Active aging
March 2015 • Vol. 36-No. 4
January 2004 • Vol. 25-No.2
Informing 112,000 55+ readers Southcentral Kansas Serving 80,000 Readers in in South Central Kansas
Happy St. Patrick’s Day Questions About Services? Central Plains Area Agency on Aging (Butler, Harvey and Sedgwick Counties) 1-855-200-2372 or call your county Department on Aging Harvey County 284-6880 1-800-750-7993 Butler County 775-0500 1-800-279-3655 Active Aging: 316-942-5385
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Mothers of ‘re-invention’ By Elma Broadfoot and Elvira Crocker While necessity may be the mother of “invention” in our early working lives, “re-invention” may become the necessity in our later lives if we choose to continue to work As we observe Women’s History Month, Active aging looks at three women who have reinvented themselves for the second half of their lives. That’s certainly been the case for Kathy Trollope Wyatt, who turned 72 last month. She started the new year by reopening a cookie shop she’d previously owned. Her KT Cookie Co., 1908 W. 13th, is west of North High where she went to school. When she was young she wasn’t interested in cooking or baking, despite her mother’s best attempts to teach her and her two sisters. “I was never responsive,” she admits. In junior high school, she had such little interest in her cooking class that she became the “bad egg” in the group assigned to make tuna salad. Her role was to boil the eggs, but they didn’t. When it came time to mix the eggs into the salad, it was not a pretty sight.
Today, she says, “I make a pretty good tuna salad.” After graduating she studied interior design in New York and, for a time worked in that field. Marriage and two daughters later, she became occupied with the role of mother and decided to try her hand at making cookies. Her first efforts were not successful; that batch of dough ended up in the trash, not the oven. But she persevered and became the mother who made cookies for her daughters’ classes and special events. When she was asked to make 300 cookies for a wedding, she accepted and figured it out as she went. She was so successful that someone suggested that she open a cookie shop. Photo by Becky Funke She ran her first store with friends Judy Gomez, Kathy Wyatt and Squeek Crouse with frosted cookies. Squeek Crouse, 77, and Judy Gomez, 65. ation an attractive job magnet because she Squeek, also an entrepreneur, owned a likes to cook. doughnut shop for 29 years. Judy, whose Together they ran the shop from 2004 husband operated a business in the same See Re-invention, page 14 shopping strip, found the cookie oper-
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Friends may come on four legs By Amy Geiszler-Jones Pudgie, a 9-year-old pug mix, has made life a lot better for his owner. She got him last year through a program that helps older adults adopt pets without the worry of what will happen to their pet companions if something happens to them. “I just couldn’t do without Pudgie,” said 96-year-old Evelyn, as the small dog lay by her feet at her dining room table. “The first thing I do in the morning is look for her. I haven’t had her all that long, but she’s woven a place in my heart.”
Annie Grace, Evelyn’s dog for 11 years, died a few months before she adopted Pudgie in May. “It just didn’t seem like home,” she said. Friends and family told her she was too old to get another pet. She’d given up until she heard about the Older Adult Pet Adoption (OAPA!) program. Evelyn and Pudgie’s pairing was one of seven in 2014, the program’s most successful year. Since it started in 2012, 16 people have been paired with dogs at no charge, said Kevin Stubbs, executive director
of the Caring Hands Humane Society in Newton where the OAPA! pets are selected. The program’s other partners are Prairie View mental health center, the Harvey County Department on Aging and the Regional Institute on Aging at Wichita State University. “We all know having animals in the home…make for a happier existence,” Stubbs said. “Sometimes the pet is all the older individual has to look forward to.” “I’ve been around animals all of my life, and I understand their value,” agreed
See Pets, page 4