Senior centers help older adults during COVID-19 pandemic
Katherine Mansfield/For the Observer-Reporter
The Canonsburg Senior Center has continued to provide lunches for older adults in the area during the pandemic.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Patricia Negley and her sister, Marilyn Sue Negley, play bingo at the Waynesburg Community Center. The pair were regulars at the center until it closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Katherine Mansfield/For the Observer-Reporter
Canonsburg Senior Center has continued to provide grab-and-go lunches for the community during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Katherine Mansfield/ For the Observer-Reporter
Barbara Marchewka dropped by the Canonsburg Senior Center recently for lunch. The center recently opened for dine-in service.
Katherine Mansfield/For the Observer-Reporter
Andrew Goudy, president of the NAACP Washington branch, dropped by the Canonsburg Senior Center recently during lunch. Throughout the pandemic, senior centers throughout the region remained open to provide meals for seniors.
Katherine Mansfield/For the Observer-Reporter
Sharon and Pat Powers visit the Canonsburg Senior Center, which has reopened for dine-in lunches.
Katherine Mansfield/For the Observer-Reporter
Lee Jones visited the Canonsburg Senior Center recently for dine-in lunch.
Carolyn Dunklin, a member of the Canonsburg Senior Center, has helped the center serve older adults throughout the pandemic.
Katherine Mansfield/ For the Observer-Reporter
Katherine Mansfield/For the Observer-Reporter
The Canonsburg Senior Center has been open throughout the pandemic for grab-and-go lunches and is open again for dine-in lunches.
On a recent Friday morning, Patricia Negley and her sister, Marilyn Sue Negley, sat at a table in the Waynesburg Community Center with bingo cards in front of them, daubers poised to mark off numbers as center aide Jessie Rush called them out.
After several games, the pair munched on fish sandwiches and chatted with Rush and site supervisor Tina Raber before climbing aboard a Greene County Transportation bus and returning home for the day.
For the Negleys, the visit to the senior center – which closed for activities last March at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and reopened March 8 – was a joyous occasion.
“I like coming here a whole lot,” said Patricia Negley. “I missed everybody here, including Jessie and Tina, who are pretty awesome. We stayed at home a lot and just got bored sitting around watching TV.”
As counties sought to control the spread of COVID-19, facilities that primarily serve older adults – a population that has been particularly hard hit during the pandemic – were among the many organizations and businesses forced to shut their doors.
It was a tough blow for senior citizens who rely on the centers to provide meals, social activities, volunteer and educational opportunities, and transportation.
According to the National Council on Aging, there are nearly 11,000 senior centers around the country, serving more than a million older adults every day.
In Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Agency on Aging supports 24 senior community centers and 14 satellite centers.
The centers continued to provide grab-and-go lunches and home delivery meals for clients.
The senior center staffs, including the Masontown Senior Center in Fayette County, tucked in treats and gifts like puzzle pages and Sudoku pages “to brighten their day,” said Kristin Dunham, director of the senior center.
“The heroes are the frontline staff that worked throughout the pandemic to prepare meals for seniors, and the home meal volunteers who provided delivery. They managed to provide much-needed nutritional support for seniors during a difficult time,” said Leslie Grenfell, executive director of Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Agency on Aging.
Rush, who calls the center’s regular visitors often to check on them, said isolated seniors have missed socializing with each other.
“Some people are getting along way better than others because they have family members who can help them out, or they can FaceTime their grandkids, but for a lot of them, this was their socialization and some are getting depressed and bored, and they do miss seeing each other and getting out.”
Dr. Anita Chandra, a geriatrician at Allegheny Health Network, said striking the right balance between protecting older adults during the pandemic while addressing their mental health needs hasn’t been easy.
“We want to keep people safe from the virus, but as a geriatrician it’s hard to see the mental and physical declines and problems that come from them not seeing loved ones,” said Chandra. “We’ve told them to keep a set schedule and to keep doing activities, but we’re recommending people to stay at home for their safety, but that set schedule is lost when they’re at home on their own and can’t participate in activities that bring them joy.”
At the Canonsburg Senior Center on Monday, about 15 seniors clad in green for St. Patrick’s Day sat down for lunch, where George Miklos won a gift basket filled with boxes of Girl Scout cookies, a Panera gift card, an insulated mug and other goodies.
On Feb. 8, the center reopened for sit-down lunches, at reduced capacity.
“It was vital for us to continue to provide meals. We have a lot of people who live alone and don’t cook, so for them this is often their only hot meal,” said Brenda Wacker, site supervisor at the center.
Earlier this month, the center resumed its weekly Bible study, and in April it will offer bingo – a favorite activity among seniors and a welcome source of income for senior centers whose bank accounts have dwindled in recent months because of the pandemic.
“It’s been such a trying, fluid period for the last year. It’s really good to see them back. It makes my heart happy to see them again,” said Wacker.
Walter Conrad, a transplant who spent most of his life in the Midwest, said the past year “made me realize the camaraderie we have here at the center. The people here are my family,” he said.
Conrad, 66, a retired plastics plant operator, has been an indispensable volunteer at the center, where he does minor repairs, painting, washing dishes, and other chores.
On any given day, Conrad would visit friends in Pittsburgh, and frequently went out to eat, but when the pandemic struck, his social life came to a screeching halt.
“I used to go to Pittsburgh two to four times a week. Since the pandemic hit, I’m lucky if I’ve gotten there once or twice in the past eight months,” said Conrad, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and other health issues.
A bright spot for Conrad happened about three weeks ago, when he received his first COVID-19 vaccination.
“I think that with the vaccines, and if people just use some common sense and wear masks and do what they’re supposed to, there will be some kind of normalcy,” he said.
The past year has been a struggle for Barbara Marchewka, a regular at the Canonsburg center.
“The first six months didn’t bother me. After six months, it started getting to me, everything being closed up. You do a little more eating, you gain weight,” said Marchewka. “Then I started getting lazy, and we had a bad winter this year with a lot of snow and a lot of freezing weather.”
And in June, Marchewka lost her 46-year-old son, who died of throat cancer.
She has seen close friends only twice in the past 12 months, and hasn’t been inside a restaurant during the pandemic.
Marchewka sees light at the end of the tunnel with the COVID-19 vaccines now available, and she is especially excited about one thing: her country line dancing lessons are set to resume in two weeks.
“I’ll continue to wear my mask and social distance, and I’m on a few lists to get my vaccine,” said Marchewka.
While the past year has taken a devastating toll on the country, with more than 535,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, there have been reasons to celebrate.
Dennis Tucker, who retired from his job at a group home and regularly brought a friend to the Waynesburg Community Center until it closed, got married on Oct. 10. One of his best friends died from COVID-19 in November.
“This year has not been, in any way, normal,” said Tucker, whose gospel group, Ambassadors for Christ, hasn’t been able to perform at nursing homes and other sites. “My Bible study group hasn’t met. I miss coming here and socializing. I’m a people person, so it’s been hard.”