In Memoriam: Karen Ferguson, founder of the Pension Rights Center

[Lois Baker]

From the Pension Rights Center:
 

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A few days ago, we sent you the PRC statement mourning the loss of the Pension Rights Center’s founder and president Karen Ferguson.

Today, we are grateful that we can send you two incredibly powerful profiles of Karen, which capture her essence and aptly describe her amazing work. The first article, “Karen Ferguson, Fighter for Pension Rights, Dies at 80,” was written by Katharine Q Seele and was published in the New York Times. The second article, “Karen Ferguson, Founder of Watchdog Groups, Dies at 80,” was written by Matt Schudel and was published in the Washington Post.

The Times’ article discusses how Karen started the Pension Rights Center and “became one of the country’s foremost experts on pension law and a champion of workers’ rights.”

The article says that “Virtually every piece of consumer-oriented pension reform legislation of the past 45 years, she had a hand in….” including “strengthening protections for widows and divorced spouses.”

It also says that “Ms. Ferguson’s long-range goal was for the United States to establish a universal secure and adequate retirement system on top of an expanded Social Security system, to provide for those many private-sector workers who have no pension or retirement savings plan to fall back on.”

We at PRC are so thankful that the New York Times captured Karen’s ambitious vision.

Similarly, the Washington Post article lauded Karen for being an authority on retirement income security and quoted her as saying “It’s one of the great scandals of our country that people don’t realize they can work a lifetime and still not have enough money for retirement.”

The article points out that, in “addition to counseling individual retirees…about their benefits, Ms. Ferguson often testified before Congress and advised legislators.” It also says that “while Ferguson wrote many articles on issues related to pensions and was often quoted in media reports, she also joked that she was the lowest-paid member of her Harvard Law School class.”

The article credits her for advocating for and helping draft provisions of the Retirement Equity Act, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act.

We are so honored to have known and worked with Karen and we will carry on her legacy in 2022 and beyond.

We have set up an online Guest Book where you can share your memories of Karen and tell the world what she meant to you.