After singing a welcome song and stretching through a half-hour of gentle chair exercise, the Old Friends Club walked and wheeled into the narthex of the Vashon Presbyterian Church.
The chatter of members and volunteers filled the airy community room. Lauretta Hyde, an Old Friends Club coordinator, settled onto a high stool at the front of the room as everyone took their seats, and explained that the day’s activities would focus on hands.
The Old Friends Club’s goal is twofold: it is both a daytime care program for people with dementia or cognitive decline and a scheduled time of respite for their primary caretakers. It meets once a week on Wednesday, from 9:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m.
“Creating an age-friendly community, especially because of the age of Vashon, is not something we should take lightly,” Carol Spangler, a founder of the Vashon Old Friends Club, said. “There are so many ways to create places for aging people to be safe and secure and have support.”
To warm everyone up, Hyde listed common sayings that reference hands, like “firsthand knowledge” and “lend a hand.” Each phrase elicited sounds of agreement in the attentive crowd.
Hyde then turned the members’ attention to thinking about their own hands.
“Betty, how many songs have you played using your hands?” she asked. She turned to several members of the group, asking how many ukuleles they had strung, how many cars they had fixed, how many diapers they had changed.
“Your hands have done so much. Start thinking about that,” Hyde said.
During each session, members are provided with a light breakfast and a hearty lunch, activities, exercise and community-building, according to volunteer coordinator Nancy Schoenberg.
“With a program like this, it’s best to have a balance between things that they can expect — routine parts of their day — and stimulating revolving programs,” Schoenberg said.
Since the Old Friends Club hosts members with a wide range of cognitive states and stages of dementia, activities are designed to be appealing — yet appropriate — for all.
“We do not infantilize people,” Schoenberg emphasized. “We do not treat them like children. Every activity that we do, we think would be fun for everyone.”
Rotating activities often feature guests; that day, a massage therapist visited the Old Friends Club to teach its members how to give hand massages.
Dixie cups containing dollops of fragrant hand cream sat on each table. A handout provided to the group said that hand massages promote wellness through connection and physical touch.
Right before lunch, volunteers passed out pens and paper and sat down with members to discuss what their hands had done in their lives.
The room soon filled with conversation as volunteers, who knew each member’s story, gently prompted memories.
The extensive training for Old Friends Club volunteers occurs once a month and covers everything from fall-prevention and responding to challenging behaviors to an overview of the dementia bill of rights, Schoenberg said.
Beyond simply learning to support members, volunteers gain a deep understanding of their past.
“We do something called life story collection,” Schoenberg said. Each member and their loved ones are interviewed to get a picture of the person’s life from early childhood onward.
“The idea with life story collection is we get to know people,” Schoenberg said. “We get to know their hopes and their fears.”
Every life story is compiled in a binder, and volunteers are asked to read each member’s life story.
Spangler said that in each volunteer meeting, they talk about every member and decide how they might best be supported in the coming month.
The Old Friends Club’s care, activities and individualized support come at the price of $400 per month for once weekly 5-hour sessions.
Scholarships are available for those who are unable to afford the cost of membership, Schoenberg said, provided by a $10,000 donation from a former island resident.
At the moment, the Old Friends Club has two or three open slots for members, Spangler said.
The Vashon Old Friends Club is part of a statewide network of a couple similar clubs. Spangler said that founding the Vashon affiliate member club was a “year-long process” taken on by members of the Vashon Senior Center and the Vashon Care Network.
The club’s necessity became clear following the 2021 closure of Vashon Community Care, a full-time assisted living and memory care facility, according to their initial program description.
According to the description, 55% of Vashon residents are older than 55, yet no group day programs or respite services for caretakers existed on the island in January 2025.
That’s when the club’s founders began to “get serious” about a solution, Spangler said.
The founding team of the Old Friends Club was made up of members of the Vashon Care Network, the Senior Center, the Presbyterian Church and other volunteers with expertise from special education to health administration. Spangler said the founders drew about 60 people to an islandwide meeting in late April 2025 and exceeded their goal of raising $25,000 for materials and coordinator salaries by the end of July.
The Vashon Old Friends Club had its first session on Sept. 17. From the beginning, Spangler said, it had 11 members — a better turnout than expected.
Hand sanitizer was passed around before members were served at their tables with plastic bowls of soup, fresh cornbread and a salad which is provided every other week by the Senior Center according to Schoenberg.
Everyone in the Old Friends Club sat down to eat together. The room soon filled with the din of clacking plastic spoons and the chatter of members and volunteers.
Many conversations centered on the food, which is entirely provided and prepared by volunteers each week.
Spangler sat in the corner of one table, checking in with all of the members. “This is kind of magical,” she remarked. “People take such good care of each other, the food is phenomenal — it’s nuts.”
She turned to one man whose life story she had written when he joined the club, inviting him to talk about his past. The man replied that he didn’t know his life story. Spangler reminded him patiently, beginning to recount what she knew by heart.
Next week, the Old Friends will arrive to find a surprise waiting for them: a framed photo of their hands, alongside their own quote, for them and their loved ones to keep.
At 2:30 p.m. members’ primary caretakers and loved ones began to arrive. A major goal of the Old Friends Club is to provide a much-needed break for these community members, Schoenberg said.
“Almost all of our loved ones — the family members — just go off and they go swimming, they go to the library, they take a nap,” she said. “That’s an incredibly important thing for them, especially on this island that has no long-term care.”
Rachelle Meenach-Ligrano, the primary caretaker for her husband Michael, said she uses much of Wednesday to complete household chores like doing laundry and paying bills. “I mostly just end up at home, getting home projects done at my own pace,” she said.
Anne Lewis, whose spouse is a member of the Old Friends Club, appreciates having some time to focus on herself.
“I had this great big to-do list, and I didn’t even look at it,” she said. “I went over to the CD player, and I got out Handel’s Messiah. And I listened to it at loud [volume] the whole way. And I hadn’t realized — that’s what I needed.”
Giving people what they need is a theme at the Old Friends Club — whether it’s connection, entertainment, or just a moment to breathe.
Tess Halpern is a contributing journalist to The Beachcomber.
Editor’s note: The median age on Vashon is 51.7, and about one-third of residents are 65 or older, according to 2020 census data. Staying active, and connected, is woven into daily life here.
This is the third edition of a recurring column that spotlights islanders who defy expectations of age and live with creativity, vitality and purpose.
If you know someone who embodies that spirit — or if that someone is you — please reach out. Share your story at editor@vashonbeachcomber.com.
The daily schedule. (Tess Halpern Photo)
