By Dan­ny Barletta
Newswrit­ing II UConn
April 29. 2019

MANSFIELD- Joan Doiron, a res­i­dent of the town since 1978, spends all her week­days at the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter, usu­al­ly doing puz­zles, play­ing Wii Bowl­ing or singing in the chorus.

She said that she loves every­thing that the senior cen­ter offers and con­sid­ers the com­mu­ni­ty there to be part of her extend­ed family.

“Any­thing you can think of, this is the hub,” Doiron said. “This is where you want to come to, and this is where you want to get your con­nec­tions. This is where you want to meet peo­ple… It’s like a fam­i­ly atmos­phere, and it’s a great place.”

Joan Doiron enjoys doing puz­zles and oth­er activ­i­ties at the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

Doiron, 63, is part of a new­er gen­er­a­tion of seniors that expects more from their senior cen­ter, and senior cen­ters have had to evolve to accom­mo­date them. Senior cen­ters are very diverse com­mu­ni­ties, and they are becom­ing even more diverse with the arrival of a younger senior pop­u­la­tion, Mans­field Senior Cen­ter Super­vi­sor Sarah Tay­lor said.

“We’re see­ing a wider cross sec­tion of ages,” Tay­lor said. “It’s real­ly chal­leng­ing, but it’s real­ly neat and very unique to senior cen­ters that we can be serv­ing folks from their 50s on up through real­ly their 90s or to 100.”

The Mans­field Senior Cen­ter sits at 303 Maple Road and is open 8:30 a.m.- 4:30 p.m. Mon­day through Fri­day. It is open to both res­i­dents and non-res­i­dents age 55 and up. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

The senior pop­u­la­tion will con­tin­ue to expand, espe­cial­ly in Con­necti­cut, which has the sixth-old­est pop­u­la­tion of any state in the coun­try, accord­ing to the US Cen­sus Bureau’s 2017 Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey. Senior cen­ter lead­ers said they have to respond to this boom­ing pop­u­la­tion by hav­ing pro­grams and activ­i­ties for every­one in the age range that they serve.

Mary Flood, the new pro­gram coor­di­na­tor at the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter who spent 10 years as the direc­tor of the senior cen­ter in Port­land, Con­necti­cut, said that even as recent­ly as 10 years ago, senior cen­ters didn’t offer near­ly as many pro­grams as they do now, and the rea­son is the chang­ing wants and needs of seniors. Flood said that the changes real­ly start­ed to hap­pen when the Baby Boomers became seniors.

“I think that whole gen­er­a­tion who went through the Depres­sion and the war real­ly didn’t expect the town or any­body to do any­thing for them,” Flood said. “As the Baby Boomers are com­ing in, it’s a lot dif­fer­ent. They want ser­vices, and they want good ser­vices and they’re more active.”

The seniors now want pro­grams geared more toward bet­ter health and fit­ness, Flood said. The Mans­field cen­ter offers numer­ous fit­ness pro­grams that are very pop­u­lar, includ­ing tap danc­ing, tai chi and yoga.

The new­er group of seniors also wants more nutri­tious food options, which is some­thing that the cen­ter has been work­ing on in recent years.

“Peo­ple are very con­scious of what they eat,” Tay­lor said. “They’re look­ing for a high­er qual­i­ty food… Part of what we’ve done over the last year is real­ly expand­ed our nutri­tion pro­gram to include a bunch of dif­fer­ent options for that.”

These options include the “Fresh Fri­days” pro­gram, which start­ed in 2016 to give the seniors some home­made meals instead of the gener­ic hot lunch­es pro­vid­ed by a fed­er­al senior meal pro­gram. The newest ini­tia­tive for the senior cen­ter is to open its own cafe, called the “Maple Road Cafe,” which will be run by vol­un­teers. It will be open to the pub­lic to get cof­fee and dan­ish­es in the morn­ing and soups, sal­ads and sand­wich­es for lunch.

The future home of the “Maple Road Cafe” at the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

The cen­ter has also added many new trips. The cen­ter has its own van that takes the seniors any­where from local shop­ping trips to out-of-state day trips to New York or Massachusetts. 

The van trips are very con­ve­nient for the seniors who don’t have their own trans­porta­tion. For John Adam­cik, a res­i­dent of the near­by Wrights Vil­lage hous­ing com­plex who vol­un­teers in the kitchen at the senior cen­ter, the van is the biggest change he’s seen since he start­ed com­ing to the senior cen­ter in 2008.

“I don’t believe they had any­thing like that [the van] when I first came here,” Adam­cik said.

The cen­ter also recent­ly opened a new branch of the Mans­field Pub­lic Library right inside the cen­ter. It has its own col­lec­tion of books and a check­out sys­tem through which the seniors can reserve books from the main branch to pick up at the senior cen­ter as well. Since the town library is on the oth­er side of Mans­field, this pro­vides a more acces­si­ble option for the seniors who live nearby.

The new branch of the Mans­field Pub­lic library locat­ed inside the senior cen­ter. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

Direc­tor of Human Ser­vices Pat Schnei­der, who has 30 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing in senior cen­ters, said that it is imper­a­tive for senior cen­ters to keep up with the times.

“In order to real­ly sur­vive, [senior cen­ters] have to con­tin­u­al­ly evolve, like any pro­gram, to the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion that they serve,” Schnei­der said. 

Tech­nol­o­gy has evolved in senior cen­ters. In pre­vi­ous years, there were com­put­er class­es in com­put­er labs to teach seniors how to use them. Now, com­put­ers and smart­phones have become so inte­grat­ed in soci­ety that the seniors, for the most part, know how to use them. Instead of labs and class­es, now there is one-on-one train­ing to teach seniors how to use cer­tain apps, such as Uber or Face­book, Schnei­der said.

“It’s not teach­ing the basic pro­grams and how to use a com­put­er any­more,” Schnei­der said. “It’s now how can you uti­lize tech­nol­o­gy to best improve your life.”

Vol­un­teer recep­tion­ist Bev­er­ly Gotch, who has been com­ing to the cen­ter for 12 years, said that the changes are all due to a ded­i­cat­ed staff, which she said is the best that she has seen. 

“We’ve had two or three dif­fer­ent direc­tors since I’ve been here, but we’ve hit the jack­pot with this one,” Gotch said. “She’s excep­tion­al. In fact, the whole paid staff is exceptional.”

Bev­er­ly Gotch has been work­ing at the front desk of the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter as a vol­un­teer recep­tion­ist for six years. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

The mis­sion state­ment for the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter is “to pro­vide a wide vari­ety of pro­grams and ser­vices designed to meet the diverse and ever-chang­ing needs of seniors in our com­mu­ni­ty.” The cen­ter has been able to car­ry this mis­sion out by estab­lish­ing changes in mul­ti­ple areas.

Despite the rev­o­lu­tion­ary recent changes at the cen­ter, its orig­i­nal goal remains the same.

“We’re build­ing com­mu­ni­ty,” Tay­lor said. “We’re try­ing to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for folks to make con­nec­tions and live their fullest life that they can, at what­ev­er lev­el that is for them.”