Senior Center

A few senior citizens of the town organized a card-carrying club on the 11th of September 1973. Each paid $1 dues per year with the fiscal year ending on the 31st of July. Dues cards served as meal tickets to lunches. They held their first meeting on the 1st of October at 12:30 p.m. at the Lions/Sportsman Building, 600 East Center. The group continued to meet there once weekly. The organization consisted of general, entertainment, membership, education, and transportation chairpersons. The Seniors Citizens in town grew from this start.

By November 1979, a change in organization had emerged. Elected officers consisted of a president, co-vice presidents, a secretary, a treasurer, and a reporter – all of whom were women, and a board of trustees consisting of two men. They elected new officers each fall. The group continued to gather at the Lions/Sportsmen Building until December 1982.

The seniors petitioned the city council for a place of their own in which to meet. Nine years after the organization, the city offered them a space in the Orpheus/old senior-junior high school gymnasium, on 200 South, in the process of being remodeled into a city recreation and multipurpose center. The senior group applied for funds from the Eldred Sunset Manor Foundation and received a grant of $3,000.00 to help furnish the rooms. They moved into the facility, on the 8th of December 1982, and had access to their own room, kitchen, and the entire recreational facility.

With eminent plans for a new library, the city included a senior center on the ground floor of that building on Center Street. In 1988, they moved into this facility. One large multipurpose room, a kitchen, and restrooms comprised the seniors’ portion, with access to the auditorium when needed.

While planning the Block 4 building project, the city set aside a vacant lot for a newer senior center west of the U. S. Federal Post Office building. With a Community Development Block Grant of $200,000.00and the Jacobs Family donation of $490,000.00, an entire building designed specifically for the seniors’ needs began to become a reality. Groundbreaking and the naming of the facility the “Jacobs Center” took place on the 31st of August 2000. The building had 9,484 square feet with a kitchen and activity rooms for dinning, meetings, pool tables, exercising, card playing, and quilting – all the usual activities of the group.

Since the new center’s opening near senior apartments, also part of Block 4, the five-day weekly meal delivery from Mountainlands has averaged forty daily with as many as sixty on special days such as enior memberships’ birthdays.