Senior Center boasts of community support

Submitted by Meg Dickens

Staff, volunteers, and members of the Johnson County Senior Center do their best to make a positive impact on the community. Two of the best-known groups for public improvement are the Quilting Bees and Chicks with Sticks. Both groups use donated materials to help the community.

Chicks with Sticks members’ most well-known projects are the hundreds of hats for elementary students and cancer patients, lap blankets for hospice patients, blankets for the Pregnancy Support Center. Their next project will be to create car seat blankets for the Pregnancy Support Center to fit with new regulations.

The Quilting Bees focus on blankets and quilts. Their most recent community outreach project revolved around making blankets to keep the homeless warm during the winter months. A project that many may not be aware of was the Danny Herman surprise tribute.

The ladies spent countless hours sewing and hemming scraps of fabric from some of Herman’s clothing into tapestries for his loved ones. Each tapestry was embroidered with a specialized, touching message for three generations of his family.

The Herman family contributes monthly donations to the center. This money mostly goes towards bolstering the meal program to ensure all those who request a meal can receive one via the meal route. This has helped expand availability greatly.

Danny Herman also helped establish one of the major staples of the senior center: transportation. According to Director Katherine Motsinger, it was Herman who purchased the first van used to bring those without transportation into the center, groups on trips, and even helps volunteers and staff travel to conferences, such as the 2022 FTAAAD Conference on Aging this past week.

Help from community members like the Hermans is paramount to the center’s continued growth and ability to give back. Whether through donations, volunteering, or other countless ways of assisting, the center would like to thank everyone who goes above and beyond to help make seniors’ lives the best possible.

Originally Published in The Tomahawk Newspaper