Growing old
Cabot senior center moves to new location
The Cabot Senior Center provides tools to local seniors that allow them to live independently for as long as possible.
The center is a branch of the Lonoke County Council on Aging, which serves both Lonoke and Prairie counties and has five locations in Lonoke County.
Buster Lackey, executive director of the Lonoke County Council on Aging, said the Cabot center will move into the building on North Grant Street that used to be the Arlene Cherry Memorial Library.
“It’s 8,600 square feet, double the size of our old building next door,” Lackey said.
Lackey said the new building not only offers more space, but a media room, a conference room, multiple offices and a dining area.
The new center has also been renovated and looks homelike and comfortable, he said.
Lackey said everything in the old center was located in one large room and didn’t offer the convenience of separate rooms that the new center will offer.
In the old center, you’d have people trying to line-dance and listen to music on one end of the room, while people tried to play dominoes or talk at the other end of the room, he said.
“Every day, [in the U.S.] around 15,000 people turn 65, and 10,000 people turn 60,” he said. “These services are not going away; they’re only going to grow.
The center offers a variety of services,
including Meals on Wheels, a telephone-reassurance program and activities for socialization.
Drivers at the center offer to pick up seniors and bring them to the center, as well as provide rides so seniors can run errands or make it to appointments.
Lackey said each center is unique, and seniors focus on a different craft. People at the Cabot center create ceramic art, he said.
“July 5 will be the first day the seniors move over to the new building,” he said.
“Think of how many seniors are able to live in their homes because we provide a hot meal every day and offer to pick them up and take them to the doctor. A lot of our seniors have outlived their families, or their kids have gotten jobs and moved off out of state,” he said.
Paul Hirleman, deputy director of the Lonoke County Council on Aging, said nearly 90 percent of the seniors who frequent the center are widows.
“The Bible tells us to care for the widows and orphans of the world. I’m just doing my part. It’s very rewarding to reach out to someone who is sitting at home alone, usually due to the loss of a spouse, and encourage them to come to the center,” Hirleman said.
Hirleman said an experience that stands out in his mind is when he tried to convince a particular woman to come to the center a few times.
The woman had lost her husband six months prior and refused to leave the house, he said. When it came time to get on the bus, she refused.
“I finally got her to come in, and now she’s a regular,” Hirleman said. “She thanks me constantly for getting her out of her house because she was just staring at the wall, smoking cigarettes and waiting to die. Now she’s not.”
Lackey said the seniors play bingo, line-dance, make crafts and play dominoes at the center for socialization rather than being sedentary and sitting at home.
The center receives federal and state funding but also receives help from the city of Cabot, he said.
Cities in Northern Lonoke County, such as Cabot, Ward and Austin, benefit from the Cabot center.
“It’s never the same day twice,” Lackey said. “We go where we’re needed.”
Lackey said the staff doesn’t want to turn away anyone who needs help.
The council recently brought on additional staff and began offering new services, such as the telephone-reassurance program that allows staff to regularly check on seniors by calling them at home.
Hirleman said the quality of food at the center has improved dramatically within the past six months as a result of hiring a new chef and sous chef to work at the Lonoke County Council on Aging.
Construction on the new dining area and kitchen at the Cabot center, equipped to feed 100 people, will begin in early 2018, he said.
Lackey said the old senior-center building will become an event center, and the council will rent it out for parties, meetings and banquets as a fundraiser for the center.
Other fundraisers throughout the year will include a fun dog show, the Miss Heart of Arkansas Beauty Pageant and a barbecue contest at the Lonoke County Fair.
Hirleman said Arkansas leads the nation in senior hunger, and the Council on Aging makes a real difference.
“I’m very excited about moving to our new facility,” he said. “It is much bigger and has a much more homelike appeal than our current small, somewhat clinical-appearing facility
“The site is home to the largest population of seniors in Lonoke County, and our job is to bring help to those who need it.”