Audrey Caro Gomez
It used to take 89-year-old Peg Chenoweth five minutes to walk from the parking lot to the Senior Center building.
But she was persistent in attending the exercise class that Delena Gilman teaches there three days a week.
“(I was) stooped, and couldn’t do any of the (exercises),” Chenoweth said. “I was a mess.”
Three years later and she can do almost all of the exercises, she said.
“What she has done for me is night and day,” Chenoweth said of Gilman.
Chenoweth’s story is not atypical for regular attendees of the hour-long class.
“A year after I had a stroke I came in here with a cane and looked at Delena and said ‘you want me to do what?’” said Tonni McCoy-Hutchison.
Her mobility also has improved since then.
The friendship, laughter and support is another part of what McCoy-Hutchison appreciates about the class.
“We have a good group of people,” Gilman said.
Gilman has been teaching the exercise class at the senior center for 18 years.
“(The class) got so big they had to move it to the gym,” said Sandi Hegge, activities director.
That hasn’t always been the case.
“At times we would have only three or four people,” Gilman said. “Betty Postma and I decided (we would just keep exercising).”
About 10 years ago, Gilman took a class called People with Arthritis Can Exercise.
“I took that training and have been using it ever since,” she said.
People with various levels of physical ability regularly participate.
Dorothy Lyon has been exercising with Gilman for about three years.
“I like it,” Lyon said. “It gets me out of my house.”
Lyon is blind and hard of hearing, so she sits near Gilman and listens to her direction.
Participants use chairs, arranged in a circle, for some seated exercises as well as for balance during some of the standing exercises.
“I try to let everyone know they can do things at their own pace,” Gilman said.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t push people to progress.
Jo Dern has been in class for about three months.
When Gilman first saw Dern sitting in one of the chairs, Dern said she couldn’t stand up.
“She can now,” Gilman said.
“I also am walking better,” Dern added. She said her husband noticed too, and he gets up and makes her breakfast on the days she goes to exercise.
Gilman’s husband of 54 years, Roger, used to participate in her class too. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1991 and it has progressed to the point he can no longer participate.
The couple is from Maine but had stayed in different parts of Oregon with friends.
“In 1995 Roger and I fell in love with Sweet Home and bought a place here,” Gilman said. “We really like Sweet Home United Methodist, (It’s a) good church family.”
They have three sons, two daughters-in-law, 11 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.
Gilman appreciates the environment at the senior center, from the staff and her students.
“We’d be lost if we didn’t have the senior center to come to,” Gilman said. “The people here care about us, I know.”
So do her students. When she misses class, they greet her on her return like it’s a homecoming, she said.
“They stroke my ego well.”
Joking aside, she said they take exercise very seriously.
“You keep moving and then you will be able to keep moving,” Gillman said.