Bingo years

Sepia Saturday's photo this week has a marquee stating "Bingo." (Check other posts on this meme HERE)

I immediately remembered my last career as an Activity Director and the weekly (sometimes more) Bingo games which I called for various senior citizens.



For several years I worked in an Assisted Living home in Tampa FL, and provided newsletters, calendars, parties and daily activities to give added quality to the lives of 70 or so seniors. These people needed a bit of help with their care, and could do a lot of things on their own.

I kept a scrapbook of some of our outings (we had use of a van holding 10 or so people) and also of some of the visiting talents who came to entertain them.

A trip to the pier in Clearwater included lunch at one of the favorite restaurants.

The valentine's party included a random "king" and "queen" of hearts being crowned.  A singing group named the Ladies in Blue entertained the residents in the lobby/living room area.  Did I mention my monthly budget was $50?  I found lots of talent which donated their time to the seniors.

High school students volunteered to help with giving nail polish to the ladies, and a lot of the seniors showed up for weekly Bingo. I had a grab bag of prizes including nail polish and candy bars for the winners at this facility.  We had afternoon tea parties and birthday parties, and the lower photo shows a visit from a Brownie troop.  Children were very popular visitors!

For our Mother's Day tea I designed invitations and drew a picture of the facility.  Bill O'Hara was a good friend who loved to woo the ladies with his voice.  Another friend was Rosemary Stout, who played a beautiful harp for our Chirstmas party one year.  Did I mention I did all the seasonal decorations also?

Justin Wolfe was the grandson of a resident, and he liked to lip-synch for Neil Diamond songs.  The ladies loved him!  I heard he stopped doing this after he went to college, but it was great to have him be a guest while he was a volunteer from high school.

I worked in two Assisted Living facilities (both privately owned, which means a business hoping to make a profit). Before that I was a counselor in several nursing homes in another city for public facilities which meant even less funding was available for activities.

My last Activities Director position was for a private/public residence for Independent Seniors.  I loved that it had a microphone for calling Bingo.  These were serious players, who bought their cards, and then all the money was returned to the winners of the games.

I continued to use my connections all over town with public persons who wanted to volunteer to make seniors happier.  Fortunately independent seniors were able to purchase tickets for catered dinners which also covered the cost of professional entertainers. But that's another scrapbook!


Today's Quote:

There are many fine things which you mean to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is yours is the present. Grenville Kleiser

Pre-retirement memories

First - the pottery for today...after all, I call my blog Alchemy of clay...for a reason!

How the pots get to the Tailgate Market every Saturday morning!

A Sepia Saturday post for this week!  I had such fun hearing about the other Sepians' opinions of my favorite pie last week.  Disclaimer, I didn't measure my ingredients usually, so if you follow the recipe I posted last week, it might be too something or another.

But I will try a bit harder this week to show you something old.

Not really that old.  But in the years before I retired, I worked as an Activity Director in a 200 unit senior citizen apartment building.  That meant there were at least 200 people, and really many more because a lot of apartments had a couple living in them.



J C Towers is a well maintained building, and I greatly enjoyed providing programs daily, including publishing a calendar which I posted on each of the 16 floors weekly.

Warning...the volume is very high on the following video, so you might want to turn down your own volume, or be ready to put the volume on the video lower quickly.

 

I haven't tried posting a video before, and this one just jumped out of my files.  

That was 8-9years ago.  And my life has changed so drastically it's hard to remember how it used to be.

Five days a week I was in that office at 8 am until 5 pm...except the days when I provided an evening program which included anything from catered dinners with an entertainer to I don't know what else.  I was also responsible for cleaning up the kitchen and dining room following those programs so the lunch people would have a tidy and clean area the next day, and some of the senior residents also helped.  There was a Kosher lunch provided which was cooked off site and brought in each day.

I did such fun things as arrange Tai Chi for elders, including Chi Gong, and daily sit-er-cise videos.   I taught folks how to paint a watercolor tree like the one on my wall in my office. 

We had some celebrations of various holidays, Thanksgiving, Valentines, St. Patricks Day, etc.  We had weekly Bingo, which I led as well as being responsible for the prize money from the purchased cards.  All the money was divided between the 20 games we played...and these were serious Bingo playing people, and the house didn't get anything left over!

I arranged a lot of volunteer visits by some of the "well known groups" in Tampa.  We had a "Pirate Krewe" of lovely ladies visit who are part of the parade and doings at the annual festival called Gasparilla.  We had some students who were in competition for Irish Step Dancing perform for us.

I also had a weekly Coffee and Cuban Bread group, which sometimes had bagels instead.  It was an interesting mix of people at J C Towers, because perhaps a third of the residents were Jewish, and a third were Hispanic.  Did I mention this is in Tampa, FL?  Almost everyone was over 65.  The rent was subsidized for many of the occupants.  What a fun group of people!

People didn't move away very often.  This was an independent living situation, so everyone was on their own.  Occasionally there would be an emergency medical team called for a few folks who had accidental falls or other problems.  And every once in a while there would be a fire drill.  That was not much fun, because you couldn't use the elevators, and those folks from way up on 16 had a long way to come down.

Tampa is in the path of hurricanes every once in a while...so the residents all learned what they could do when and if the electricity was off.  Again, no elevators.  And sometimes no water.  The windows could be opened in the apartments, and when you opened your doorway to the hall, you could get some cross ventilation...as well as more light besides the emergency lights.  Tampa is certainly hot during much of the year.

I made up my mind never to live in a tower when I retired!

I was certainly ready to move to the mountains of NC and to not be any place on a daily schedule, and so I slumped into retirement with a lovely period of depressed adjustment.  I'm glad I got involved in a lot of things after a few months.  But that's the "after retirement story."  This is the "before" story.

I just tried looking on line for pictures of the apartment building, and the only one I found is the one above.  I wonder why.  It is kind of hard to take a picture there without any people in it.  I spent lots of time taking pictures of the people at parties, then posting them for their enjoyment and to share with friends.

OK, come on over to Sepia Saturday to see what else folks have posted on their own blogs (scroll down to the list of people's names as links) maybe about Russian violinists playing chess...HERE.

The quote for today:

Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, the eternal One.

Ralph Waldo Emerson