Senior center could use a shot in arm

BY DWIGHT HOBBES

There comes an age at which you don’t work anymore. Not that you can’t function. Just that you’re past the point of pulling down a regular paycheck. You move on. And abruptly find you’ve suddenly got a great deal of free time on your hands. More time than you can figure out what to do with on your lonesome. Oh, sure, if you jettisoned out of corporate America with one of those golden parachutes, you can island hop or ocean cruise to your heart’s content. Other than that, basically you’re left watching billboard ads and TV commercials about what younger people do to keep life fun.

So what’s there to do? Well, for one, there’s U-Meet-Us Club at Sabathani Senior Center in the Sabathani Community Center at 310 East 38th St. in Minneapolis. Granted, it’s not quite Club Med. But, thank God —if not a world of funding—it also is not one of those spaces to which folk routinely are relegated à la ain’t it sweet: oldsters sitting around, playing checkers, pretending they’re still alive. It’s a social club that gets together the first Monday morning of each month. The idea is to give members what the popular scheme of things doesn’t—a chance to do something more rewarding than hold down their living room furniture. Something like meet people, maybe make new friends and definitely do stuff. Like field trips to go gambling at Grand Casino Hinckley (coming up in May) or enjoy a picnic (that’ll be in August) or, on a regular basis, compete in the Senior Center’s Bridge Challenge tournament on Tuesdays and Fridays, take in some of the theater for which Minneapolis is so well known or just hang out—to go shopping together or do some of the in-house activities that are offered on the premises.
“I enjoy working with the group,” says U-Meet-Us president Pat Washington. After she retired in 1999 after working for 33 years at the Seagate branch of Control Data, she started coming up to the Senior Center and pretty much was drafted by predecessor Marion Snargrass to head things up at this program. It’s been quite a worthwhile undertaking. “I put in a lot of time and it keeps me busy. I’m always here with some activity that’s going on. Our seniors like to get out, like to get involved. So, I try to keep something going that will keep them coming to be involved.” Toward that end, a monthly newsletter goes out in the mail to spread the word as to what’s going on at U-Meet-Us, as well as the Senior Center’s other offerings (including AARP and the Red Hat Society).

Bevely Roland (no “r” in the first name, thank you), who has lived in the neighborhood more than half a century, drove the Minneapolis Public Library bookmobile for 17 years and a school bus the next 20. He’s one of the bus drivers who picks members up, drops them back off at home, transports members to outings and such. Bev (that’s what they call him) attests that between U-Meet-Us and the Senior Center, participants indeed get to shed some isolation and enjoy a sense of connectedness. In fact, whether they’re all coming for the same activity or not, while they’re on the bus they get to hang pretty tough (without getting carried away—there is, for instance, no mooning at the window or anything like that). “There’s a community feeling. They have a good time riding on the bus.” He notes that while the buses get the job done, “They’re drivable, but they’re old. We need some help to get some new ones.” Not land bound luxury liners, just vehicles that are reasonably comfortable. Even adequately air-conditioned. “The heat’s OK, but in the summertime it’s kind of rough.” Gas money is needed too, as busses—old or not so old —don’t run on a sense of purpose.

Marion Snargrass, it turns out, has been involved with Sabathani for 40-plus years and, in fact, used to be a big wheel as, among other things, a founder and former president of the board of directors. Actually, the board is still known to come knocking on her door when they can’t figure their way out of a troublesome situation.

“We got U-Meet-Us from a woman named Ione Brown,” she recalls. “She got the money and raised the funding. I was still working for Sears. A lot of people didn’t realize when she got the money she gave it to me.” See, Snargrass and Brown wanted to put the club in what was considered “prime space”—as in for whites only. So, “a lot of people” got their noses bent out of joint when a bunch of old black folk, who weren’t welcome at white folk facilities in Minneapolis, got to have the room for their social gatherings. That was way back then and this is now—when such generosity of spirit still is evident. U-Meet-Us is predominantly black. Because white folk, by and large, snub the place. Pat Washington readily attests, “Anybody can join. There’s a few [white folk].” She adds, “The ones that have been seem to enjoy it really well. And, we’ve had some that have been here quite a number of years.” And to show just how magnanimous Marion Snargrass and company are, why, the very executive director of U-Meet-Us, Georgia Marinkov-Omorean, is white. And so is one of Marion’s good friends. Actually, her mentor. Reflecting in general on the Senior Center, of which she is also the director, Georgia says that though funding is not what it should be, “The seniors are very resourceful, because of what they’ve come through. These are people who lived through the Depression.”

Washington, Snargrass, Bev Roland, volunteer Cassie Norris and Virginia Tenison Clark all concur: The U-Meet-Us Center offers the opportunity to get the heck out of the house and into the world. Everybody gets old— those who live long enough, anyway. And, funders who readily support such outfits as Medica Skyway Senior Center, which are hardly on life support—need to realize Sabathani’s Senior Center and, by extension, U-Meet-Us Club clearly deserve a much-needed financial shot in the arm. Said prospective funders and members alike can call 612-821-2306.