For the first time in two years, the Trigg County Senior Citizen Center on Joy Drive jumped and jived late Tuesday night. The chairs were put up against the wall. The tables were moved. It was standing room only, and people needed to dance.
But there was once a time when the older folks of west Kentucky didn’t have a place to congregate, socialize, re-energize and wistfully spend the day.
Wednesday afternoon, the center’s first and former director, Carolyn Bland, was anything but — as she colorfully illustrated the 50-year history of what’s long been one of the best retirement refuges and service centers in the Commonwealth.
Before John Leneave’s farm, before the Hester House on Jefferson Street, the first senior citizen center in Cadiz sprang up inside the old Masonic building.
In 1973, Congress passed the “Older Americans Act,” which eventually led to the Pennyrile Allied Community Services for a nine-county umbrella — and further determined that each county would have its own established senior center.
Bland remembers it well. She was in her mid-20s — young and naive, a nervous first-time director. And it was Winthrop Howell Hopson Jr., a Ceruleanite, helped quartermaster the center’s opening.
Roy McDonald, former Trigg County superintendent, asked if she “liked old people” in her interview, and when she was introduced to folks already attending the up-and-coming facility, she was grilled about her family tree.
Some things never change in Cadiz.
But one big thing that’s changed over time, Bland noted, is women’s independence. In the late 1970s, that generation of elderly women didn’t have as much autonomy within the household. It was a man’s world, and Bland said she and many of her staff taught several basic life skills in those early days.
The first senior’s bus was a little old Ford van that held 10 people and was driven by Wade Sumner, who Bland said would take an hour nap and keep the women from getting home in time for their soap operas.
While some programs like “Meals On Wheels” were big hits and needed services, Bland said the worst of the lot in the last 50 years was “Project Independence.” Drafted in 1979, it essentially re-wrote already existing programming in Trigg County and other areas — and it added a lawn-mowing service available for retirees.
Bland said that simply didn’t work.
There were so many memorable trips over the decades, too. Morehead State University. Bardstown. Hodgenville. Gatlinburg. Savannah. Charleston. San Antonio. Dallas-Fort Worth. Niagara Falls and nearby Vermont state. Washington, D.C.
Some excursions were shorter, but Bland said they were all life-changing in ways, because it gave some independence. Some freedom.
In 1994, a wing was added to the back of the Hester House — and the center was quickly shifting to its more local name as “The Kitchen.” Bland thought that was more fitting, anyway.
Clearly needing more space and level ground for older residents and ease of access, Bland said it took help from the Civitans, the Lions Club, the Cadiz Rotary Club, Trigg County Fiscal Court and former Judge-Executive Berlin Moore, local homemakers and churches, yard sales, ham & biscuit sales, 50/50 raffles, memorial brick sales, a grant and the overall generosity of the community to make this last move happen.
Bland’s retirement in 2013 made way for the second director, Cissy Lawrence.
Full presentation:
