicaid, and (for the years he served as chairman of the Select Committee on Aging.”

The National Institute on Aging supports the Pepper Centers to develop and enhance research and education at institutions with strong programs in aging research.

In addition to the UF Pepper Center, other centers are in Boston, the University of California-San Francisco, the University of Connecticut Health Center, Duke University Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, the University of Pittsburgh, Mount Sinai Medical Center, the University of Texas Medical Branch, Northwestern University, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Yale University.

Congress established the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Centers to continue Pepper’s mission through geriatric research.

“All of them have a focus – ours is very focused on preserving and restoring mobility in older adults,” Manini said. “We aim to help older people move freely and maintain their independence.  By applying science to the physical needs of older people, we are creating evidence to support improvements in the lives of current generations as well as those to come.”

Ongoing studies at UF’s Pepper Center include an Aged Garlic Extract, or AGE for those over age 60 experiencing mild to moderate physical challenges; the Preventable Study for those older than 75 to determine if taking a statin could help older adults live well for longer by preventing dementia, disability, or heart disease; and the ROAMM Study that creates and tests smart watches for tracking important health events including falls and hospitalizations.

Then there is also UF’s Pepper Registry, which aims to create a pool of volunteers interested in participating in aging-related research.

Even those who didn’t get to work directly with Pepper but followed his doings as professionals and researchers in the world of aging praise him.

Leilani Doty, a retired director of the UF Cognitive and Memory Disorder Clinic, said being asked to reflect on Pepper was “a nice memory journey for me.”

When her three daughters were adolescents, she said they would call out to her every time Pepper was on television.

“There’s Senator Pepper. He’s talking about old people. You’re old people. Come and see what he’s saying,” she recalled,

In fact, Doty credits Pepper with her professional success in the aging field, saying his efforts encouraged her to stay on and apply for the funding that would keep her going.

Bob Blancato worked with Pepper for years as the longest-serving staff member on the House Select Committee on Aging, which Pepper chaired from 1983 to 1989. Blancato served on the committee staff for 15 years from 1978 to 1993.

“He was the most effective chairman because he took advocacy very seriously,” said Blancato, now president of Matz, Blancato & Associates, Inc.

Blancato also served as the executive director of the 1995 White House Conference on Aging.

“He (Pepper) understood we had a unique position to be a lobbying group on behalf of older adults,” Blancato said. “He was a very distinct champion. He took the older adult population as a cause. And even to this day, people still walk around and say, Where’s the next Claude Pepper going to come from? And the answer is still elusive at this point.”

UF’s Manini also praised Pepper for his investigation into health care scams that preyed on older people; something, unfortunately, is still going on today. That 1984 report was titled “Quackery, a $10 Billion Scandal.” 

“He put out things that no one else really did,” Manini said. “Like he wanted to understand how older people were getting scammed. And he wanted the government to do something about it. He was not a researcher, but supported many programs that we still use today.”

But there’s another type of Pepper Center in Tallahassee at Florida State University, which includes the Claude Pepper Museum and the Claude Pepper Library. That center is an outgrowth of the Claude Pepper Foundation, established by Pepper himself with an endowment in 1986.

Dawn C. Carr, an FSU professor of sociology who is also director of the Tallahassee Pepper Center, praises him for zeroing in on the problems facing older adults before “Boomer” became a collective buzzword.

“He was the first one to talk about old people in general,” Carr said. “We didn’t talk about old people as a separate demographic group. We talked about adults. The idea that you would shape policy based on chronological age was unusual.”

Pepper Library Archivist Roberto Rubero thinks he has one of the best jobs on campus as he keeps track of all the Pepper papers and conducts visitors on tours of the museum. A look around makes you marvel at all that Pepper accomplished in his lifetime.

It goes back to his genuine nature about wanting to do these things,”  Rubero said. “When he lost his father in 1947 to kidney disease, it had a profound effect on him.”

Rubero said Pepper was reported to sleep only four hours a night because there was so much more he wanted to achieve.

“He would make the focal point of his later life the elders in this country who did not have access to life-saving medical care,” Rubero said. “I think that earnest dedication to his job and to that duty makes him remembered.”

Rubero and others said the code Pepper lived by was “to lighten the burden upon those who suffer,” and he did.

Editor’s note: This is the latest story in Mainstreet’s award-winning Aging Matters series. It was independently reported by Ronnie Lovler and underwritten by the University of Florida’s Institute on Aging.