Community center drops ‘senior’from name
When Pennridge Community Senior Center moved to its new home in Silverdale in 2007, there was an open house with coffee and cake.
From 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 13, there will be another open house, but this time, attendees will be able to sample wine and cheese.
“Your baby boomer doesn’t want to sit around and have coffee and cake. They will come for wine and cheese because that’s their mind frame,” said Debbie Scollon, the center’s director.
The menu change is just one indication of another change that’s happening.
The “Senior” is officially coming out of the center’s name.
As the baby boomers reach age 55, they become eligible for membership but don’t want to join an or- ganization with “senior” in its name, Scollon said.
“They feel like when you call them senior, that they’re the old people,” Scollon said. “They don’t want anything to do with it.”
The senior designation once was used as a sign of respect for a retired person, but that’s no longer the way it’s viewed, she said.
People looking for a rental hall,
such as brides, also didn’t like having the word in the center’s name, she said.
“They’ll say, ‘lh my God, it really is beautiful, but it’s a senior center, and I’m not having that on my invitation. There’s no way,’” Scollon said.
The renaming will change that. Now the invitation can use the new name for the ballroom/banquet hall.
With several people involved in helping build the center, there were too many to name it after just one, so the room’s new name pays tribute to those individuals without designating a specific person, Scollon said.
“We came up with The Legacy,” she said.
The sign outside the center will include the Legacy Room designation beneath the Pennridge Community Center name.
The “Senior” has already been removed from the sign, although traces of the lettering still remain. That has left a lot of people wondering if the sign was vandalized or what’s going on, Scollon said.
Initially, there was some hope the sign change could be made by simply removing the lettering, but that isn’t possible, she said.
“We can’t clean it where the old letters were. We have to redo and revamp the whole sign, so it really isn’t very cost effective, but it’s going to be done,” Scollon said. “It’s that important to the center.”
It doesn’t look like the new sign will be ready by the Sept. 13 open house, she said.
Pennridge Community Center is one of five fullservice senior citizen centers operated by Bucks County Association for Retired and Senior Citizens.
The center will continue to provide the services it has in the past, including lowcost lunches for seniors five days a week, and to be primarily a senior center, but the programs and activities are open to all ages, Scollon said. Members, who must be 55 or older, pay a reduced price, just as members of other organizations pay less than non-members to use the services, she said.
“Everybody is welcome, welcome, welcome, and, again, people need to take advantage of this because, if not, at some point, it might go away,” Scollon said.
Wine for the open house will be provided by Unami Ridge Winery in Quakertown. The open house will also include demonstrations of classes and activities held at the Pennridge Community Center.
Information on the center is available at www.pennridgecenter.org or by calling 215-453-7027 or 215453-7028.
Special upcoming lunches include a covered dish one Thursday, Sept. 20, Sara helly, assistant director, said.
“If you bring a covered dish, it’s free. If not, it’s $5,” helly said.
There will also be a special meal, with a chef preparing the entree and the center providing accompanying dishes, Thursday, lct. 25.
The Pennridge Community Center also holds trips including ones to the Showboat Casino Sept. 25, Indian Head Resort in New Hampshire lct. 1 through 5, Ride the Rails in the Poconos lct. 4, Branson in the lzarks lct. 15 through 22, Asheville and the Smokies lct. 21 through 27, Rainbow Dinner Theater in Lancaster Nov. 15, sictorian Cape May Dec. 13 and 14 and the Pines Dinner Theater in Allentown Dec. 19.
Contact helly at the center for more information or to make reservations for the lunches or trips.
Recent changes at the center have led to increased attendance, according to information in the center’s September/lctober newsletter.
“ln some days last month as many as 142 people participated in activities at the Center,” Buster Guth, president, wrote in the newsletter.
The Pennridge Community Center isn’t the only one dealing with prospective members who don’t like the senior designation, Scollon said.
“This is going on all throughout the country,” she said. “All senior centers have been affected.”