Time together

Marion Shaw loves to paint, especially watercolor. She’s been painting all her life and wants to continue as long as possible.

“I don’t care how old you get. ... You’re constantly amazed when you finish a painting and think: ‘I did that,’” Shaw said.

Shaw gets plenty of opportunity to paint with her peers. For the past 10 years, she’s been leading a painting group for people older than 50 through the Older American Klub, better known as OAK. The club, sponsored by the Columbia Parks and Recreation Department as part of its 50 Plus Program, started in 1969 with the opening of OAK Towers at Garth Avenue and Sexton Road.

Today, it holds activities at the Parkade Community Center, allowing participants to get together and socialize through a variety of activities, from pool tournaments and dances to cooking classes and musical groups.

Debbie Reschly, a Parks and Recreation specialist, became involved with OAK 12 years ago when she took charge of OAK Tours, a group that takes one-day, overnight and long-distance trips all over the state, the country and the world. Reschly now oversees the Fifty-Plus Program and overall OAK activities.

“It’s an outlet for them to have a little home away from home,” she said.

Reschly said OAK was a state-of-the-art program when it began 37 years ago. “People came from all over the country to see how we did it in Columbia,” she said.

The program moved about 10 years ago to the Parkade Center, where there is a pool room, several craft rooms and a larger recreation room for dinners, dances and other large get-togethers.

Active minds

The painters in Shaw’s class range from a country farmer to a university retiree. The enrollment, she said, “covers a broad spectrum of our society.”

The amateur artists sit around a table working on individual projects, lost in their own creative worlds but occasionally injecting a bit of conversation.

Each of the class members has a chance to display artwork in the Parkade Center and in an annual show. Last year’s exhibit was held at Lenoir Retirement Community; this year the class plans an outdoor exhibit in May on the grounds of Bethel Church.

Shaw said the group brings a little joy each session to its participants. “I think most of our painters are happy,” Shaw said.

“People come in basically for the association. . . . They need this. It keeps the mind active,” she said as she worked on her latest watercolor of a picturesque forest scene. She likes to go outdoors and paint plein air, and she has portrayed on canvas many of Columbia’s more beautiful places.

Shaw said it’s important for older adults to keep challenging themselves. To make her point, she drew on a comment a friend once made: “If you didn’t want to get old, you should have died young.”

Dorothy Nelson is a regular participant in Shaw’s painting sessions. She’s been attending OAK activities for more than 20 years and particularly enjoys painting and making music with the handbell choir.

“It’s good for the older people to get together,” she said.

Shaw’s classes normally draw fewer people in winter, when the room grows too cold for some. During other seasons, however, there’s hardly enough room at the two long tables for everyone who arrives. Most, she said, come “just for the pleasure of painting,” while others come primarily to talk.

“People can enter into the conversation as much or as little as they want,” she said. “There is no pressure of any kind.”

A different reward

“Slow down fool,” Curtis McMorris shouted as the cue ball rolled into a pocket. The scratch cost him his turn and the ball he’d just knocked in. But it’s not the end of the world. McMorris already has taken home a bunch of trophies from monthly OAK pool tournaments.

The prizes aren’t the reason he keeps coming back.

“I come over here for the companionship more than the trophies,” he said.

Pool sharks gather the fourth Friday of every month to test their billiards skills. The atmosphere is amiable. They joke back and forth, congratulating competitors for good shots and ribbing them for those that aren’t so good.

Eventually one team wins and claims its trophy, a shiny statuette of a pool player leaning over a table to strike a ball. Second-place finishers win trophies as well. But even the others don’t walk away empty-handed. They get to spend a few hours telling stories, kidding around and sharing pool strategies.

Once a winner is declared, some members of the group quickly gather their coats to head out, mentioning wives and responsibilities to which they must return.

Others, however, stick around a while, just to get in a couple more games and a couple more laughs. It’s an easy-going way to pass the time.

Dee Macon experiences that same camaraderie during her weekly visits to the OAK music group, where she sings and plays her rhythm guitar with the OAK Jammers and Goldenairs. Absent for a few years, Macon recently rejoined the group that meets for a couple of hours every Wednesday afternoon.

She said she used to be in a serious band but now doesn’t want to deal with all that pressure and commitment. The OAK music sessions, she emphasized, are “just for fun.”

Group leader Jennie LaBrue said the purpose is simply that, to give people a chance to get out and enjoy playing music together. Participants take turns starting a song, and the others chime in when they get a feel for the music.

Don Avery comes just to hear the musicians play. He’s been sick recently and hadn’t heard them in years, but he managed to make it out for a recent session. “I heard the music and had to stop in,” he said.

The musicians also hold monthly jam and dance sessions from 7 to 10 p.m. the second Friday of each month.

Gil and Amy Heckel, who recently moved to Columbia from Connecticut, have been happy with their welcome here and with all the activities available to seniors, including those hosted by OAK.

“If seniors say they have nothing to do, it’s their own fault,” Amy Heckel said during the recent St. Patrick’s Day Laugh and Lunch.

The event included a video of Irish comedian Paddy McGinty, a potato bar lunch complete with green Hawaiian punch and “Kiss Me I’m Irish” necklaces for all.

Later that day, dozens gathered for OAK’s St. Patrick’s Day Dance.

Whether it’s painting, shooting pool or playing music, OAK fulfills an important need for older Columbians to remain active, members say.

“I ain’t going to just sit and do nothing,” LaBrue said.