‘We’re a senior family’

The Trussville building designed for senior adults is growing up.

The Trussville Senior Citizens’ Activity Center, which opened Aug. 31, 1999, is now 20 years old. And, like its active membership, it shows no signs of slowing down soon. 

The membership stands at approximately 500 people, and the nearby greenway has increased visibility. Director Sandi Wilson said she gave out four membership applications recently in a single afternoon. 

“I hope it keeps growing,” she said.

While the building is 20 years old, the senior citizens’ program is older. Wilson was hired in April 1996 to help start up the Trussville Parks and Recreation Department with Director David Vinson. Three weeks after Wilson’s hire, an exercise program was underway in the now-demolished John C. Yarbrough Community Center.

Wilson has seen a lot in her time as the center’s director, like a 93-year-old woman exercising there three times a week and signing up for line dancing class. She has seen women who grew up picking cotton in the Alabama heat learn that it is all right to participate in some fun. She has held hands while ears were pierced. She has listened to stories of bus rides to Birmingham’s Alabama Theatre. 

She has tagged along for out-of-state trips — in July, the group’s trek was by train from Birmingham to New Orleans for four days of airboat swamp, plantation and riverboat jazz tours. Already this year, day trips have gone to Florence, Montgomery and Auburn. A five-day trip planned for December is bound for Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. 

Wilson’s also seen the required membership age drop to 55. While the exercise, activities and travel schedule for members is enough to tire a college sophomore, Wilson points out: This is an activity center.

“I used to tell people all the time, ‘Well, we don’t sit and drool,’” Wilson said. “We don’t. We move. We are an activity center. It’s one of those things that once you get them pulled in, they like it and they see that we don’t sit and drool. We’re not a nursing home. We’re not an assisted living place. You drive yourself. You come and go as you want.”

Getting that point across has been a challenge through the years, though it is improving. The challenge these days is offering something different from the past due to changing times. What a senior adult did for fun 20 years ago is often different from today. Recent additions are a tai chi class and a senior softball league.

“The core base of what we want to do is offer a fun environment where people can come and be themselves and hang out,” Wilson said. “It’s just fun. It’s kind of like ‘Cheers.’ When you walk in, everybody knows your name.”

The center is a host site for the Nutrition Program offered through United Way AAA. To qualify for this program, citizens must be age 60 or older and live in Alabama. For a $1.50 donation, seniors are able to eat a hot meal each day. 

There is a large game room with two pool tables, a private card room, an exercise room, a coffee/TV room, back porch with fireplace, and a multipurpose room with a floating hardwood floor. 

Wilson, who receives feedback through a suggestion box and an Advisory Board, said at one time a grief support program was floated as an idea for the senior activity center but was not implemented. 

“We don’t want anything sad in here. We are the grief support,” Wilson said. “They just need to come and join us because there’s rarely a situation that someone can go through that, if they walk through the doors, they’re not going to find somebody else that’s been there. There’s somebody else here that’s lost a sister or brother. There are plenty of people here that have lost their parents, aunts, uncles, children. You’re going to find somebody that’s going to sympathize with you. [Former Advisory Board member] Gus Kennedy always said that, ‘We’re not a senior center, we’re a senior family.’” 

Wilson, from her office that overlooks a portion of the city’s greenway along the Cahaba River, made her pitch to residents who either have not heard of the senior activity center or are approaching their 55th birthday. 

“Where else are you going to go where everybody’s doing the same thing that you want to do without any barriers and just being themselves and having a good time?” she said.

Wilson talks about the exercise programs, line dance, square dance, yoga and the women playing cards. She talks at length about the men who play pool.

“You can laugh just about any given day,” Wilson said. “If you’re feeling down, go stand in the hall and listen. It’s no different than a boys’ locker room. They are going to pick on each other. They are going to call each other out. They are going to talk smack. And then they are going to get each other some coffee. It is what it is, and it’s hilarious.” 

Through Wilson’s office wall that borders the pool room, the crack of pool balls echoes.