SCHENECTADY — Ralph Boyd Sr. remembers the Great Depression: Herbert Hoover, the produce business his father lost, money suddenly gone.

Yet the 89-year-old General Electric Co. retiree and World War II veteran also recalls he never went hungry, and he maintains a positive attitude now, saying “Where there’s a will there’s a way” and “You have to be optimistic.”

As Wall Street trudges through one of its most chaotic periods since the Depression, many other GE retirees are struggling to remain optimistic with their former employer’s stock hovering near a five-year low.

Battered by the global financial crisis, the Fairfield, Conn., conglomerate’s stock price closed Friday at $21.50 per share, up 13.10 percent from a day earlier but down 46.4 percent from a year ago. GE stock ended Thursday at $19.01 per share — its lowest closing since February 2003.

“It’s a very difficult pill to swallow, but you have to swallow it,” said Boyd, a Niskayuna resident who retired from GE in 1982 after working there for 35 years.

GE’s stock oscillated Friday after the company posted a 22 percent drop in profit for the third quarter, compared with a year earlier. GE also announced plans to deviate from its usual practice of raising its stock dividend each year. Instead, it will maintain its current dividend level through 2009.

The declining stock price, coupled with the flat dividend, is threatening to upend the income sources of many area residents who have long counted on GE to get them through their golden years. Retirees, many of whom banked most of their investment portfolios on the conglomerate founded in Schenectady, are fretting that GE is not as infallible as they previously thought.

“I don’t think I’ll be taking that cruise I wanted to take. I’m running out of time to do these things,” said Paul Pagiotas, a Clifton Park resident and retired GE worker at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna.

Although Pagiotas said he has adequate retirement savings to keep him off welfare, he admits “my only sin was I didn’t diversify enough.” While working for GE, Pagiotas bought company stock and put it in an individual retirement account.

The Internal Revenue Service requires seniors over 70.5 years old to take a percentage of the balance amount out of their IRAs each year. Because of that required minimum distribution, Pagiotas expects to incur significant losses of income if GE’s stock continues to slump.

“The big question for GE investors now is how much of a drag the finance unit will be,” said Sanford “Sandy” Family, the managing director of investments for the Sanford Family Financial Division of Wachovia Securities in Latham.

GE is being “hammered” because its major profit engine — GE Capital — is struggling amid the global financial crisis, Family said. That arm’s third-quarter profit dropped 33 percent, overshadowing its stronger industrial arms. Among those industrial operations in the Capital Region are GE Energy, which manufactures turbines in Rotterdam, and GE Healthcare, which is building a digital X-ray detector production facility in North Greenbush.

“When you look at GE, you’re looking at a solid industrial operation and a bank. And banks right now are just going through a really rough time,” said Daniel Holland, an analyst for Morningstar, a Chicago independent investment research firm.

Holland said GE is “still pretty solid,” but “the market is not trading on the fundamentals of the economy.” The frantic market activity is raising concerns over how long GE will be able to continue paying out its generous dividend of $1.24 per share.

Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte, N.C., earlier this week surprised investors by announcing plans to cut its dividend in half to save $1.4 billion. The Glenville-based TrustCo Bank Corp, whose shares are also in many area retirees’ investment portfolios, slashed its dividend to a nine-year low in February.

Holland said GE has a significant amount of cash on hand, enabling it to continue paying dividends at their current level. But Family cautioned, “No one’s guaranteeing that dividend is going to stay where it is.”

“If something were to happen to that income, they’d be hurting for sure,” said Ronald Plaine, who runs R.L.P. Financial Management in Schenectady. “That’s a main reason why the older folks hold on to [GE stock]. They use it for income.”

Glenn Gerber, a Rotterdam resident who worked for GE at KAPL and retired in 2002, said he puts money from his GE shares into his grandchild’s college savings fund. He primarily leans on his pension and Social Security for income, but inflationary pressure might force him to tap those dividends in a few years.

“I’m not happy about it, but there’s not much I can do about it … If I needed the money, I’d be upset,” said Gerber.

Ron Fiorillo, the organizing director for the International Union of Electronic Workers/Communications Workers of America Local 301, said GE’s stock performance this week highlights the flaws in the conglomerate’s “three-legged stool” approach toward employee retirement financing.

Under that approach, GE has encouraged workers to prop their retirements with three financial legs: company pension, Social Security and shares of company stock. The union has opposed the three-legged stool strategy due to concerns over members’ exposure to Wall Street tumult.

“Now look at it. We were right,” Fiorillo said of GE’s stock price. “This week people lost a lot of money.”

Jim Denney, president of Mohawk Asset Management in Glenville, said many Capital Region residents have an “emotional attachment” to their GE shares. He has spent years encouraging clients to diversify their investments so they are not entirely centered around the conglomerate.

“I know I have lost money this year, but right now I’m going to sit on what I have and watch the developments,” said Helen Quirini, a retired GE worker who heads IUE/CWA Local 301’s retiree council.

Quirini’s commitment to her GE stock was strengthened earlier this month when Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway agreed to buy $3 billion in the conglomerate’s preferred stock. The billionaire investor’s firm also arranged to received warrants for up to $3 billion in GE common stock at $22.45 per share for up to five years.

“I’m going to hold on to it,” Quirini said of her GE shares. “Buffet has showed wisdom in the past.”