Important Update: We would like to thank Leanne Cordischi, our Digital Communication Specialist, for managing our website and e-communications for the last 3.5 years and we want to wish her all the best in her next chapter. As we navigate the hiring process, we ask that you please refer to The Beacon newsletter or call the Senior Center for the most up to date information on our programming, activities, and services. We appreciate your patience.
How Tenacity Perseverance and a Determined Trio Helped to Build the Brookline Senior Center
By: Leanne Cordischi
In the 1980’s many communities were creating senior centers and resource hubs for their seniors.
Ruthann Dobek, as a recent social worker grad, recognized that Brookline needed a senior center.
Her social work colleagues Sue Welpton and Helen Sampson also saw the value that a center would
bring the Brookline Community. The optimistic trio approached their boss, Arlene Stern, numerous
times about building a Senior Center for Brookline. The young women received several rounds of NOs.
Ms. Stern was concerned that it would require too much work, money and aggravation. However,
determined and armed with a frosted cake and some solid reasons why the community needed a senior
center, Ruthann and her colleagues sat down one afternoon with their boss to discuss, over bites of
cake, why the center would be such an asset in Brookline.