Happy Birthday White Rock Senior Activity Center!
“It Takes a Village to Support a Volunteer Senior Center”
White Rock Senior Center History - Told by Mary Venable & Jan Barber
Please join us on Wednesday, August 14 during lunch to celebrate White Rock’s 29th birthday with cake and a prize drawing. See the event details here.
Read below to learn more about the center’s beginnings as told by Mary Venable and Jan Barber, who helped start the center in 1995.
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It all started in the mid 1990s when a group started meeting in White Rock at Katherine’s Restaurant on Longview Avenue once a month for good food & conversation. They called themselves the Prime Timers. Mary remembers that, “Katherine welcomed us because we tipped, we behaved ourselves, but we were a large group!” These lunches built the cohesion necessary to start the White Rock Senior Center. The second key factor in the creation of the WR Senior Center was a cohort of freshly retired LANL employees. “We were so tired of coming to the hill and we had all these people- a lot of men- who had just retired. They did not want to drive to the hill anymore, but they had all this time on their hands,” says Mary.
Mary knew there was a community need for something to do beyond a monthly lunch at Katherine’s. She also knew there was a large county building sitting unused. She thought, “Well, I’ll see what I can do.” Jan added, “Mary was the ramrodder that got it started and kept it going.” At first, the space the county council granted them was modest. “They gave us a little room -- oh and a bathroom!” The group figured out how to improve the space and make it more inviting. The room started to fill up with “necessities” like a coffee pot and a refrigerator. They made physical changes too, with the County’s permission of course. “We cut a hole in one of the walls so you could see who came in the door when you sat at the desk.”
The group who frequented the White Rock Municipal Building, in the beginning, was comprised of about six women. Mary, always looking for an opportunity to expand the reach of their little room, knew there was a group of men who went down to the service station to have coffee. One of those men was Jack Clifford, and he and “the guys” heard there was this new place with cookies. So they moseyed into the building one day to look around and soon enough they were regulars in the little room with the coffee pot & the sweet treats. There was one adjustment that Jack felt was necessary to make. He was not a morning person in any regard, and soon successfully lobbied the county for extended evening hours at the center.
The center continued to grow from there. Mary’s strategy was simple but effective; she just kept asking “Can we have this? Could we have that?” Members of the Los Alamos County Council knew Mary cared about creating a space for the retired and senior people of White Rock to come together. Mary shared that, “The County Council pretended to be thinking about all this but as soon as they saw me come in they knew ‘she’s gonna want more space, and we’ve got it...why don’t we just give it to her for heaven’s sakes?!’” Jan added that Mary developed quite the reputation with the County Council, “Here she comes again, she’s wanting more stuff!”
There was good reason to request more space. The group needed it for their ever-expanding events and programs, like the potlucks they held once a month. These potlucks were so popular the attendees overflowed from the little room to eat outside on the patio. Mary says, “People had to stand to eat and eventually they needed to sit!” At first, the county allowed them to have lunch just once a month in “that huge empty room”. This same room is now the dining room where lunch is served five days a week at White Rock, but back then there was no kitchen to prepare meals in!
The White Rock Senior Center came together in bits & pieces, gradually adding activities like cards and pool, and requesting space for groups like Wood Carvers and Hookers & Stitchers to meet regularly. The volunteers also organized large-scale events, like an annual Fish Fry that took place every year in late August or early September. “We’d get all these fish and three or four of us would get it all ready and then a couple of the guys would fry it up. They cooked outside, so the whole neighborhood could smell the fish. It made the news, it was so well timed and wanted in the community.”
In many ways, the creation of the White Rock Senior Center came down to good timing. Mary saw an opportunity, a need, and a space, and the community responded. She calls the center “a miracle waiting to happen.” Both Jan and Mary emphasized the importance of volunteer contributions that made the White Rock Senior Center possible. Everything from the coffee to the potlucks to the overnight fieldtrips were made possible thanks to volunteers. “Nobody got paid, and we had a kitty on the food table and people would donate,” Jan recalls. The first paid staff person did not arrive at the center until 2006, meaning the White Rock Senior Center operated on volunteer time, talents, and donations for eleven years. Even today with all our paid staff at LARSO, our volunteers are so important to the operation of both centers and make our regular programming and special events possible.
While much has changed since the early days of the White Rock Senior Center, with paid staff, new programs, and the unification of White Rock & Betty Ehart through LARSO, much of the vision remains the same: To promote positive living in Los Alamos County for older adults.