Woman teams with Morning Star Baptist Church to bring ‘gathering place’ for seniors

A north Spokane woman has teamed up with Morning Star Baptist Church to offer a weekly gathering place for seniors who want to stop by for a cup of coffee, a doughnut, community and some conversation.

Karen Kearney said she wanted to create a gathering place because northwest Spokane doesn’t have a senior center or other place where seniors can meet. She said she sees seniors sitting in grocery stores, having coffee alone.

“We have a lot of great senior centers,” she said. “Unfortunately we don’t have enough.”

Kearney approached the Rev. Walter Kendricks of Morning Star Baptist Church, whom she had met at an NAACP meeting, and asked if she could use his church to create a gathering place. She was quickly given the green light and bought furniture and decorations at area thrift shops to turn a room at the church into a cozy place to sit and chat or play a few card games.

Kendricks said it just made sense to open the church doors to Kearney. “The church is in a particular community to be a service to the community,” he said. “A lot of elders live here. It’s sitting vacant during the day, so why not? It doesn’t cost us anything.”

The weekly gathering place sessions are every Tuesday from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m., but Kendricks said people can stay as long as they like. The entire church is open to them, including the library and the sanctuary. “I just love to hear the laughter,” he said. “It does my heart good.”

While Kendricks is in the church during the event and sometimes drops in to visit, he said the experience is nonreligious. “No one preaches religion,” he said. “I am here, though, if someone walks to talk about personal issues.”

The group has access to a full kitchen and there is usually some sort of pastry and fruit available along with juice and coffee. There are no stairs leading into the church, making it easily accessible to those who might use a walker. The church, located at 3909 W. Rowan Ave., is also on a bus route.

It’s not unusual for Kearney to sit down and join the conversation with those who come to the sessions. “I consider them the greatest generation,” she said. “They are fabulous. They made do with what they had and when they didn’t have it, they did without.”

On a recent day, that conversation touched on gardening, grandchildren and traffic on neighborhood streets. Barbara Anderson is a 47-year member of Morning Star Baptist Church, where the library is named after her son, astronaut Michael Anderson.

She said she lives just down the street and wanted to come to the gathering place for the conversation. “I’m a people person,” she said. “I just want to meet people. I love to meet people.”

Her friend Della Anderson-Todd arrived late after having car trouble and was enthusiastically greeted by name by everyone in the room. The two friends said they talk on the phone daily. “We get on the phone and we might talk for three hours,” Anderson said.

But despite their daily phone conversations, the friends are happy to talk some more at the gathering place. “I love to talk, “Anderson-Todd said. “It’s nice to have an outlet with nice people.”

She said a family member urged her to get out of the house and go to the weekly sessions. “I have a nephew, and he insisted,” Anderson-Todd said. “He said you need to get out and do something with the women.”

Anderson-Todd said the only thing lacking at the weekly sessions are men to play cards with. “I like to play against them and beat them,” she said.

A yard sale fundraiser is planned for the spring, but so far the effort is being funded by money from Kearney and Kendricks. “I don’t want this to be a burden to the church,” Kendricks said.

Kearney, who is the chair of the Balboa Neighborhood Council, held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the gathering place, which was well attended by local public officials and city council members. People come and go during the weekly sessions, but Kearney said so far she has seen up to six people in a single day. She hopes that number will increase as the word spreads.

“It takes a while for anything,” she said. “We’re really new.”

Kearney intends to spend at least the next six months focused on building up the gathering place, but said she’s already thinking about adding more locations. “It’s time that this part of town gets what it needs,” she said. “This is kind of compensation for not having a senior center.”