Berg leaves fruitful legacy

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A moving force in the Northcoast aging services community, Patty Berg, executive director of the Area Agency on Aging (AAA), will retire from the agency in mid-December.

In the years since she became its first director, Berg has led or participated in an impressive number of senior-service projects in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, including the Retired & Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), the Senior Service Collaborative, a recent baby boomer survey for planning services in the 21st century, and an Eldercare Program for local businesses.

She was instrumental in organizing the Dixieland Jazz Festival, a county-wide Crime Prevention Plan, and chaired the Crime Commission. She was selected Woman of the Year in 1992 by the California State Legislature and Woman in History by the College of the Redwoods Foundation League, 1994.

Eighteen years ago when area agencies were formed from federal mandates under the Older Americans Act and the Older Californians Act which followed, Berg was developing sex education curriculum for public schools. She had already been profoundly involved with the early days of what is now known as the Humboldt Senior Resource Center (HSRC). Berg was one of the collection of people at Humboldt State University's Center for Community Development and was one of the grant writers who developed the first assessment of senior service needs in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

The group wrote a grant to establish the Information and Assistance program and then the nutrition program, both of which are still in operation; developed the nonprofit Humboldt Senior Citizens Foundation to receive grants and designed the well-known HSRC logo of the hands reaching toward one another. Berg was recommended in 1980 by the HSRC director to head up the new Area Agency on Aging that would serve Humboldt and Del Norte counties, one of the area agencies set up as part of the Older Americans Act.

"I love starting new things," said Berg, 56. "The agency was not greeted with open arms. Our area had wonderful senior services in place, and then came a new agency that was responsible for planning, administering and monitoring all OAA funding."

Starting with one room in a small office space across the parking lot from the Area Agency's current offices on Glenwood Street in Eureka, Berg said the agency began with a desk, a file cabinet and a phone. "No furniture, no advisory council, no equipment, no staff," she recalled. "We had an area plan due in three weeks and the White House Conference on Aging coming in 1981. We had to create policies and procedures and administer all of the senior service programs that had been put under AAA."

A number of years later and through the Senior Citizens Foundation, Berg and her good friend Humboldt County Supervisor Bonnie Neely went to community movers and shakers to brainstorm a fundraising idea-to create an annual music festival that would benefit the foundation and the Eureka downtown business community as well. The first three years of Dixieland Jazz Festivals netted $170,000 for the Senior Citizens Foundation. Still involved in the project, Berg said the 1997 festival became the single largest tourism event in the county; and that year it spawned an August Blues by the Bay festival and a youth music program. She sits on the Eureka Chamber of Commerce board representing the Jazz Festival.

Always interested in the "big picture," Berg was naturally drawn to the California Association of Area Agencies on Aging. She chaired the association's state legislative committee for 12 years and was encouraged to run for the national board in 1993. She served as an alternate to that board for two years and then was elected to it four years ago.

"I enjoy sound policy, and that's what legislation is all about," said Berg, who has testifed in Congress at hearings on the Older Americans Act. "I enjoy working with Congress and working with area agencies throughout the nation." After her retirement, she said she won't be able to serve on the national area agency board, but may continue serving on its policy committee.

Patty Berg is justifiably proud of her legacy to the senior community and to her agency. "My greatest legacy is not mine personally," she said, "but it is to be connected for so long to the kind of professionals in the most responsive service system in California. We've never settled for second best. We've been great risk takers and had the courage to experiment with new ways of doing business-and it's all for the bottom line of trying to enhance and improve the lives of older people in our community.

"We've also opened doors," she added. "We've not just been focused on senior citizens but on the community as a whole. We've crossed the age lines going from RSVP to the Volunteer Center of the Redwoods. We've brought more awareness to the business community because we got into the business of economic development. We've reached out as a network. We're not insular. I'm proud to have been an active participant in this movement," she said.

Quiet a moment, Berg thought of two more legacies she leaves the group: "We've been visionary, and we've created this fabulous team (the staff of the Area Agency) that is all marching in the same direction."

Berg's 18 years have not been a bed of roses. During her tenure she has been picketed by other agencies and spent two years in a court battle on the state funding formula. Three years ago she successfully battled breast cancer.

"It was my first wake-up call. I lost my husband 11 years ago-and when he died, my work became everything. Then three years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was the kind of wake-up call that told me I need to reconsider what I'm doing and take the opportunity to explore new avenues.

"This job - as much as I love what we do - is all-consuming," she continued. "It's the standard we've set. I realized that all of a sudden I'd be 60 years old and I'd still be here and getting grayer and still won't have a relationship.

"It's the first time in my life that I don't have a plan. I did that intentionally. I think that I need to re-learn how to be a human being-to live in the present and enjoy what's around me."

Berg said that her next months would be focused mostly on her mother in Seattle, just diagnosed again with cancer. "I need to be with her, and beyond that I haven't made any plans. I'm a master gardener and I want to have more beautiful perennial beds. I love to garden and I have an acre of land that's landscaped and a greenhouse. Gardening is such a wonderful therapy. It teaches you patience. So I'll have a beautiful garden this spring."

One-time article Copyright 1998 by Humboldt Senior Resource Center.