EDITORIAL: Celebrating the legacy of Seniors Inc.

Published 11:45 am Wednesday, February 8, 2023

The scenario at first glance seems disappointing. A vital community group that relies on volunteers is dissolving due in part to declining interest.

But the end of Baker County Senior Citizens Inc. is more a cause for celebration than for lamentation.

The nonprofit, created in 1977, has its origins in the late 1960s, when a group of local residents gathered weekly for card games and potlucks.

Half a century ago there were relatively few organized social groups for seniors, and little financial support from the government.

But today the situation is much different — and much better.

The federal government is a reliable source of money for senior programs, which typically are administered by local organizations. In Baker County that’s Community Connection.

For more than four decades, Seniors Inc. has been a partner with Community Connection.

And what an effective relationship it has been.

Community Connection oversees the meals, bingo games and myriad other events that make Baker City’s Senior Center, at 2810 Cedar St., such a bustling building.

But that center exists thanks to Seniors Inc. The nonprofit bought the property in 1994, and five years later the senior center opened.

That accomplished one of Seniors Inc.’s major goals, said Ed Payton, a longtime president of the organization.

Seniors Inc. has also achieved another vital objective — stable sources of money that allow Community Connection to continue to offer the robust schedule of activities at the senior center.

In November the Seniors Inc. executive committee — Payton, Mary Jo Carpenter, Deanna Davis and Peggy Payton — decided during its annual meeting to dissolve the corporation and transfer its assets to Community Connection.

Those assets include the senior center as well as an endowment worth about $100,000 and around $30,000 in liquid assets.

That money will continue to support senior programs in Baker County.

And seniors will continue to offer valuable volunteer support for those programs.

The bottom line is that although Seniors Inc. will no longer exist, everything that the group and its members advocated for, and helped to make possible over nearly half a century, will continue.

There’s nothing sad about that legacy.