Martin Perry Knowlton (July 30, 1920 – March 12, 2009) was the American co-founder of Elderhostel, a non-profit organization established in 1975 that allows senior citizens to travel and take educational programs in the United States and around the world.
[1] In 1940, he left college to join the Free French Forces, where he served in southwest Asia as an ambulance driver and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
He earned a master's degree in 1949 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in political science, and later served on the school's faculty.
David Bianco, who supervised the dormitory and dining programs at UNH and had hired Knowlton to run the hostel based on their connections at Boston University, brainstormed about the concept.
[2] Knowlton described the program's purpose as erasing "the disturbing concept that people are all used up after age 65", offering a program "aimed at stimulating the elderly out of this agism trap",[3] solving two different problems by matching them with each other; the inefficient use of capital resources at colleges over the summer and the difficulties of those growing old in a society focused on youth.