Vada has been a West Allis Senior Center member for 7 months.
“Want to hear a funny story? I came to West Allis to visit my grandchildren in 2019, and I was planning on staying until April of 2020. Well, of course, COVID came in 2020. So, I couldn’t go home. At that time, I lived in North Carolina, but my family didn’t want me to live by myself, especially out of state. So, through COVID and beyond, I ended up staying with my daughter in West Allis until the beginning of 2025. During this time, my daughter kept telling me I should join the West Allis Senior Center for something to do. I laughed at her, ‘Senior Center? Are you kidding? Me?’ For five years she continued to suggest this, but I never went. In 2025, we moved to West Bend, where I live now, but my grandchildren still attend school in West Allis. So, I have to drive them every day to school in West Allis from West Bend and pick them up every day to take them home.”
“When I first started doing this in September, I would drive all the way back to West Bend in the morning and then drive all the way back to West Allis to pick them up to drive all the way back to West Bend again. So, one day I decided to stop by the Senior Center my daughter had mentioned countless times to me. I thought I’d give it a try just once, because I didn’t feel like driving back. Instead of going back home to just sit around the house, I’ll just go and see what it is. And since that day, I am here almost every day.”
“They do everything I like. I am in all the different classes. I like fiber arts and painting. I am learning how to make winter hats on a loom, which I never did before. I learned how to make rag rugs, which I never knew how to do before either.”
“So, for five years, I lived right down the road from the West Allis Senior Center and never came here once to give it a try, and then I moved to West Bend, and now I come here every day. That’s my funny story.”
We hope you stop in to give the West Allis Senior Center a try like Vada. Membership is free, and it is open every weekday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Maybe the Senior Center offers everything you like to do as well — but you’ll never know unless you give it a try.