Fulda senior center open house today

• Senior Center

Dale Brock, president of the Fulda Senior Center, shows off the new facility where seniors will host an open house from 2 to 5 p.m. today. (Brian Korthals/Daily Globe)

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FULDA — The seniors in Fulda are opening their doors and inviting everyone in for a peek at their new center today. The open house runs from 2 to 5 p.m. at the new Fulda Senior Center on Lafayette Avenue.

“It is just an open house for people to come and see the new facility,” said Grace Meier, who runs the Senior Dining program. “The city council was having an open house for their Wood Duck development, and asked if we would have coffee and cookies here for anyone interested.”

The center, used primarily for senior dining, the senior citizen group and the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization, has been open since the beginning of the month, but things are still being moved from the previous building.

“We’re still getting settled in,” Meier admitted. “It’s a big job to move things.”

Senior citizen president Dale Brock said the seniors have not had a chance to conduct a monthly meeting in the new building yet, but are very happy to be in it.

“Oh man, this is great,” he stated. “Compared to what we were in before, this is great.”

In the former senior building, patrons had steps to climb to enter.

“And the roof leaked. We had to set pails around,” Brock laughed. “But it was a building, and we still had fun in it. The fellowship was there, and we had good cooks.”

The fellowship is still there, but now the facility is handicap accessible and doesn’t leak.

“It is fantastic to have this senior center,” said Fulda mayor Mary Magnus. “The center we had was in such disrepair.”

About half of the money needed to build was donated by Maynard and Vi Larsen of Fulda.

“They are very generous people,” Magnus said. “It inspired us to keep going.”

Rather than spend money fixing the old center, the city opted to combine the money they would have spent on repairs with the money donated by the Larsons and build new.

“It is lovely,” Meier sighed. “We are just enjoying it.”

Tags: senior center, news, fulda, seniorcitizens