Carol Roark builds ties through art & humour
Carol Roark spends most of her time out and about visiting friends, so her one- bedroom apartment at the Terrace Retirement Community suits her just fine. It’s only when she jumps from her seat to tell the stories about her colorful life that it seems she might need more room.
Roark acts out her stories with her hands and feet in constant motion, ignoring the walker that’s within arm’s reach. She only needs it occasionally to take the weight off her back, which began to give out a few years ago. She can fill volumes with tales about her travels, her love of art and humor, and the friendships she’s developed over the years.
Roark, 77, might be best known for her art. Most days she does pen- and- ink drawings on half a dozen envelopes, stuffs them with an index card of jokes and sends them to friends, doctors and patients she used to work with when she was a certified nurse’s assistant at Candlelight Lodge, a retirement and assisted living facility on Business Loop 70 West.
One of the friends who receives the cards is Mary Ann Mize, a personal banker at Landmark Bank on Stadium Boulevard and Ash Street who met Roark when she and her husband, Joe Roark, opened an account several years ago.
Every year Roark invites Mize, 73, to the Mother’s Day luncheon at the Terrace. Mize said they have “a mother- daughter relationship,” though the age difference is small.
“Carol is big on sending you jokes,” Mize said, “... once she gets to know you and likes you.
“She has many, many friends, people that she shares her life with, and it’s wonderful she has all that.”
Roark, who says she makes friends everywhere she goes, is a living illustration of the research that shows seniors who are more social fare better cognitively as they age.
“Why do seagulls fly over the sea?” Roark asked. “Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels.”
Roark also enjoys creating coloring pages with outlines of flowers, butterflies, birds and ladybugs that she takes to Candlelight Lodge for residents with dementia to colour. It gives her a chance to visit her former workplace, and it gives the residents something to do.
Roark gathers inspiration for her drawings from photographs, calendars and books she buys. She creates cutouts that she can use to easily replicate her drawings. One of her favorite characters is a cow she calls Dee Daisy Marie that she draws in various tai chi and yoga poses.
Where did she get the cow’s name? “My mother’s friend, Dee Daisy Marie, was always talking and taking cows to pasture,” Roark said. “Somehow it just occurred to me: They have calendars of cats doing yoga, and I thought cows can do yoga.”
Art has been a passion for Roark since she was in elementary school. An oil painting she created her senior year of high school is still showcased in Van Buren, if the plywood she painted it on hasn’t rotted, Roark joked. She painted the Hunter Hotel, which was built beside the railroad that ran through the town.
■ Roark acts out her stories with her hands and feet in constant motion, ignoring the walker that’s within arm’s reach