Elderly volunteers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library claim they have been barred from giving tours and welcoming visitors because they are too old - even though many are younger than the former president when he led the US.
Nearly 30 of the volunteers learned of their fate in a letter telling them that they were being relieved of their duties. They were awarded "emeritus" status and handed glass globes and certificates signed by Nancy Reagan.
Administrators deny that age was a factor in dismissing the volunteers, who are devoted to President Reagan. He was buried in the grounds of the library in the Simi Valley north of Los Angeles after his death last year aged 93.
But many of those affected, the majority of whom are in their seventies, believe otherwise.
"It was just 'goodbye and don't come back'," said Norma Stafford, 75. "Basically all they said was that we were not needed any more. But as we went along we figured out that all of us were over 70 or had grey hair, some of us both.
"I guess they thought we wouldn't be able to bounce around and were looking for younger people. But believe it or not, you can walk and talk in your 70s - as Mr Reagan did."
She said the nation's oldest president, who was 77 when he left office in 1989, "would not have liked this at all".
Dee Rickards, 79, from Malibu, has volunteered for 14 years at the library, which has about 400,000 visitors each year. Mrs Rickards said: "We are heartbroken. It was very badly done and unnecessary to do that to people who have donated so much."
Kirby Hanson, who developed the emeritus programme, said that the decision to remove touring duties from some of the volunteers was based on the "physical and intellectual" rigours of the job following the doubling in size of the campus.
"Age absolutely was not a factor,'' she said.
Oldsters banned from giving Reagan Library tours.
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