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BRONX CENTER FOR AGED MARKS 40 YEARS
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.About the ArchiveThis is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.While working for New York City's Department of Welfare in 1943, Harry Levine says, he saw that nothing was being done to relieve ''the loneliness of the elderly.''
With financing from Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, Mr. Levine opened what he says was the country's first center for the elderly, the William Hodson Senior Center, in a wooden shed outside the old Bronx Borough Hall Building. Mr. Hodson, a former Commissioner of Welfare, was killed in a plane crash shortly before the center opened.
There were originally five members, and the only furnishings were some leftover Federal Work Projects Administration paintings on the walls.
The Hodson center, now in its own building on Webster Avenue in the Bronx and with 800 members, last week celebrated its 40th anniversary and its role as a model for other centers for the aged. There are now more than 300 in New York City.
''We have created a concept for older people that enables them to live longer,'' said Mr. Levine, who is now 84 years old. ''Before this center there were no resources in the community for the elderly.'' 220 Participants a Day
On any day the Hodson center, which reports that 220 people go there daily, is filled with activity. Members can be found painting, knitting, making ceramics, shooting pool and playing cards. The center even has its own jazz band and sponsors theater trips and boat rides as well as a two-week summer camp in upstate New York.
Teachers from colleges in the area offer such courses as English and public speaking, and nursing students from Lehman College lecture regularly on health care for the elderly.
The center is open weekdays from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. and serves more than 200 free breakfasts and lunches a day. Hodson officials say that lunch at the center is the only hot meal some of the members have.
''The center has progressed enormously through the years,'' its chairman, Rose Tishman, said. ''We are very proud of the influence this has had all over the city and throughout the world.'' Budget Is Over $330,000
The Hodson Center, which is financed by the city's Human Resources Administration, the Housing Authority and the center's board of directors, has an annual budget of more than $330,000 and a full-time staff of eight.
Although most of its members live in the Bronx, some travel from as far away as New Jersey and Brooklyn.
In 1975, budget cuts forced the board to eliminate a psychiatric social worker who had been on the staff, but officials say they hope to restore the position and some activities through a current fund drive.
Evelyn Virgo, 75, says she has been going to the center from her apartment on Riverside Drive in Manhattan almost every day for eight years. ''The main thing is that the center lets you go out and do something with others,'' she said. ''That's what seniors love - to be with people.''
Mrs. Virgo, a former machine operator in a sugar factory, is a member of the center's choral group and improvisational theater, which frequently perform in schools and homes for the elderly in the city.
''A lot of seniors come in in the morning and say they don't feel good,'' she said. ''When they leave at the end of the day they've forgotten all about it. They feel all better. It's the best medicine.''
Before the Hodson center opened, ''there were no services for the aged - nothing,'' recalled Gertrude Landau, 71, who was the center's first full-time worker and director. ''The whole society has now changed for the elderly, though we still have a long way to go.''
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