Mary Ann Hernandez

I’ve been a nurse for 40 years. After I retired, I was staying at home and then my daughter died unexpectedly. I’m now raising my granddaughter. She’s seven years old and she lives with us. I always have her in gymnastics here because she loves it. When she was little, she always went to all the programs here the cooking, the arts and crafts.

So I’ve always been here. But when I started staying home, I felt this empty feeling while my granddaughter is in school. So I said ‘I don’t want to go back to nursing. It’s too stressful. Maybe I can do something, something to keep me occupied.’ My stepdaughter Sabrina works here in membership and she said to me “they’re looking for someone in the daycare to babysit. Would you be interested?’ So I met Heather; she was so sweet. And I started working in Child Watch about six months ago.

I feel like this job was a Godsend. I only do three days a week but it fills my day. When I’m playing with the kids, I feel so much better. When some of them cry, I pick them up and start rocking them. And then all of a sudden, they’re quiet. They do such cute things. They make you laugh and they’re so innocent.

I like it here. It’s very comfortable. The girls I work with are very nice. We all get along well. It’s really been a good experience for me to be here. It’s part of my healing process.

I was a young athlete and I wrestled all through middle school and high school. One of my aspirations in life was to stay physically fit, but after graduation in 1980, I was unsure what direction to go in. Weightlifting and bodybuilding became that direction. I befriended a Rye resident, Gabe, who was an active bodybuilder and he took me under his wing. For the next three years, every day, sometimes twice a day, we would weight lift and body build and prepare for events. Gabe lived just a couple blocks away and I would meet up with him at the Y.

We would go together throughout the county and surrounding areas and perform in either a bodybuilding or power-lifting contest. It was a great period in my life! After leaving high school, I had felt the dead absence of wrestling. For those six years, the Y kept me going. I owe my life to it.

My wife and I were members of another gym for about 10 years. Then COVID hit and there was a blank period of our lives. We didn’t transition back to that gym after the COVID relaxation. We would drive by the new renovated building on Route 1 and that was an inspiration for us. “Something is really going on!” I said, “We should go take a look at the Y.” We visited and fell in love immediately.

We fell in love - not only the location – it is so close to town - but we were excited about the new Y Studios. We had joined the other gym for our yoga practice. Yoga has taken us through really great journeys. We travelled across the country and had advanced so much with our yoga practice. But COVID put a halt to it. We wanted to get back into it and now the Y offers this great yoga experience. It is so, so great! My wife goes during the week and we go together on Sunday mornings. We’re enjoying both locations – it is really cool that they are just 1 block away from one another.

We knew we wanted to get back into a little weightlifting and body exercise and back into yoga as well. And the Y is offering everything to us now at a very reasonable price. I think we were paying, between the two of us, about $700 a month at the other gym. We are paying virtually nothing here but getting to enjoy so much more, whether it be the pool, the gym or yoga. I even feel like I have a conference room at the Y studios with their great sitting area. We both think it is genius the way the bathrooms and lockers are set up. Whoever planned it, thought it out really, really well.

I’m so happy to back at the Y and to be a Rye resident. The people here are so pleasant. Everyone here is just so helpful and beautiful. Whether it is Christina upstairs, or our yoga teacher, or Rich, everyone is just great. My heart is with the Rye Y!