Old friends pay visit to B.C. Senior Center

By Jean Reid Norman

Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2009 | 1:59 a.m.

The Senior Center of Boulder City is a place where friends get together to eat lunch, play cards or just visit, but on July 21, some special guests stopped by.

Four residents of The Homestead at Boulder City, an assisted-living facility run by the nonprofit Volunteers of America, were brought by the facility’s bus to the Senior Center.

Among those guests were Ida Bell Rogers and Ada “Sugar” Garbo, longtime volunteers at the Senior Center.

Rogers and Garbo walked into the Senior Center, and immediately hugs and exclamations of “Hello, How are you?” followed in their path.

Rogers, who volunteered at the Senior Center for 18 years, was the inspiration for the outing, The Homestead Activities Director Debbie Patterson said.

“We are trying to rekindle old friendships,” Patterson said. “I figured, why not come back and see friends they haven’t seen in so long?”

Rogers said she used to get to the Senior Center regularly, but her visits declined after she gave up her car. Before the visit, she relied on friends to take her, she said.

“This is one of our treasures here,” volunteer Gloria Nelson said after greeting Rogers.

Garbo said she used to visit the Senior Center every day, “to keep up with things,” but hadn’t been able to get there much lately. Some of the paintings she donated to the Senior Center when she moved into The Homestead are hanging on the wall.

“It’s a good place to see old friends,” she said.

Among those waiting to see her were Al and Donna Harrell, her nephew and wife.

“There are not many places she can go where people don’t know her,” Donna Harrell said.

But Rogers and Garbo weren’t the only ones to receive a familiar welcome. Sadie Leming and Jack Eckert also visited the center, and Eckert found an old friend he didn’t realize he had.

Volunteer Betty Smith, who worked at the Bureau of Reclamation for more than 10 years, asked Eckert if they didn’t know one another. Eckert didn’t remember, but then Smith realized: They had worked at the Bureau of Reclamation together. She was in the finance department and met people in many departments because of her duties.

“He made an impression on me,” she told a small group that watched the reunion. “I was young and impressionable then.”