Senior Citizens Band Together and Take Their Act on the Road : Performance: The Golden Dreams will appear Saturday at a televised Dorothy Chandler Pavilion concert.

Ramona Rodriguez says that with her left arm hanging uselessly by her side, she felt too ashamed to leave her house--except for doctors appointments. But three months ago, a guitar and a band enticed her to leave the security of her Pacoima home and helped her regain partial use of her limb.

“I never thought I would use my hand at all,” said Rodriguez, whose arm and two fingers were paralyzed in a car accident four years ago. “Now I look healthy. I feel healthy. Nobody believes I’m 70. Some people think I’m 50, 60.”

To exercise her fingers, Rodriguez joined Today’s Golden Dreams, a band of about 70 senior citizens who sing and play stringed instruments. The musicians are all students at the Kennedy-San Fernando Community Adult School and automatically became band members when they registered for senior citizens’ music classes.

Some students say the band’s activities are the happiest time of their lives as they bring Christmas cheer to convalescent homes, schools and community centers.

On Saturday, the Golden Dreams will sing and play Christmas carols--some in Spanish--at the Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the 13th annual Los Angeles County Holiday program. Other groups also will perform, and the entire program will be televised live from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on KCET-TV, Channel 28. Golden Dreams’ 15-minute performance is scheduled for 3 p.m. Admission is free.

Most of the band members are from Pacoima and San Fernando, areas its leader calls “ghettos” where headlines often revolve around drugs and gangs.

“A lot of people don’t think that anything good comes out of these areas,” said band leader and music teacher Violeta McHenry. “Here there is good: people willing to learn. I had an alcoholic man. He lost his family and he started coming to the class. And his life changed. He had something new in his life: playing the guitar. He was appreciated.”

Last week, about two dozen band members practiced at the Pacoima Senior Citizens Center for Saturday’s televised performance. Some in the group, composed mostly of women, dressed in Christmas colors and wore flowers in their hair. Pointing their fingers and sweeping their arms across the audience, the Golden Dreams sang, “I Want to Wish You a Merry Christmas” in Spanish and English.

The lively beat had other senior citizens, who had come for the daily lunch at the center, tapping their hands on the table and waving their arms as if they were conductors.

Guitar player Isidro Lozada lives alone and said he joined the band for companionship and music. At 74, he limps a little because of arthritis in his hips and knees.

But when he plays and sings, he said, he forgets the pain because “I’m enjoying the music.”

Mandolin player Ruth Sanchez, a 68-year-old retired television assembler, knows how the sound of Golden Dreams affects audiences.

“When we go to schools, they’re sitting there. They’re giggling, thinking, ‘What do those old ladies know?’ Then we start playing. They’re quiet. They don’t even move and they open up their eyes. The same with senior citizens. Some of them even cry. I think they remember their families when they used to get together for Christmas.”

The roots of the Golden Dreams goes back to 1977, when McHenry taught music classes for senior citizens at an elementary school. But after Proposition 13 passed, money for many programs financed by the Los Angeles Unified School District was cut, including McHenry’s music classes for senior citizens. Golden Dreams went out of circulation for a year before funds became available again and McHenry restarted the group. A few members of the old group are in the present one.

“Some of them have wanted to sing their whole lives and until now they didn’t have the chance,” McHenry said. “I’m discovering in them some talents they didn’t know they had their whole lives. Many of the seniors use their time watching TV or knitting. They are not very active, so this is something new for them. Everybody’s afraid to get old and with this kind of group . . . the myth that you’re old and can’t learn, that’s past for them.”

Band members said they don’t want to sit at home waiting for death.

“I don’t want to be in the rocking chair yet,” said Epimenia (Pepper) Delgado, a 64-year-old mother of 12 and grandmother of 14. “I had so many kids. I was always washing, ironing, making lunches. I never had time for myself. Now that my children are big, I have time for me.”