Tell me that someone around your parents age (you said you were 60's, I'm talking about 80-90 or even 70-90 age range) did not have an appreciation for a paid off home? I can't even begin to tell you how many stories I've heard about how hard my great grandmother worked to take care of 7 kids during the depression and what a blessing it was that the house was paid off - and that if nothing else, they were able to raise their own food and didn't have to worry about ever having to move - and about how many people came to their home for food and a place to stay, because people could not stay in their homes. And those stories advised us to take care of what we had - because it might not always be there.
Apples & oranges-- mortgages of these Depression-era generations tended to be of much shorter durations, sometimes as little as 5-10 years.
The balance was usually due as a balloon payment, and financial institutions almost always held on to the loan instead of selling it to another. Banks didn't hesitate to foreclose and become the town's biggest real estate owner, even if it killed both the bank and the town.
I'm not sure that there was even a standard deduction on personal income taxes, let alone an itemized deduction for paying interest on a mortgage.
But I think that even Grannie would be attracted to a 40-year no-income no-assets "liar's loan" 80/10/10 ARM with zero money down, financed closing costs, variable interest, optional payments, negative amortization, a 125% HELOC rider with a debit card, and the prospect of a bailout...
A couple years ago my father-in-law showed us his 1964 mortgage on a brand-spankin'-new Levitt home. It was about $17K at 5.5% with an onerous $88/month payment, which he was still mailing checks for when he sold the home in 1983. (Yes, he stored the original agreement for over 20 years after paying it off, but that's a whole 'nother story.) The agreement's terms were typewritten into a half-dozen blocks of a pre-printed 5"x8" piece of heavy-gauge pasteboard. We had just matched that interest rate, admittedly at a slightly different balance/payment and on a much larger stack of paper.
A year later we "kids" beat the 5.5% with a 30-year 5.375%. A few months after that the credit union sent a notary to our house to certify our HELOC with zero closing costs. And a couple years after that their credit union happily loaned this age-70s couple a similar mortgage on a condo in an over-55 community. It's a 30-year loan, and with their genes it's quite possible that they'll be writing the check for the final payment.