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Steadfastly Serving Seniors: Spotlight on Marielders’ Kathy Chapman-Dick By Pete McBride There seems to be a mounting wealth of evidence that many of the traditional “challenges” of aging can be offset by certain healthful practices and lifestyle variables. These include maintaining a beneficial diet, exercising, getting plenty of sleep, scheduling regular medical checkups, and so on. All good stuff. (Visit https:// www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/healthyaging-secret#1, for just one example of the many articles out there on healthy aging.) Aside from these more tangible best practices, medical research also strongly indicates that tending to the cognitive/ emotional/social needs of our more mature relatives, friends and neighbors is equally important. Such “enrichment of life” supports are what Kathy Chapman-Dick and her team at the impressive Marielders Senior Center so strongly endorse and are so deeply and professionally committed to providing to their members. Since 2012, Kathy has served as the executive director of Marielders Inc., the not-for-profit senior center housed at 6923 Madisonville Road – modestly positioned between the Mariemont Inn building and the Mariemont Executive Building at the corner of West Street and Madisonville Road. She will be resigning her position at the end of this year after an impressive 36-year career focused on geriatrics. Kathy’s passion and avocation for teaching and working with the elderly, as well as wanting to serve and give back locally, were well-cultivated by several factors:
Barb Hampton, Helen Whitling, Kathy Chapman-Dick and Kim Flick at Marielders’ Italian Festival last April. opposites. One was a devout Quaker who Kathy was born in Cincinnati, raised was finally convinced that it was not in Kettering, and obtained her BA in inappropriate for a righteous woman to Social Work with a specialty in geriatric wear blue jeans under her dress, “if only populations from University of Cincinnati. –for the sake of female modesty.” She lived to be 101. Kathy’s other grandma was an Kathy was close to her two Cont'd on next page grandmothers, who were a study in