Published: June 18, 2009 10:46 pm      

ADAMCZYK: Underage at the senior center

I don’t patronize senior citizens’ centers, largely because I don’t meet the age qualification. While there’s a certain joy in getting to my advanced stage of the game and then being told I’m still too young, I can’t wait until I hit my 60th; that’s when I’ll pay my seven bucks to join the Town of Tonawanda Senior Citizens Association.

In the 1950s, the Town of Tonawanda erected about a dozen new schools, many of which are now former schools or abandoned schools or razed schools. The one on industry-intensive Ensminger Road, the former Robert Frost Elementary School, has been given over to the senior population of Kenmore and Tonawanda. It’s the headquarters of the Town’s Department of Youth Parks and Recreation’s effort to serve its aging residents, and, in the manner of a middle schooler who tours Kenmore West High School and can’t wait to graduate to the next step, I eagerly anticipate the moment I’m eligible to go play in the senior center.

There’s some irony in that this low, flat and very suburban building dedicated to school children is now in use by people who might have attended it as kindergartners in the Eisenhower era. The corridors are wide and the rooms remain busy with activity, but it’s 2009 now, and it’s a different kind of busy.

Senior Center director Trish Pray explains the mission to me.

“We have lunch, a part of the Erie County Nutrition Program. We have line dancing and jazz dancing. We do ‘Fit Rhythm’ classes. Drawing classes and ceramics classes. We have movies, and a place to sit and play cards. This year, there’ll be nine day trips, and two extended trips. Forty-five people are going to Alaska.”

So it’s a daytime hangout for the older set, with extra-cost tours to places like Shea’s Theater (for dinner at the Pearl Street Grill and “Jersey Boys”), the Finger Lakes racetrack and, yes, Alaska.

They party all the time in here (the older one gets, the more there is to celebrate) — ice cream socials, a Roaring ’20s party, an Oscar night party, numerous dances and as director Pray mentioned, “a 50th anniversary party. We offered a sit-down dinner to 82 married couples, who brought family members. We had about 200 people.”

They’re playing bocce ball on the back lawn, cruising the Internet, and one room, for movies, is full of overstuffed living-room lounge chairs aimed at a television screen the size of a garage door. If this place only had sleeping accommodations, it could be the world’s coolest college dorm.

One of the many rooms seems to be a guys-only getaway: the wood shop, a fully equipped studio for builders and craftsmen. Picture a high school shop class full of people who know what they’re doing.

Self-described “big cheese” Shelly Foreman (and he was laughing when he said it) is the retired industrial arts teacher who runs it.

“Al’s Tree Service donated a truckload of lumber, and Island Lumber splits it in half for us. We get about eight people a day in here building things,” said Foreman in an accent that belied his Brooklyn roots.

The calendar at the senior center is a blizzard of activity: Exercise, a speaker’s series, yoga, table tennis, ceramics, art classes, Tai Chi, card games galore, Scrabble and dominoes, “advanced line dancing” and visits from financial professionals and politicians. From 8:30 to 4:30, Monday to Friday, this place is rocking.

There are satellite locations as well, at the Ellwood Fire Hall in Tonawanda and the Mang Community Center in Kenmore.

Dawn Coniglio helps operate the Kenmore site, and runs through the schedule. “We have lunch every day, card games and bingo on Monday and Thursdays, exercise and bingo on Friday. We get up to 70 people a day for lunch.”

Wandering around the Kenmore building, it’s a smaller version of the mother ship on Ensminger, room after room of one thing or another — weight training, pool tables, card games and the like.

Ken-Ton has about 20,000 residents who qualify as senior citizens. About 2,500 are members of the senior center. As Pray says, “People don’t realize what we have to offer. You’re getting a lot for $7.”

It should be pointed out that none of this has anything to do with poverty, rescue or lack of privilege; this is all about quality of life and the pursuit of happiness, and the YPR has built a remarkable resource here, serving one of Ken-Ton’s remarkable resources.

Walking out of the Ensminger facility, I passed a 70-something on his way in, wearing shorts and carrying table tennis paddles. Eagerly awaiting the qualifying age to go in and play, I started my car, turned on the radio and heard Jon Bon Jovi philosophizing on the very topic: “It’s my life, it’s now or never. I ain’t gonna live forever. I just want to live until I die. It’s my life.”

Can’t wait.

Ed Adamczyk is a Kenmore resident whose column appears weekly in the Record-Advertiser. Contact him at EdinKenmore@gmail.com.