WESTFIELD – Senior centers have long carried a stigma of being places for a community’s elderly to go out to the pasture of bingo and card games.
In Westfield, however, the city’s Senior Center plays host to a 10:30 a.m. program run on the fourth Tuesday of each month that enables patrons to enjoy literature in a group setting.
Thanks to the efforts of Kathy Benedict, a retired fifth grade teacher from South Hadley, the Talking Books program has taken off over the past three years, growing into an experience enjoyed by Benedict and her seniors alike.
“I was in a book club with Tina Gorman and when I retired, she thought this might be a good thing for me,” said Benedict on her conversations with Gorman, Westfield’s Council on Aging Director.
While the reading sessions are small – typically four or five seniors plus three or four more who come sporadically – Benedict feels that the small size helps for discussion and makes the sessions all the more enjoyable.
“We read short stories, usually just one per session, and oftentimes it is interesting how they relate the characters to someone they know or situations to something they’re familiar with,” said Benedict, listing Maeve Binchy, Bailey White and Elizabeth Berg as some of the group’s favorite authors. “I try to balance the stories – some are humorous, some are mysteries, some are just feel good stories.”
Benedict adds that the seniors who participate in the program often have great stories to tell themselves.
“I read a story once about a girl who was forced to take piano lessons and one of the seniors then told a great story about how the same thing had happened to her when she was young and she really connected with it,” she said. “Usually there’s some nugget that resounds with them.”
Having spent her professional life teaching and reading to fifth graders to now spending every fourth Tuesday reading to charges on the opposite end of the age spectrum, Benedict said it’s hard to determine which group she likes reading to more.
“Everybody loves to be read to aloud. My fifth graders would devour 10-12 books in a year just by listening,” she said. “We go through 12 stories a year with the seniors and they are just as attentive and considerate and I think they get as much out of it as the kids did.”
Benedict said that anyone is welcome to come by one of the Talking Books sessions to experience it for themselves.
Book donations to the senior center are always appreciated and Benedict believes that perhaps the program can continue to grow when the new senior center on Noble Street is completed.
“Hopefully the usership will go up,” she said, adding that audio book donations would also be appreciated so that the patrons of the senior center can continue listening.
I would probably pass that on to Tina, but I certainly think they would be welcome,” she said. “I’m sure that would be a great idea.”
