TAMPA, Fla. — There were a lot of smiling faces Monday as for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, Hillsborough County reopened some of its senior centers.
The centers were among the first to be shut down when the pandemic first started as it was clear early on that older people were the most vulnerable.
Hundreds of senior citizens from across the county, many of whom had been separated from each other for two-plus years now, finally got to see each other again. For many, the centers are their source of social interactions and act as an extended family of friends.
Over the course of the past two years, many of them got tech-savvy and were able to stay in contact through social media apps.
“They have been in touch. But by Zoom. Via Zoom. Those types of platforms,” Hillsborough’s Senior Centers Manager Frances Duran Brea said. “So, actually coming together is a big deal.”
“I almost cried when I came back to see the faces,” John McDonald said. “Just being around good people who love each other and help each other — it just made me feel great. It’s like a family. Loving and kind and just helping each other out.”
Margaret Silas just turned 90.
“It’s very important to have it open because a lot of us are older, we’re women and we’re widows most of us. We don’t get that much socialization,” Silas said. “And I was going bananas even though I was living in kind of a senior place.”
The first senior centers to reopen are the Progress Village, Ruskin and Plant City.
The county’s goal is to keep opening another four or five locations every couple of weeks and have them all back open again by the end of June.
That, however, hinges on whether there are any new variants or other issues that might come about with the coronavirus pandemic. County workers were planning to reopen the centers a few months ago, but when they saw a surge in cases from the omicron variant, they waited a little bit longer.