Here we are almost four years in presenting our thoughts on having a Senior Center, with nothing to show for it, but a worn out bus. Absolutely despicable.

Especially after our friend, Andrea Lemos, Council on Aging in Westport, came to speak in October 2023 and educate our council what a senior center does in and for a town.

Last November 2023 it was decided that although there are three towns in Rhode Island that don’t have senior centers, our council member Gary Mataronas said there will now be two.

Just what has been done to find our seniors coming closer to a senior center?

Councilman Gary Mataronas and Bob Mushen contacted me asking me to come and check out the Odd Fellows hall and consider it a place for our seniors. After an official inspection of the building, Ive heard nothing from that suggestion.

The UCC church offered our seniors a place to gather for several days a week. Then that turned into a carefully arranged time frame of two days a week, four hours a day, with “testing out” parameters of a time period.

All unacceptable. How hard is it to understand that people get old,  and needs change, bodies wear down, people pass on.

Are we too scared to recognize that we all need each other to live with our dignity and help one another.

Senior centers provide all of that — a place for people to gather and meet to talk to socialize to compare notes of how they are living and release tensions, stresses, and have someone to turn to in their hour of need, because everyone will have an hour of need someday. No, the community center doesn’t accommodate this need in town and never will no matter how hard they try. There have too many balls in the air, too much going on, too many rules to follow. It’s a community center, a gathering an event place for all ages at all times of the day. So far our oldest citizens have been waitlisted for a meal, seniors have been forced to go upstairs to the bathrooms when the children’s camp is in session. I was asked by gentleman who is in his 80s if he could bring a friend or two. They live alone and watch TV all day. I couldn’t answer him. The rules only allow certain individuals meals. It is open to everyone; however when you’re in your 80s or 90s and don’t understand the waitlist, well you can’t call and say ‘I’d like to bring a friend today.’

A senior center would accommodate every senior.

I’m asking the council if they would consider hiring an educated person in senior affairs full time, with an office in the town hall and a dedicated phone line for senior services. This would start our advocacy of helping our seniors in town with services they could turn to and continue the process of having a senior center for all of our seniors “no exceptions.”

Clearly we are worn down trying to get a senior center in this town and time after time having our hopes rise only to fall again and again.

Angela Denham

Little Compton