Golden Agers enjoy fellowship
By Steve Herring
Published in News on August 31, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
Members of the Golden Agers are, seated from left, Harley Ringer, Peggy Barwick, Claire Baggett, Iris Lee and Marguerite Myers; and standing from left, Johnnie Arnold, Linda Jackson, Linda Kersey, Paula Jean Kersey, Martha Merritt, Linda Kabler and Dot Dearen. Not pictured are members Lib Hall, Mabel Sutton, Ann Hart and Sue Holmes.
MOUNT OLIVE -- Dot Dearen looks around the tables in the back dining room at the Yummy Orient pointing out the few empty chairs.
One by one she names who the missing members of the Golden Agers group are and where they normally sit.
"See all these chairs?" she said. "They are normally filled. I have been doing this going on nine years.
"We have about 20 members. Some of them are inactive. They come occasionally, but I always contact them on Monday before our Tuesday meeting. They all wait on that phone call."
Members range in age from 45 to their mid-90s.
Harley Ringer, who moved to town from Cove City, is the only man in the group.
"He was so excited when he came," Mrs. Dearen said. "He said, 'How much is it to join? We want to join.' I said, 'Nothing.' I said, 'You just participate and be happy.' That is the name of our game.
"We play bingo about once every three months. That is not the reason we meet. We look after the elderly. It gives them something to do. (Member) Mrs. Mabel (Sutton) tells me it might be the only time that she gets out. We fellowship. We have devotions. We have prayer lists. We send birthday cards, sympathy cards, and we support the cancer drive that Mrs. Hilda Hill, when she started coming she was the captain of a cancer team."
Members enjoy playing bingo, but that is not the purpose of the Golden Agers and is on the bottom of the list, she said.
"That is not the purpose of the Golden Agers," Mrs. Dearen said.
It is for getting together for fellowship and to have a good time, the members said.
The group meets at 11 a.m. on the fourth Tuesday of the month at Yummy Orient. It has also met occasionally at Rita's.
Golden Agers started at the Baptist Church in Calypso and met at the Southern Belle Restaurant in Mount Olive until it closed in September 2013.
Mrs. Dearen, who lives in the Dudley area, was not living in the area when the group started. She spent 20 years in Florida before returning home to look after her parents, Mr. and Mrs. W.H. "Pop" Raynor.
"Mrs. Donnie Kennedy would try her best when I came back here to get me to come," she said. "I would say, 'I am not a golden ager. I'm not going.' She said, 'Well, you have got to go because I need someone to take me.'
"I would pick her up and come with her. She was in her 90s, and she was the president. She a president for two years and then me. We used to have some men in here, but you got rid of them."
"All of our men disappeared," Claire Baggett joked.
"Us women, we do all right together," Mrs. Dearen said.
Anyone is welcome to attend. There are no membership fees.
"We have a little basket over here that we pass around, and they will put 50 cents, a dollar, whatever," she said. "It is not a money-making thing. It is just for our cards and bingo stuff. Marguerite (Myers) is our bingo caller."
"She's loud," one member shouted out as the others laughed.
"Sometimes we take a trip," Mrs. Dearen said. "We had one member who was not doing well. She had asked if we could go to Meadow (near Benson in Johnston County) to eat. So we planned a day, and I think maybe six or eight of us met. Everybody had their cars loaded, and we drove to Meadow so that she could have lunch there. Everybody enjoyed it."
Mrs. Baggett's grandson Mark Anderson of Dudley will visit with the group from time to time, she said.
"He will do a devotion," Mrs. Dearen said.
"Let's go ahead and get our picture so we can go play ball," Mrs. Myers said.
"I told you they have to be out there at the (Senior Citizen) site at 1 o'clock to play beanbag baseball," Mrs. Dearen said.