Monday, Aug. 19, 2002 | 11:15 a.m.
In the cool of Lois Payne's three-car garage, a small group of seniors has staked out a haven against change. They come weekdays to paint tigers slipping through green waters, saguaro-studded landscapes and beach scenes hazy with whitecaps.
The amateur oil painters left behind Henderson's only senior center this spring, following their art teacher to avoid rising class fees, the arrival of activities open to all ages and the sense that a heyday of pinochle, poker and friendly gossip had been all but lost to a new, hard-nosed Parks and Recreation business model.
On Wednesday by one of the three bay doors, student Carol Cummings was poised before a canvas in a red apron and sandals, working from a postcard of a desert landscape. She'd dropped $3 in a wicker basket for the three-hour morning class. She'd brought the doughnuts, Krispy Kremes.
"The word has gotten out that they're going to charge for everything and that they're going to let the kids in," said Cummings, 58, a widow now for 10 years. "But a lot of seniors don't have the money to lay out $40 or $50 for a (six-week) art class. And we don't have another place to go with people our own age."
At the downtown senior center, where a class of seniors murmured over ceramic figurines and the lunchroom boiled with talk, sentiments were much the same. At least when it came to kids.
Linda Blackwell, 92, sitting over a plate of corned beef with her 72-year-old daughter Doreen Markey, said she, too, had heard the Parks and Recreation Department was planning to let kids in.
"Let's face it," she said, "The younger ones have their own ideas and so do we."
Martha Winterholler, 98, agreed. "Never put kids and grandparents together. Only on special occasions."
The senior center should be for seniors and for seniors only, the three women agreed.
Tanya Richburg, the director of the center, had to laugh.
"But they're already here," Richburg said. "It's just that they're not here now."
It's true, Richburg said. Classes open to all ages have been offered at the senior center since the spring, but at hours when seniors don't typically use the center. Kids have also participated in special events, such as a fashion show and an afternoon tea at the center. The women said they liked those events. But they didn't think of them as open-age activities.
"There's a misconception that with multi-generational offerings, the kids will be running around like an open gym," said Tracy Eng, assistant director of the center. "But it's structured activities."
For Payne though, and for many of her students, the center has not been the same since Richburg established new management practices, limiting cash transactions to the front desk and requiring seniors to sign up three months, rather than one month, in advance of field trips.
Previously cash could be given directly to teachers in classes. The more formal guidelines have drawn criticism from some seniors, who say they are inconvenient and lack the personal touch of the old policy.
The new policies are the same at the city's four other recreation centers.
But Payne and others felt the changes came without warning or discussion, and in her garage, with flute music playing and the smell of turpentine and linseed oil drifting from coffee cans, Payne says she breathes easy again.
"The temperature, the whole feeling at the senior center changed," Payne said. "But here, I can share my art, teach to my heart's content and I'm happy as a clam." But so, too, is Linda Croft, 52, a ceramics teacher who remained at the senior center through the changes, where ceramics students pay $4 a class.
"I love the relationships here," Croft said. "I have students that come in and hug me, or ones I've gone to their house and done repairs because I know they can't afford them. They'll have a hard time getting me out of here."
The bottom line, Richburg said, is that the center is there for the seniors first. That won't change.
"Every thought is for the seniors. I want that to be reflected," Richburg said. "By coming here, they are improving their quality of life. And if something is wrong, everything is just a fingertip away for them. If someone says 'My daughter's taking my money,' that's a phone call."
Lee Gullickson, 75, has the best of both worlds. She is a student of Payne's and a volunteer at the senior center.
On Wednesday morning she dropped by to paint in a woven, wide-brimmed hat, a flower-print dress and white pumps.
"I hate to tell you this," she said, "But older people hate change. It's just that the old crowd was used to the way things were done. And now they've changed." But it's structured activities."
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