Senior Center offers more than bingo

Center adds more programs and events.

By: Leon Tovey
   JAMESBURG — "We’ve been trying to get more programs, more educational things going," Frank Jawidzik said Monday.
   Mr. Jawidzik, the director of the borough’s Office on Aging, was speaking of the borough’s Senior Center, which is housed in the old Baptist church on Stevens Avenue. He pointed to a bulletin board covered with fliers for events, both passed and upcoming, that hangs on the north wall of the old church’s chapel.
   "We want this place to be more than just the monthly bingo game," he continued. He added quickly, "Of course, we still have the monthly bingo game — but not just that."
   The Senior Center was established in 1968, when 12 borough seniors met in a small room in the basement of the American Legion Hall on Railroad Avenue.
   By October 1979, the center had more than 120 members and needed more space (it had started holding bingo games and periodic bus trips in 1971), so the borough used $65,000 in federal funds to buy the church for the use of the Jamesburg-Monroe Senior Citizens corporation.
   Today, the center has 172 members, Mr. Jawidzik said — 95 Jamesburg residents and 77 Helmetta, Monroe and Spotswood residents. In addition to its regular monthly meeting, the center offers a twice-weekly aerobics class, a monthly movie day and a bus trip to Atlantic City on the third Monday of each month.
   Mr. Jawidzik said he and the center’s current executive board have begun to bring guest speakers to the monthly meetings to make the meetings more interesting and educational. Recent speakers have included an assistant Middlesex County prosecutor who warned about scams targeting seniors.
   The center also hosted a free blood pressure screening by the St. Peter’s University Hospital Mobile Health Unit last year and Mr. Jawidzik is looking into starting an osteo-health training program at the center.
   "We try to offer a mix of things so that seniors can be educated and entertained — and that they can afford to do," Mr. Jawidzik said.
   The issue of what the center’s members — and the center itself — can afford is a tricky one, Mr. Jawidzik said. But he added that it’s one borough officials are willing to help the center deal with.
   The borough plans to spend a portion of its 2005-06 Community Development Block Grant upgrading the entrance to the center, which currently consists of an old, hastily poured concrete ramp (for wheelchair access) and a pair of battered wooden doors leftover from the buildings days as a church.
   "They still open inward," Mr. Jawidzik observed.
   Such commitment from the borough is helpful, Mr. Jawidzik said, since the center’s highest cost is upkeep on the building.
   Most of the cost of the center’s programs are covered by event or membership fees (membership is $10 per year and events like the monthly Atlantic City trips cost $17 a pop), but the borough does chip in for things like chartering extra buses for the center’s annual Christmas trip, he said.
   Because the borough’s senior population is much smaller, and generally less affluent, than that of Monroe (10.7 percent of Jamesburg residents are over 65 according to the 2000 U.S. Census, versus 43.5 percent of Monroe residents), Mr. Jawidzik said the center needs all the help it can get.
   "Fortunately, the mayor and the council have been great about pursuing grants for us," he said. "With their help, a little luck and a lot of hard work by our volunteers, we’re going to keep doing great things for the seniors here in town."
The Jamesburg Senior Center is located at 139 Stevens Ave. Regular meetings (followed by bingo) are held the second Wednesday of each month at 1 p.m. For more information about the center and its programs, contact Mr. Jawidzik at (732) 521-0190 or board President Marge Linke at (732) 521-0377.