NEWRY – An energetic buzz filled the Grand Avenue Caf at the Jordan Grand Resort Hotel and Conference Center on Nov. 6 when 127 seniors from senior colleges across Maine sat down to share expertise, ideas, experiences and creative energy over dinner that Sunday.
Deena Day, who with her husband, Chet, runs a concert series in Augusta, said, “The thing about the senior college is that everyone is excited about learning, and that makes them fun and interesting people to talk to.”
Western Maine Senior College, in partnership with SAD 44 Adult and Community Education, hosted the three-day annual conference of the Maine Senior College Network. The conference, called “A Meeting of the Minds,” attracted people from each of Maine’s 15 senior colleges.
Kali Lightfoot, director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of San Francisco, welcomed the group.
Escalator effect’
“There is an escalator effect that happens when we get these groups together,” said Lightfoot, noting the group’s synergistic energy.
Lottie Fortune regaled people with a humorous account of her experiences as a member of York County Senior College’s Odyssey of the Mind team competing at this year’s world finals in Boulder, Colo.
Her team of six seniors, ranging in age from 62 to 83, won a first-place trophy in the “Laugh-a-thon,” she said. She summed up her talk saying, “I have arthritis, but for two whole weeks I had no aches! The endorphins really work when you’re happy and excited.”
Energy is something Rabbi Harry Sky of Falmouth, at age 83, knows a lot about. He gets charged up when he talks about the exciting aspects of aging.
“This stage in life it’s almost as if you’ve been released from a sentence – as if the yoke has been removed,” he said.
“It’s a time of life,” he said, “when we begin to explore the spiritual aspects of life, to explore the meaning of life that is the essence of spirituality.”
Sky is the spark that started the Maine Senior College Network, which now serves approximately 4,000 seniors across the state and ultimately has become a nationwide network through the philanthropy of Bernard and Barbro Osher.
Sky explained that in 1993 the idea of senior college came to him. “Engagement of the mind and spirit are essential” to a happy life, Sky said. In conjunction with the University of Southern Maine, Sky planned a chowder dinner to introduce his idea to potential older students, planning on 150 people attending, he said.
“It really was like the miracle of the fish and the loaves,” Sky said, noting that instead of 150 people, 500 showed up. “And miraculously all were fed!”
Sky said he knew of a philanthropic Maine native, Bernard Osher, who lived in California, and thought he might have the resources to help him get the idea off the ground. By pure luck, he happened to meet Osher at a party in Biddeford Pool, where he pitched him his idea of the senior college, he said.
Osher, in turn, asked his mother her opinion of the idea, and when she approved it, Osher pledged his support, said Sky. The first courses were offered in 1996.
Holding his arms up, gesturing to the roomful of animated seniors enjoying each other’s company, Sky declared, “This was destiny.”
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