Ukulele music filled the room Friday morning at the Kamana Senior Center, where a large group gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Pomaikai Senior Center.
As the musician sang a contemporary Christmas tune, two women stood up and danced. Others in the crowd chatted and laughed.
After a number of speakers, including county Managing Director Wil Okabe and county Parks and Recreation Director Roxcie Waltjen, addressed the audience, the entertainment continued.
A small group performed “Jingle Bells” with hand bells and another group of men and women danced hula. An ukulele group performed a selection of Christmas tunes while lunch was served.
When it opened in Hilo in 1968, Pomaikai was the first senior center and the start of senior programming on the island — services which eventually evolved into the Parks and Recreation’s Elderly Activities Division.
Former Elderly Activities Division Director Harold Bugado, who first served as a senior coordinator at Pomaikai in 1974, spoke to the crowd about the center’s history.
The Older Americans Act, which was passed in 1965, provided funds to get these programs started, he said.
Bugado said after Friday’s festivities that it was heartwarming to experience the celebration.
“That’s what our program is all about — to see them happy, smiling faces, and you know that we’re doing something right by providing activities for them to engage in, enjoy and get them to live longer … ,” he said.
Dorothy Williams, now 92, has been a member of Pomaikai Senior Center since January 1981 and president for the past 25 years.
She started when she took an ukulele class and through the years also has taught a number of classes, such as tap dancing.
“Then also I learned line dancing, so I started to teach that, too,” Williams said. “Then, after I learned the hula, I started teaching hula there.”
As president, Williams said she does the planning and programming at the center. She also does exercise two mornings a week, directs an ukulele class two days a week and has taught many people how to play Mahjong.
“It’s meant my life,” she said about the center and its offerings. “It’s meant that I was able to live to be 92 so far and keep my mind and body busy. That’s how you stay young. The muscles are going in the legs, but the mind is good. … It’s my life to run this, and I have no children and I have no husband — he died in 1981 — so I’ve been taking care of all the seniors, and I devote my time, and that’s what keeps me young — devoting my time to helping keep the seniors’ minds and bodies busy at the center four days a week.”
Nathan Suganuma has been a member of Pomaikai for the past eight years, but he worked there from the late 1990s until he retired in 2011.
“I was the last member of the Elderly Activities (Division) to actually have an office there, and I did programs out of that office,” he said.
Suganuma said the celebration Friday was “awesome.”
“To be part of it, to work there, that was awesome,” he said. “… The whole socialization for seniors, I think that’s probably the most important thing besides exercise, camaraderie. It helps prolong the quality of life.”
Waltjen said during a phone interview that Pomaikai has “served as the model for the rest of the senior centers that would follow … and in fact our senior citizen program has received commendations for being one of the best senior programs in the state.”
The senior center has “lived through thick and thin,” and has provided a lot of seniors with services throughout the years, said Waltjen, who began her Parks and Recreation career as a recreation aide in the Elderly Activities Division in 1978.
She credited her predecessors for making the county’s senior program what it is.
“We are just as strong as when we started,” Waltjen said about Pomaikai, and Pomaikai is expected to be “just as strong in the future.”
Email Stephanie Salmons at ssalmons@hawaiitribune-herald.com.