Part of effort to make center a new, vibrant, fresh place to go
OCEAN CITY – Things were a touch more elegant at the Ocean City Senior Center April 23. Seniors donned white gloves and some wore fancy hats and fascinators as they were served high tea on fine china courtesy of the Flanders Hotel.
“It is something to make them feel a little special and celebrate spring,” Samantha Kurtz-Seif, director of social services, said about the event, which came about through the center’s supervisor, Karen Bergman, who used to work at the Flanders.
The Flanders staff prepared pastries, showed the seniors how to steep tea correctly, how to customize tea to their own taste and brought their fine china, Kurtz-Seif said, “which is definitely a special touch we did not expect.
“Our focus is really on creating a fun place for our seniors to be social and meet new seniors. We do have a lot of seniors in town who are house-bound so we are getting them out of the house and enjoying our social and wellness activities,” she said. “Every morning we do an exercise like chair yoga or morning stretch, something to get people moving first thing. We serve lunch every day and then we also have our afternoon activities which are things like Zumba. We do chair yoga sometimes in the afternoon. We also have cards so folks can come and play.”
“It’s wonderful,” Karen Bruno said between sips of tea. “I’m really enjoying this. There are a lot of nice things that they do here. This is one of the best so far.”
Bruno said she comes to the center four days a week. She also enjoys the food, the fact the people are friendly and she takes advantage of the other things in the Ocean City Community Center, which houses the senior center, the pool in the Aquatic and Fitness Center, the Ocean City Free Public Library, the Ocean City Arts Center and the Ocean City Historical Museum.
Lisa Torquati, director of banquets and catering for the Flanders Hotel, said they brought their banquet team, china tea service, white gloves and other items the hotel uses for its high afternoon tea.
“Today we’re offering a scone, chocolate-covered strawberry and a savory bite,” she said. “In the high tea served at the Flanders, we usually do a three-course which involve a savory, sandwiches and dessert course.”
The Flanders offers its high afternoon tea every first Thursday and third Sunday of the month at the hotel and will be offered every Thursday during the summer season.
“It’s nice to see more people getting involved with the high tea and we’re hoping we are able to host them at our high teas at the hotel,” Torquati said. “It’s a very popular event for us that is open to the public and then also something we’ve started to use a lot for our baby showers, bridal showers and banquet get-togethers.”
“I think we’ve almost tripled the daily attendance, which is not what we thought we would get in the first year especially,” Kurtz-Seif said of what has taken place since Ocean City took over the senior center from Cape May County a few months ago.
“Our seniors really seem to have embraced us as kind of the new team running the senior center,” she added. “We’ve gotten a really positive reaction from people in the community and things like this, the high tea with the Flanders, are what we want to bring into the center because we want to make it new and vibrant and fresh so seniors who maybe haven’t come in the past may want to come now.”
Kurtz-Seif said they will do a group birthday celebration at the end of each month and this month will include Cinco de Mayo and Mother’s Day celebrations.
“Every day I am blessed when I come in here and spend my days with these wonderful, lovely people,” Bergman said, noting they started a stretch class at 10 a.m. and it quickly grew from five people up to 20-25 every day.
“Some of these people never moved and they’re over here and getting healthy and I’m proud of that,” Bergman said. Other activities include line dance classes in the afternoon.
“The administration has given us such support. We work in conjunction with the Aquatic and Fitness Center. Now the whole Community Center is complete. We’re all one and we’re all under the umbrella of Ocean City,” Bergman said.
Asked about the requirements to come to the senior center, Kurtz-Seif said, “We try to focus on the folks who are in Ocean City first so anybody over the age of 60 can join. We do also have some folks who came when it was part of the county so we welcome all of our Cape May County neighbors as well.” The center is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Bergman said Ocean City has two jitneys running on Tuesday and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. They do a loop from Wesley by the Bay, 500 Bay and Sixth and West, which includes the Bayview Commons building and the Speitel Building for seniors with no transportation so they can get there at least two days a week.
“We would love to be able to offer this every day,” she notes. “Cape May County also offers a fare-free shuttle as well every day, but it’s full a lot. That’s why we wanted to supplement that with the jitneys.”
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
