thank you so much kitty in many ways i feel like i would want to be interviewing you today kitty our host for the benefit of the audience is a very very beloved member of our community and she has contributed in many many ways not just to the center but to the community at large and has championed many wonderful causes and has been a very very lively participant so i am delighted and honored that you asked that i speak today so what would you like to know  you came from you know back ok so my name is foreign and so many people do know from my name that i must be from somewhere else i and so i suppose i came from the big city and grew up as a city kid then i came up to this area for college to brandeis university and majored in history and sociology and developed an interest in social work and sociology which brought me to my first job in the so that led me to social work school so i did my degree of social work at simmons college in boston and that's where i began my at point forty year career in working with older adults need a lot of that we do i have to say that i tell all my young social work in turns and social workers coming out of school yes we in the geriatric social work field need you and i tell them that  you know they're inclined to work with young families who need a lot of help but they need to exactly people need a lot of help and very often we don't get it well you are right and this is what astonishes my my younger colleagues who are looking for work in the field is that they they don't realize what are and what the needs are older people what they are up against and also how rewarding it is and how vibrant people are in their later years and how much we can offer older people i must say that most people see it when you i'll tell you but you are an example for what we what we see every day which is and at our center at the beach street center i mean i think we can compete with any lively evening scene in boston we have so much going on and people are interacting in very youthful ways now please tell me also how you ago we had a celebration of eight years moving into our beautiful center which is located on beach street and it is beautiful thank you it was a thirty year process kitty it began with seniors realizing they want a place to congregate however they felt that the town  was ignoring this need for many many years yeah it and i must say the seniors of the town are really who made it happen because they spoke up they said they they clamored and clamored until by the time i came to the job as director of council on aging which was seventeen years ago they were fired up be that the space opened up the candle school for and which became an art center had burnt down a number of years before so that the space open very important is much room in belmont correct so when i came on board at least there was a temporary place we were at the our lady of mercy parish hall  some in the audience may still remember and katie i remember meeting you there you came then and but the archdiocese had to sell the place so we could no longer be there so that also pressured the community but thankfully the community voted in favor of a dead what we call the dead exclusion of paying for a building it was five million dollars paid for by the town and in the meantime we started a nonprofit or a fund raising and support organisation that raised a million dollars towards the project it was it was a huge help and was a model for a public private partnership so that's so we were  homeless for about eighteen months in the modular units behind the high school so we were hobbling along and then we opened up even though there were a lot of people who are still i would say very concerned they didn't know if their taxpayer money going to go into something that let's face it some people who don't need th thinks it's the expense this shouldn't have and shame on them shame on them well i'm happy to say that there are programs for everyone there now for the  older frailer people and for the boomer generation and for their family members who are younger rich and poor white nonwhite  that all those groups feel comfortable in in the center and we have a very rich cultural opportunities we've had indian devalue celebration we have chinese new year celebrations and we have a lovely exchange so we try to bring everyone in this morning we had a wonderful breakfast sponsored by east cambridge savings back on behalf of the veterans and know you do things it is very important well it it was it we've been doing it for a few years and each year of course is anything you get better have to i have to really consult my scene you know it's every day i have it's hard for me to keep up with everything but i'm very happy about the the various programs and we all have some very interesting ones i went to one  see these are the things i like to know about you know we can put on programs but those you know how people's tastes it's important for us tonight also helped me a lot when i needed something and we had a very good program on food that my dog and the hospital that was also very very useful well i think you could learn a lot i encourage people to come to the center it's a beautiful place people are very very and you will learn things you never knew you had to know or have that's true and so sometimes you know we'll put on a program so it's always helpful to get this feedback we will try anything now also you have a very good person i can't remember her name who teaches x well we have a number of exercise glad which is why she's excellent i'm going to ask her to come on our greatest plane what beef old people should do because there's still hope even if you have problems sometimes you can like carol wilson who teaches yoga and art tight cheeks instructor i really can tell when somebody started with one of our exercise i try to track them  see what they look like and i will tell you invariably three months later they look i see their pastor better i see they're stronger and then i ask them when i have a chance as some have how is grateful for the town that we have her position as assistant director there was how could you do it is too much well it's it's fantastic she  is still looking for people who if they're alone on thanksgiving who would like we have a special meal well we're organizing a group of people who want to be together who are alone thanksgiving to meet at legal seafood at the charles hotel rearly at noon time so if anyone's interested to