Simi Valley Senior Center Toasts 173 Volunteers : Services: Helpers gather for honors and entertainment. The camaraderie is more than worth the time and effort, they say.

At 73, Jean Dewey rarely slows down.

She volunteers as a member of the Simi Valley Council on Aging and the advisory council to the county’s Area Agency on Aging. In May, she attended the White House Conference on Aging in Washington, D.C. All this in addition to her accounting job.

By volunteering to help others, she said, you also help yourself.

“If your attention is just on yourself,” she said, “you’re going to go downhill fast.”

Dewey was one of 173 volunteers honored Friday for donating time and effort to the Simi Valley Senior Center. The center relies on volunteers to augment its two full-time and two part-time employees, said Kathryn B. Oliver, senior-services coordinator for Simi Valley.

Without volunteer help, Oliver said, the center couldn’t provide its current level of service, from staging dances to providing meals to homebound seniors.

“We hold you volunteers in very high esteem,” Oliver told a crowd of about 200 people at Friday’s honors ceremony. “Without you, we would be nothing.”

For their efforts, volunteers received license plate frames labeled “Simi Valley Senior Center Volunteer.” The ceremony had a driving theme--with toy cars parked atop the tables--inspired by the large amounts of time volunteers for such programs as Meals on Wheels spend on the road, Oliver said.

Attendees also were treated to cake and comedy, the latter provided by a local comic who arrived late to find 72-year-old volunteer Thomas Rock taking his place on stage, telling jokes about outhouses.

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Senior Chorale Director John Gross, 74, and three other volunteers serenaded the crowd with the song “Be My Life’s Companion and You’ll Never Grow Old.”

“We do everything from the old-time stuff up to the ‘60s,” he said later. “After that, we’re lost.”

Every Thursday, Gross leads 15 to 20 people in the center’s choral group. The former president of a book publishing company, Gross began singing at the age of 7 and formed a glee club in his Army battalion during World War II. Music, he said, is an important part of life for people at the center.

“Music makes the world go ‘round,” he said.

Robert Dunnican, 64, volunteers as president of the Senior Center Meal Site Council, which helps provide a hot lunch at the center five days a week. It also arranges trips to such places as Santa Barbara and the Imax theater in Los Angeles.

He started visiting the center about five years ago and it grew on him. He now considers the people he meets there family.

“We’re all getting old together,” he said. “It makes it a lot more fun. . . . If you want to stay active, you can stay active beyond description here.”