Cuts could threaten the welcoming community senior center

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 15, 2016

I moved to Vashon Island last June from California. The folks at the Vashon Senior Center welcomed me with open arms. Being partially blind and deaf didn’t matter. There are programs and volunteers there which help with disabilities of all kinds. Since June I have learned a lot about the seniors who make the Center their social home.

They come from a generation who served: cooks, police officers, teachers, soldiers, carpenters: people who have worked hard and lived paycheck to paycheck. None of them were ever Wall Street brokers or Bankers. Their life savings were minimal. Their Social Security checks are low.

They have ended their journey in the Pacific Northwest, on an island which has been gentrified and is now expensive to live on. But when you are age 70-100, in their income range, you don’t move to Florida. The Vashon Senior Center is now their “Tribe”, their social center, a warm, dry place with a good lunch that only costs $4 and a volunteer to help them home.

Recently the funding for the Center has been drastically cut for next year. That is sobering news for us.

— Lawrence Dean