Callaway Senior Center volunteer and board member Betty Woodson first came to the Center when she moved to the area about five years ago. She didn’t know anybody besides immediate family.
“So, my daughter-in-law showed me where the Center was,” she said.
Yvonne Adams, who now serves as the center’s executive director, first came to the Center for her mom.
“She was here every single day,” Adams said. “She lived just over there until she broke her ankle. I thought this is something she always did, so I decided to do it.”
While the COVID-19 pandemic slowed things down, the Center is getting back to normal.
Adams said the Center’s biggest need is for volunteers to help get things done.
“There’s about six of us that work everything,” Adams said. “About any time of the day, there’s something that somebody could do.”
The Center sells lunch on weekdays, hosts a dance every Tuesday and Saturday, and serves as a social hub for area seniors. It runs on donations and volunteers.
“I help serve lunch sometimes because we have nobody on certain days,” Adams said.
She said, the Center needs volunteers to help clean, accept money at the dances and various things around the center.
Most of the Center’s volunteers are 70 or older, but she’d like to get more young people in, Adams said.
“We’d like to get younger people to come and try to get them to by,” she said. “There’s been two or three people die since I’ve been here and we need younger people in here to help influence us older people. I just want to try to get some young people that will want to get on the board.”
Concern over COVID-19 has kept some residents from visiting the Center, but Adams said attendance at lunch and the dances are starting to go back up.
About 50 people came out to this week’s dance and she anticipates more will attend the Valentine’s Day on Tuesday.
“We wore masts for quite a while until everybody was vaccinated,” Adams said.