LETTERS: Senior center is only place island seniors have

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Regarding our beloved Vashon Senior Center: In what are fat times for the real estate market, some luckier island organizations and the whole construction industry, here is a resource that serves a segment of the population that’s essentially forgotten.

These people with no safety net — the widows on pensions, the last of the senior K2 workforce and other longtime islanders determined to brave it out in homes where they raised their families — are the ones who depend on the senior center. When the power is out, they don’t have the luxury of just going uptown and waiting it out over lunch and free wi-fi at The Hardware Store. Without that shuttle to the senior center, they will not have a nourishing lunch in a safe place and company and activities to keep them from worrying about the storms outside. Are we willing to let them shiver it out, alone in the dark, fully aware that this vital island resource is “between a rock and a hard place” for a mere $45,000 when many millions have been raised down the way for a place to be entertained?

This has been a tough holiday season for island shopkeepers because of the weather. Luckily, I have another household source of income to pay the bills. But these seniors are out in the cold if we don’t come together and help the place that’s their only port in the storm. Most of us are lucky; we aren’t in these folks’ shoes … yet. One day we might just be them, and won’t we wish dearly that the senior center was still there for us.

I am pledging $500 to help get the senior center through the crunch. Who will join me? These are our seniors. We should be their safety net.

— Rebecca Wittman