please call our main office six one seven nine nine three two nine seven zero and they can still sign up for this  that's great well now i remember use you said how did i get to belmont yes and i neglected that in my bio but so i've i've lived in cambridge for many many years but years ago one of my jobs out of social work school was with the visiting nurses in cambridge and so at the time we not only serviced cambridge but we service belmont and so i got to know the senior population a little bit from from that that time of working so that by the time  i was interested in going back to school i got my master's in public health in the year two thousand from harvard and i had this new skill set  and i saw that the belmont council on aging was looking for a director and i thought well this is great i feel connected to the community already from having had so many  and even though you know a number of years my job was really very focused on building the center and building up the programs now we we're trying to do some other things for seniors in the community worst now that we have the center and we're looking out to see what are the other needs and there are a lot of other needs for people in the community what do you think is the most important well what we're hearing from people and what we know is there are housing and even though there are some exemptions that the town provides for seniors including the work off program that is seniors can volunteer  to work in one and municipal office oh really i didn't know yeah and if their income eligible they can receive a thousand dollars off their taxes does that add in the well you know marie poor our volunteer coordinator she handles those applications she's very in as but she doesn't want to come oh yeah well if lot yes she does and a law fuel assistance applications and applications for these tax exemptions so to get back to what we were talking about yes so there though we can't solve that whole problem but we are aware and the selectmen aware and they're very supportive of doing what we can for seniors to remain in the town for housing to be developed that is senior friendly and so what we've decided to do kitty is we have a new initiative we're aiming to be it's a little it's about twenty two percent of the population of people over the age of sixty so that's quite sizable even for massachusetts so it really yes   a r p designation it means that we have a number of goals for the town that we're working on a number of important projects so what does it mean to be age friendly it means that the streets in a rather rough pick they should be well that that that's an interesting part of that conversation but certainly that that in that their concerns are included in decisions about town planning that would be very in this and civic in more civic engagement it means so that that so it basically means if you want to age well in belmont do you feel that on a structural level on a social level financial world health organization says beer hasn't sort of thing good i'm glad you're interested i was interested too when i first learnt about it and then we the way i learnt about it is because brookline near us got a nature friendly designation and they got a special award and i said wow this is really interesting so we're we're working towards it and i want to alert you and the public that we're conducting focus groups for seniors but other residents are invited the a professor from the university of massachusetts gerontology institute is going old you don't come around well not putting up with that and absolutely not putting the did a lot for everybody i think now this should do something for us too it's just a bad time well i'm i can tell you that one of the one of the goals an age friendly is to bring the generations together and i think there's a lot of i think there's a lot of there's a lack of communication and misunderstanding of one another and i think you kitty you actually have been championing causes for young will but i mention it because you know young there are young people who are interested in seniors we have young people who come and volunteer in and delightful and then  older people like yourself who care about younger people and and and and create public health projects for them so i think there's a lot of room for the generations to come together which i think is a good idea and that is part of that is also part of the age friendly process is to understand he made the i don't call the scent the xenia zen is just the scent the beach that he said well if you want to know that story we actually when the building was under construction we needed to find a name and we brought together the council an aging board the friends of the council on aging i want to make a plug and this is the time for the flyer if that could be put up we the friends is our not a nonprofit support organization that helped  finance the center but has also helped finance many of our programs and they will be holding a fundraiser coming up november eighteenth our annual crafts fair you thank you so the friends were invited that's the organization that funds our many of our programs to come together and come up with a name well kitty i thought this process was going to last months you know people everyone having their own opinion and until you get they came up with the name within an hour and really they just someone suggested and they said this is it because people didn't want people these days don't like the word senior so much not that it's a bad name  there was a little discussion about that they but our terminology is changing even for senior we we were turning in the in the geriatric world we're turning to use the term older adult because that seems to be more popular for whatever reason than any case we just want the idea was this place can have meaning for everyone in the community and then the board of selectmen loved it when we asked them to move for other things we vote there too right well the other reason people like the name we had a historian on the board of selectmen at the time he said he liked that idea of a place that it was that its center named after a place that conjures up history and in fact the tree on the property the beats the intrigues three there is a big tree and we had to build around a tree and very important that that the whole design was so that that tree would not be disturbed and i learnt from one of our seniors that it was actually planted by that seniors brother on