Red carpet affair
Tuolumne County Senior Center plans Monday ribbon-cutting
More than two years since the COVID-19 pandemic came to Tuolumne County, volunteers and nonprofit service providers are preparing to reopen one of the community’s most vital places for its oldest residents.
A red carpet, ribbon-cutting, grand reopening ceremony and celebration are being planned from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday at the Tuolumne County Senior Center at 540 Greenley Road, on the east edge of Sonora’s city limits.
In a community where 27% of residents are age 65 and older, and the deaths of 181 people were attributed to COVID-19, the closure of the Greenley Road senior center in mid-march 2020 was a harbinger of the pandemic to come. Its closure remained a symbol of what was lost for a significant portion of the county’s population for more than two years.
To gain a sense of why people loved the senior center before it closed and why people are looking forward to its reopening Monday, The Union Democrat interviewed individuals who used to go to the senior center regularly before March 2020.
Wanda Spenny, 74, of Sonora, said Friday she used to volunteer at the Greenley Road senior center off and on from about 2013, when she retired.
“I was really sad when they closed down, because it really affected me,” Spenny said in a phone interview. “I missed the people there and the interaction with other seniors. It’s especially important for the older folks who can’t get out and go places. It helps with their mental health, because they have something to look forward to, for the elderly seniors, especially those with no surviving family around here.”
Activities and interaction are the keys that make the senior center so vital for the community’s older population, Spenny said. She’s a volunteer at the center and did exercise classes there, as well.
“I’d be there for other activities,” Spenny said. “Seniors really need that interaction with other people, things they can do, and the camaraderie. I’m an active person, and even for me the pandemic was really hard. You couldn’t get out. It must have been very hard for those who the senior center was their only outlet.”
Spenny said she’s looking forward to some of the people she used to volunteer with and interact with at the senior center when it reopens Monday. She had strong relationships with visitors to the senior center, as well as with other center volunteers and staff.
“If you’re sheltered-in, or on your own, it’s a great place to interact with other people,”
Spenny said. “From the day I retired it’s been a really great place to go. With all the people coming in for lunch, and the extracurricular activities, it will be nice to see people again, definitely I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be there Monday.”
Volunteers sometimes come to the senior center to offer help to people with Medicare questions, other insurance issues, and to help people with their taxes, free-of-charge, Spenny said. She said she is glad the Meals on Wheels program continued through the pandemic because that was a vital service for many seniors in need of assistance, and/or living alone, with many reliant on limited, fixed incomes.
Dave Jenkins, 90, of Sonora Meadows near Crystal Falls, said Friday that before the pandemic hit Tuolumne County, he used to go to Greenley Road senior center regularly. He started going in 2005 when he moved to Tuolumne County from Denair in Stanislaus County.
“I’m an avid bridge player, and I was looking for a place with duplicate bridge,” Jenkins said in a phone interview. “Bridge is a wonderful activity, because it’s social and it’s mentally challenging. Puzzles are challenging but not necessarily social. Hiking is physically challenging but it’s not always social.”
Jenkins, who says he hikes Dragoon Gulch and the Tuolumne Main Canal frequently, said he and other bridge enthusiasts have been carpooling to San Andreas and Angels Camp for bridge games for the past year, and they’ve been able to play bridge online, but he’s missed the in-person bridge games in Sonora, so he is looking forward to the reopening of the Greenley Road senior center.
The senior center building on Greenley Road is owned by the county’s government, but the senior center is not a county entity. The five-county, jointpowers Area 12 Agency on Aging has an arrangement with Tuolumne County to provide congregate dining services at the senior center and a Meals on Wheels program that has ties to the senior center. The Area 12 Agency on Aging contracts with the nonprofit Sierra Senior Providers Inc. to coordinate lunches and activities at the senior center, as well as the Meals on Wheels program.
Like many other facilities that are open to the public on a regular basis, the senior center was subject to local, state, and federal guidance on reducing the spread of COVID-19. Since most visitors to the senior center were among the most vulnerable to the pandemic, it closed in midMarch 2020 specifically because of COVID-19.
Since then, the CO
VID-19 case fatality rate among Tuolumne County residents age 70 and older was 9%, representing 119 individuals who died in the age group, out of 1,311 positive cases in the age group, according to the county public health epidemiology team. Of the entire estimated population in that age group, 12.4% tested positive and the fatality rate was 1.16%. As of this week, 78% of county residents 65 and older were fully vaccinated, and 88.4% were partially vaccinated.
“I was somewhat anxious about the virus, but
I was one of the first to get a vaccine, Moderna,” Jenkins said. “I appreciate the county offered that at the fairgrounds. I got a booster there, and I got a fourth shot at Safeway on Sanguinetti (Road).”
According to the state Department of Public Health, 60.1% of COVID-19 deaths in California occurred among individuals age 70 and older. Individuals 60 and older accounted for 80.3% of COVID-19 deaths in California.
Betty Miller, another senior center volunteer, said Thursday she has been helping at the Greenley Road senior center for more than three years.
“I’m so glad it’s reopening,” Miller said in a phone interview. “So many people are going to be happy.”
Alan Hamilton, 79, of Angels Camp, used to be a bridge game director at the senior center on Greenley Road for about a year or two year before the senior center closed in 2020.
He’s said he’s looking forward to the return of American Contract Bridge League-sanctioned duplicate bridge games resuming at 12:30 p.m. each Friday.
“There’s a lot of people who play,” Hamilton said. “We used to have 24 to 32 people, at six to eight tables, each Friday. Each game lasts about three hours. Most were seniors, over 65, some were middle-age adults, in their 50s or 60s.”
All forms of bridge games, no matter what variations, and including duplicate bridge games, they are all partnership games, and any bridge game requires four people, Hamilton said. That’s what makes playing bridge such a social, interactive endeavor.
“For a lot of the older people, this is and it was their main social outlet,” Hamilton said. “This was their way to socialize with others. We came to bridge games, we met at bridge games, and then we socialized together other ways. We became friends, we’d take cruises, we’d travel together. We also played bridge in Angels Camp and in San Andreas.”
Sierra Senior Providers Inc., the nonprofit at the Greenley Road senior center, has a new chief executive officer, Emily Fife, who started in mid-march.
Thanks to continued funding for the Meals on Wheels program, a team of four paid drivers and 16 volunteer drivers continued to deliver more than 1,000 meals weekly throughout Tuolumne County, including Groveland, Kelli Kleinhans, Meals on Wheels program coordinator, said in April.
Tuolumne County Senior Center is also known as @ Sonoraseniorcenter on social media, and its Facebook page is run by Sierra Senior Providers Inc. The county’s government began partnering with Sierra Senior Providers Inc. in 1996 to manage the senior center at 540 Greenley Road. Sierra Senior Providers Inc. is not a county entity. The county does not contract with, pay, or fund the nonprofit in any way, and the county does not oversee the nonprofit’s operations at the senior center, Tracie Riggs, the county government’s top administrator, said Friday.
Sierra Senior Providers Inc. funding comes from the Area 12 Agency on Aging, grants, fundraisers, and donations, Liz Peterson, a senior analyst with the county, said Friday.
“It is known as the Tuolumne County Senior Center,” Peterson said, “because it is a place for all senior residents of the county to gather and interact.”
Sierra Senior Providers is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization founded in 2001. More information about Meals on Wheels and making donations can be found online at https://sierraseniorproviders.com.