By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Staff Writer
“Miami Comes to the Mountain” was held on Aug. 23 at Leisure Shores Senior Center in Crestline. The afternoon and evening event was a rip-roaring good time with games of chance, drinking and eating, plus a dance demonstration, a dance contest and more dancing led by Steve Valentine. Both the dancers and the audience enjoyed the fun.
Horses raced in the derby by a roll of the dice.
Leisure Shores was filled to the brim with people dressed in their Miami vibe/Key Largo best, with a costume contest that brought out the color garb on men and. women. The partygoers played several games of chance including the dice game “Right, Left, Center.” The “Horse Derby” races had the crowd gathered around the race track and everyone having a great time. The games were three tickets each.
The bar was set up in the Fireside Room and the games of chance and dance contest, along with the buffet dinner and snacks, were held in the Lakeside Room. Socializing, mingling and fun were everywhere, even outside on the front lawn overlooking the lake, since the temperatures had cooled down from the rainstorm that morning.
The silent auction with three baskets of wonderful items with values way above $100 each raised many hundreds of dollars. The raised funds are to help pay for the beautiful Leisure Shores facility, including the basic necessities, such as water and power (now it’s air-conditioned).
“Leisure Shores,” as explained by Citizen of the Year Carrie Forbear, who was the event coordinator, “is enjoyed by club members for their activities, keeping seniors young and healthy and also used four days a week by Mountain of Promise,” an adult daycare and educational program for challenged adults who live in the community.
Leisure Shores Senior Center, on the east shore of Lake Gregory, has a long, wonderful history, beginning with the Friendly Neighbors Club of Crestline which began in 1959. Many years later the club leased a flooded-out building which the county had purchased as part of the new Lake Gregory Regional Park. The building was originally built by the Club San Moritz as their teen center in the 1960s but it was severely damaged by a flood in the 1970s after the Club San Moritz’s closure. The seniors rebuilt and rehabilitated the building about 50 years ago, creating a clubhouse for the Crest Forest Senior Citizens Club (CFSSC) and as a community center for Crestline. They also rent out the building to community members for weddings, receptions and for meetings and community events such as Bingo by the Lions Club.
Steve Valentine leading the dancers.
The CFSSC has maintained and upgraded the building, recently adding air conditioning to make it into a cooling center for the summer. They are working on adding a generator soon to power the facility, enabling Leisure Shores to become a warming center for the winter, if the power goes out.
For more information, contact Leisure Shores on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at (909) 338-5036 or visit the facility at 24658 San Moritz Drive in Crestline. See their Facebook page for weekly senior nutritional lunch menus and a calendar of events.
0 Comments