As measured by the 2012 census, 8.1% of neighbors in Dayton’s Bluff are persons over 65 years of age. When you add 55-65, that percentage climbs to 16.2%. That’s a lot of knowledge, wisdom, and experience among us. Are we harnessing those assets?
You may know a senior neighbors. You may have helped support our block nurse program that helps seniors stay independent in their homes.* You may have been curious about what our Community Organizer Karin DuPaul cites as the three senior housing facilities in Dayton’s Bluff: Cerenity near Mounds Park; Parkway Gardens senior apartments on Old Hudson; and the highrise at 1300 Wilson. Also in the works: A revamped assisted living and Alzheimer’s care facility on 7th Street.
While I know where many seniors live, I’ve gotten a sense of disconnection from my senior neighbors. My son doesn’t have grandparents close by, and I’ve often brought him to the East YMCA to interact with seniors, even if only for a few moments. Every time we pass Parkway Gardens senior apartments, he begs to go visit the residents. But there’s this sense in me–however accurate or misguided–that I’m just not welcome there…that I’d somehow be a burden or an interloper.
As I look around and notice the general isolation that’s so endemic to our culture, I’m most haunted by the opportunities we all miss when we don’t interact daily with our senior neighbors. How might Dayton’s Bluff draw in and mobilize seniors’ gifts and dreams? How might we make more connections among us all?
Drawing again from the ABCD Institute’s Building Communities from the Inside Out, here’s a list of what some Chicagoland communities have been up to:
- A group of seniors worked with their neighborhood association to secure a loan from a local community development credit union in order to open a consignment shop administrated and staffed entirely by seniors.
- A nonprofit organization connects retired senior business executives with a wide variety of nonprofit groups in the city as part of an Executive Service Corps.
- A group of 10 to 12 trained seniors make telephone calls to get people involved in community activities at the Pilsen Neighborhood Community Council.
- A group of seniors that forms the Eastside Historical Society works for the local high school in space provided by the park system in developing a museum which documents the history of four Chicago neighborhoods.
- At the Lincoln Park Senior Center, a group of seniors presents skits, songs, historical presentations, and cooks southern-style food at local churches, synagogues, and other senior centers during Black History Month.
- The Kelly Library works together with the president of the local historical society to collect oral histories from senior citizens with the purpose of compiling a book that will chronicle the history of the neighborhood.
- Through the Illinois Intergenerational Project at Stateway Gardens Library, seniors from the Chicago Housing Authority senior building meet with fourth-graders from a local school once a week to conduct interviews with each other and as a result developed oral histories and act out skits based on the seniors’ lives.
- A local drugstore chain offers discounted prescriptions to seniors and works with medical school doctors and the seniors group in the community in order to provide educational programs at local churches on medications and their proper usage.
Could we do any of that here? What would it take? What might the community gain? I invite comment!
*If you want to support the Living at Home Block Nurse Program, they’ve got a fundraiser coming up on Saturday, April 21 at First Lutheran Church. Cost is $12-15 per person, and there’ll be music and prizes.
A Thread of Connection 