The boomer senior tsunami: Are we prepared for the coming tidal wave in the senior population?

Story by Chris Graham

Paul Lavigne is one of these baby boomers on the verge of wreaking havoc on the senior-services system as he ages into senior status, at least theoretically speaking. But at 61, Lavigne isn’t ready for the rocking chair on the front porch of the old-folks’ home just yet.

Lavigne, to the contrary, went out and bought a racquetball racket earlier this year, and though he hasn’t started playing regularly, the racket has him at the Waynesboro Family YMCA a few days a week getting in shape for his eventual return to the court. Read more

‘Mad’ Mark? Cline will make you smile

Story by Chris Graham

The man responsible for the herd of fiberglass elephants up on the ridge overlooking Waynesboro earlier this year has been entertaining people here since his days in elementary school in the River City doing impressions of characters from popular television shows like “Green Acres” and “The Andy Griffith Show” in front of classes at the behest of amused teachers. Read more

Our own ‘Julie and Julia’

Story by Theresa Curry

It was an ambitious undertaking, so we split it up. Three Waynesboro women made five dishes from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking;” and we served them on Aug. 15, which would have been her 97th birthday. Sylvia Woodworth, a retired educator, realtor Dixie McClenahan and I prepared a four-course meal chosen by Bon Appétit magazine as a meal from “Mastering” that would come together well. Read more

Time for change? Embattled treasurer seeks re-election in face of critical audits, slew of citizen complaints

Story by Chris Graham

Three years of audit reports have suggested that her office is in disarray – with bank deposits made late, cash and checks left sitting in envelopes on desks and counters unsecured, wire transfers being handled improperly, tax records making it hard to tell what had been collected and what hadn’t been.

And still Sandee Dixon tries to see the bright side of things.

“The next audit is going to be my best one yet. I just have a good feeling. I know we’re making improvements,” said Dixon, who was elected the treasurer of Waynesboro in 2005 after working in the office under long-time city treasurer Nancy Beverage for five years. Read more

Burnett up to the ‘challenge’

Story by Chris Graham

It’s hard to say Augusta County has done poorly for itself in the economic-development arena, with the likes of Hershey and McKee Foods and MeadWestvaco, among others, setting up shop in the county and doing good business here. Read more

No smoking

Story by Chris Graham

Until Augusta Health made it public that its campus had gone smoke-free this summer, it hadn’t registered with me that the regional hospital had been effectively facilitating smoking all these years by allowing employees to take smoke breaks on the clock and setting up designated smoking areas for visitors outside.

Turns out it’s not as easy as you’d think for a hospital to go smoke-free. Read more

Home at last

Story by Chris Graham

Lynn DiBiase has been planning for an eventual move into a permanent home for the Staunton Senior Center for what seems like forever.

“We’ve been talking about this for five years. To now be talking about floor colors, about where the ceiling fans and plugins are going to go, that makes it seem real,” said DiBiase, the executive director of the Senior Center, of the move to Gypsy Hill Place on Churchville Avenue that is in the works for next spring.  Read more

Growing pains

Story by Chris Graham

Early 2010 Census projections have more than 20 percent of Rockingham County’s population in the 60-and-over category, a 20 percent jump from the 2000 Census. And it’s not like they all live just outside of the Harrisonburg city limits, either.

“No, they’re all over the county, in subdivisions outside of the city and off little country roads way out in the county,” said Cathie Galvin, the director of senior services in Harrisonburg and Rockingham for the Valley Program for Aging Services, which provides an array of human services to people 60 and older in Harrisonburg-Rockingham and throughout the Central Shenandoah Valley. Read more

Fundraising, awareness key with Memory Walks

Story by Chris Graham

It didn’t use to be the case that we could consider Alzheimer’s a pervasive senior health issue, if only because it didn’t use to be the case that many people lived long enough for it to be an issue.

Which might be why the Alzheimer’s Association is such a relative newcomer to the advocacy scene, founded in 1980 and still learning the ropes in the advocacy game in a lot of ways. Read more

A whole new outlook

Story by Chris Graham

It’s more than a name change. The new Senior Advocacy Commission has a new outlook on senior issues in Waynesboro.

“Advocacy was the word that kept coming up over and over again. We see ourselves advocating for people who are seniors right now, advocating for people who will be seniors in the future,” said Melissa Crocker, the chair of the newly named commission, which replaces the former Commission on the Elderly. Read more

Downtown living: Urban Exchange sets a new course for Downtown Harrisonburg

Story by Chris Graham 

Harrisonburg leaders have a vision for how to make their downtown thrive. Barry Kelley is helping bring that vision into a reality.

“I know downtown pretty well. And I thought this was the perfect area for the kind of project that we were thinking about doing,” said Kelley, who with fellow property developer Andrew Forward has turned a Downtown Harrisonburg parcel that was most recently a used-car lot into a four-story, mixed-use architectural wonder called the Urban Exchange. Read more

More than a game

Column by Chris Graham

Sacco has left the building.

Never thought I’d write those words. I thought we had him for life.

Got him settled in Greenville, where the city boy from Chicago who used to take the subway to school could count the stars at night.

Got him hitched to a local girl. You know how hard that one was – getting a good one to answer his historically pathetic attempt at finding a soulmate in the personal ads?  Read more

The New Dominion – September 2009 edition