Thank you letter from LBD - Found in Mama's Files

Many of you know I have been. am and will probably always be "fanciful. So here goes:
If there had not been a Sandy Carlin, a Mary Curlis, a Marcia Courts, Hank Russell, Rose Papier, Martin Janis or Governor James Rhodes, there would not have been a Senior program in Clermont County.

All of these people had a hand in bringing to fruition the small program of Senior Centers to the full service organization that it is today. If there had not been a Robert Slade and a Jim Mack there never would have been a hearing testing program that has grown to a comprehensive health screening program with the monitoring of Linda Lang and Jack Fee's willingness to work on Saturdays to bring persons for testing.

If there had not been a Joanne Jenkins, unafraid to tackle a different concept of home care and her co-workers and her nurses and a grant from Council of Aging, through John Fleming and Bill Bogart and the Cincinnati Home for the Aged and then Jim Sauls and Harold Flannery for financial undergirding to continue the program - it would have been lost!

Transportation loomed large for the Centers, and for the programs. Bless Hank Russell for the funding to buy our first van and Wayne Oney for working out the operational dollars. Harold Bissantz and Tim Hogan found a way to buy the 25 passenger GREEN MACHINE for the agency and we really began to transport our Seniors.

Somewhere along this line - names are going to be lost, but count that to the age of this author.

Participants numbers increased for all services and with each year new goals were et and with the strong support of board members and dedicated staff - services also increased. Some programs worked well and we had a few falures (one a garden at East Fork Lake for Sight-Impaired).

All along the willingness of the Seniors to participated in community projects:
making baby layettes to dresses and shirts for Headstart youngsters, dolls and toys for children at Christmas, white elephant sales to sponsor young men and women for their Senior Prom, lap robes for Veterans in VA Hospitals (hundreds of them), toys for the Burns Institute, gown's for children in Children's Hospital, supplies for cancer patients, making telephone visits for shut-ins (and on and on - the list goes and grows).It was wonderfully rewarding!

Dance classes, kitchen bands, a roving library, travelogues and a myriad of interesing programs and crfts, ceramics, quilts, discussion groups and the inevitable Bingo games (and on and on- the list goes).

Foster Care along with Protective Services were much needed services. A training program was developed for Home Care Operators with the Kent school of Social Work. A Sign Language  training course for family members of Heaing Impaired under the leadershiip of Betty Herring, Warren Hamblin, Judy Atcheley, Dee O'Leary - made the Foster Care Program a model for other communities.

Argie Dudley organized and monitored a Volunteer program that grew into over 400 energetic helpers - The Adopt-A-Gran program, Persons Alone and Sandwich Groups (for caregivers) all burgeoned - Volunteers at the Centers, Volunteer Friendly Visitors (and on and on - the list goes on).

Transportation included buses for handicapped - making it possible to begin a program for Stroke Clients.

*A Tax Levy passed in 1982 after two failures rescued all the programs from oblivion as Federal Funds nealy disappeared. Passing that tax levy, the first county-wide levy in Ohio - inspired seventeen other counties to "follow suit".

Bob Proud became an able assistant in the Volunteer Department and took on the resonsibility for writing and disseminating all publicity. He began a weekly column that has continued under the imaginative leadership of Cindy Jenkins.

Wilma Kurz took on the awesome task of enlarging the Meals program from its beginning with a small group of volunteers who organized themselves to deliver meals from Clermont Mercy Hospital led by Wanda Barrett and her friends. A small Federal grant allowed prchse of the meals from the hospital. But, without those volunteers, the program would never have come to be.

Then the opening of two meal sites - one at Mt. Moriah Methodist Church and one at Clerco. Angie MacKay and her sister Debra managed those wo sites, with programs for the participants as well a the five day a week delivery of Meals on Wheels.

A Council on Aging program allowed a worker to transport persons int Cincinnati for medical visits - another bonus for the Seniors.

(Mama's hand written note at bottom of this computer-written Thank You: N. Rich. vol survey - New Richmond bank for helping to start - Joe Kill - Kelly?)