NEVER TOO OLD

By John F. Dickerson

Instructor George Breathitt asked an audience of 300 computer enthusiasts in Louisville, Kentucky, how many seniors in the group would like to teach other seniors about computers. A younger member of the audience quipped disdainfully, ``Wouldn't that be the blind leading the blind?'' He was promptly booed: almost half the audience was over 50. In fact, Breathitt, 61, has attracted so many seniors willing to teach -- and learn -- about computers that he founded a successful firm to employ them. So far, his Silver Fox Computer Club has taught about 7,500 students and expanded into four states.

So who says computers are only for youngsters? The American Association of Retired Persons, the nation's largest organization of senior citizens, counts 2 million computer users among its 33 million members. And with more leisure time and discretionary income than many youths, thousands of seniors -- including many who have never before used a computer -- are entering the cyberculture, burying the hoary old-dog-new-tricks axiom. ``Once they get used to handling the mouse,'' says Breathitt, ``they learn faster than teenagers.''

Seniors are using their new computing power to do everything from monitoring investments to tracking genealogy to producing their memoirs. Some have started postretirement businesses making greeting cards or performing legal research on the Internet. But the majority say they were drawn to computers because, like Jack Fowler, 75, of Sun City West, Arizona, they simply didn't want to be left behind by progress. ``I couldn't keep up with my four-year- old grandson,'' says the retired pharmacist.

Ilene Weinberg, 68, a former social worker from Newton, Massachusetts, didn't want to get a computer; her typewriter worked just fine. But two years ago, her son gave her one anyway, hoping it might help make up for the debilitating effects of her Parkinson's disease. Now she spends so much time online that she has installed another phone line. ``I feel like I'm with it,'' says Weinberg. ``I'm connecting with the present and the future.''

One of Weinberg's chief destinations is the 15,000-strong SeniorNet, where she spends several hours a day chatting with others her age in the organization's station on America Online. Many seniors find the network a rich source of new friends and support in time of trouble as well as a handy supplier of information on such subjects as how to light a water heater or handle depression. ``For many older people, computers allow them to feel as if their world is still expanding,'' says Mary Furlong, who founded the San Francisco-based SeniorNet in 1986. ``They allow you to form new friendships and become more intellectually mobile.'' For Rick and Rita Hanson, SeniorNet has led to much more than intellectual mobility. In September 1993 the former truck mechanic and his wife traded in their Bellingham, Massachusetts, house for a 28-ft.-long mobile home and embarked on a nationwide tour. ``We wouldn't have considered this trip if it weren't for SeniorNet,'' says 59-year-old Rick. ``If one of us got ill, what would the other do? But now, no matter where we are in the U.S., we're within 100 miles of friends.'' The peripatetic duo has gone from Thanksgiving in Las Vegas with 60 online friends to a wedding of two SeniorNetters in Michigan. ``Lord willing, we'll see all 350 people in our computer family.'' In addition to communicating with one another and sharing memories about everything from the Great War to the once ubiquitous Burma Shave highway ads, seniors are connecting with the generations below them. Children of aging parents log on for advice about health care and retirement communities or just to chat. On SeniorNet, several programs link schoolchildren and seniors. The Generation to Generation forum enables students to tap personal histories of World War I and the Depression, as well as lessons on aging. Says John Horn, professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California: ``It's the equivalent of the old folks sitting around the village square.'' Though seniors are far from being the dominant group among computer users, their numbers are growing and are bound to mushroom as the baby boomers age. When that happens, they will feel right at home alongside the mass of younger users in the digital future.

--With reporting by Kathy Shockett/Phoenix and Tara Weingarten/Los Angeles

With reporting by KATHY SHOCKETT/PHOENIX AND TARA WEINGARTEN/LOS ANGELES