Valley Life : footnotes

Grandparents Day is not the marketing scheme of some greeting card company or online floral service. Instead, West Virginia housewife Marian McQuade wanted to promote the cause of the lonely elderly in nursing homes. She hoped young people would honor the “old” folks and also tap the wisdom and experience of their grandparents. McQuade should know, being a mother of 15 and grandmother of 40 herself. She started her campaign for the holiday in the late 1960s. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter designated the Sunday after Labor Day each year as National Grandparents Day.

Grandparents Day seems to be an idea whose time has come. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the population of people 65 and older will more than double in the next 30 years, jumping from around 34 million today to about 70 million. Also, the number of children living with their grandparents has nearly doubled since 1980.

But, Americans have not yet embraced Grandparents Day with the same fervor as Mother’s Day or even Father’s Day. AT&T; reports no calling volume increases on Grandparents Day, unlike those holidays. Things are different in Japan, where the number and length of calls increases sharply on “Respect for the Aged Day,” Sept. 15.

Symphony in the Glen will present a Grandparents Day concert Sunday at 3 p.m. in Griffith Park near the merry-go-round, 4800 Crystal Springs Drive. Marion Ross of TV’s “Happy Days” will narrate Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” The ensemble will also perform the “Grandparents Song,” the official theme song of National Grandparents Day, written by Symphony in the Glen Music Director Arthur B. Rubinstein. Before the concert, Rubinstein will offer a conducting class for grandparents and their grandchildren, at 1:30 p.m. Free. (213) 955-6976.