Senior News July, 2001 Vol. 20. No.  7

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Senior News: HSRC's newspaper moves to United Way building

The panther rests: Remembering Bill Landis

Vacationing at home

Crescent City: First Northcoast Redwoods Writers Conference scheduled in September

High cost of energy: Cal. Commission on Aging files amicus curiae brief in FERC petition

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Senior News
HSRC's newspaper moves to United Way building
by Barbara Clarke

Senior News' new home at 1809 Albee, Eureka. Photo by Barbara Clark

After more than 17 years in its present location, the offices of Senior News will move away from the Humboldt Senior Resource Center and into spacious new digs five blocks away.

We will rent space upstairs at the United Way building, 1809 Albee, at the corner of Albee and Wabash, the place where the League of Women Voters has an office and holds many public forums.

We will have new phone numbers, but please continue to send mail to our old address: 1910 California Street, Eureka 95501.

This move is exciting for us on a number of levels. You may not be able to tell from our paper, but our department has grown in these 17 years. Just since 1994 while I've been editor, we've grown from an average of 350 inches a month advertising to more than 500 inches a month. We have hired a part-time assistant and started Senior News Graphics, a high-end graphics production service run by Ad Manager Elizabeth Whitley.

We're bursting at the seams of this little basement office we've occupied since Adult Day Health Care built its building across the street in 1986. Our new space will give us each a private office of our own and a large common room for layout, graphics production and small meetings. We'll share a large conference room on the first floor for distribution and larger meetings. We're thrilled!

On another level, this move is exciting to United Way Executive Director Carolyn Walden. She is bringing "home" a program that she was instrumental in starting in 1981. We must now revise the history we wrote in our April edition celebrating 20 years of Senior News, because in that story, Walden's work was not mentioned.

Carolyn Walden, then Carol Baker, was director of senior services for the Senior Citizens Council which started the Humboldt Senior Resource Center. She had just moved from Michigan and had come from a community that had a strong senior newspaper. She thought about starting a paper.

"One of the main reasons to start it was to help the nutrition department get the menus and activities out for all the lunch sites. I was asked to help come up with an idea," Walden said. "I had newspaper background in high school and college. I thought it would be great to start a real newspaper and use social service money to fund a position. I was also creating the Information and Referral system (now Information and Assistance of the Area Agency on Aging), and I needed a vehicle to talk to seniors about tax assistance and other senior issues.

"It was the time when the Senior Legislature was starting, too, and Bill Landis (who died in June) was starting the Gray Panthers.

"There is such value in a newspaper, more than a newsletter," Walden said.

Yvonne Baginski, Senior News' first editor had also just moved to the area from Michigan, and the two of them went out to sell the first ads for the paper. Walden moved on shortly after the Senior Resource Center renovated and moved into the old Washington School on California Street, and her name Carol Baker was lost to the newspaper's history after her marriage. Now it's a homecoming for her.

"That's why it's so exciting for me to have Senior News moving here," said Walden, who became executive director of United Way in 1990.

The levels of enjoyment in this move take interesting turns. There is Garfield, the office cat, a big yellow with an attitude, Walden said. The building has long been a favorite place for stray cats which the staff would take care of. Garfield came shortly after Christmas, skinny, shy, a little mean and with wounds on his back. The staff invested in vet bills and decided to keep him. Now he's a love-bug and frequently occupies the mail out-box in the United Way office.

Then there is the ghost. Since the days when Humboldt Home Health occupied the offices that Senior News is moving to, staff members have seen a female ghost dressed in period costume, hair up on her head, a long flowing dress. She is mostly seen in the hallway upstairs just outside the new Senior News office! She seems like a solid person and then just disappears.

Walden said that her first understanding of the ghost's story was that the house used to be a brothel and the ghost was one of the ladies of the evening. However, more research revealed a different story-that of a somber stern elderly man who locked his young wife up in her room away from her friends and family where she died of a broken heart.

The ghost acts out when she experiences tension in the building, Walden said. AIDS support groups meeting there on weekends would agitate her-the copy machine would start running, the toilet flushing, the faucet turned on. She likes Saturday daytimes. Once someone angrily tossed a pen at an accountant and returned the next day to find the four-drawer filing cabinet turned over.

Walden said the ghost has not been too active in recent years and that she has never seen her. We all would welcome any information about the ghost or the building at 1809 Albee in Eureka. Come visit us in our new offices.

New phone numbers:
Editorial 476-9261
Advertising and Graphics 476-9258
Fax 476-9259
Please continue to send mail to 1910 California Street, Eureka, CA 95501


Barbara Clark is editor of Senior News.