Public Places : A Place to ‘Live a Second Life’ : A Glendale park rounds up an array of social services for seniors and helps Armenian immigrants feel at home.

While some areas of Southern California despair at taking back neighborhood parks from drugs or gangs, silver-haired throngs seem to have taken over the parks in Glendale.

The Glendale Adult Recreation Center at Glendale Central Park on Colorado Boulevard is an example--a beehive of activity serving 400 to 700 people daily. Groups of men gather around picnic tables engrossed in board games. By 11:30 about 150 people will have gathered inside for a hot meal. Lawn bowling, shuffleboard, card games and dances draw a crowd.

The Center offers more than a good time--it’s also one of 42 L.A. County ‘focal points’, which operate mostly out of parks, where seniors can come for one stop shopping for social services. Here 25 agencies offer everything from health screening to lunch, legal assistance, educational classes, help with finances and taxes, recreation programs and volunteer opportunities.

At the Glendale Recreation center people speak many different languages--Filipino, Spanish, and, by far the dominant language, Armenian. Thirty percent (confirm) of the population of Glendale is Armenian, and the parks are an important meeting place for a community that numbers about 600,000 in California. Armenians have come to the United States in four main waves fleeing religious and civil wars, beginning with the massacre in Armenia in 1914 which displaced many into nearby countries in the Middle East. The next major immigrations came during the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s and the Islamic revolution in Iran in the early 1980s. Most recently a large group of immigrants came in 1987 escaping civil war with the Soviet Union.

SONA ZINZALIAN, director of the Armenian Relief Society Social Service, Western Region, told Public Places columnist JANE SPILLER:

Most of the parks in Glendale are occupied by the seniors. I see many Armenians sitting there in groups, chatting politics or whatever, some grandparents taking care of the kids. It’s good. It’s better than staying home and being bored and not being happy because they came to a new country and they feel like foreigners. Some people go to English as a Second Language classes.

In the Glendale parks, most of them are from Armenia; others are from the Middle East Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and others are from Iran. Their common experience is war--civil war or political or religious war. Already they have lived a life. This is the second life that they’re living and to adjust is kind of difficult.

In Armenia there were a lot of parks and that’s why these people like to go to the parks. In Armenia, if someone has a message, or wants to give a lecture or a speech, they go to the park. They get the news there. It spreads so quickly from one mouth to another.

We often refer seniors to the Adult Recreation Center. There they provide seniors with bus tickets and lunch, hot lunch which is very cheap, and they can meet some friends. They can play games. They have programs and they take them places. In holiday times they have parties and have activities going on. And there are Armenians working there so they feel more comfortable to speak their language. During tax season they help them complete the forms. So instead of staying home and watching TV, they get together in a good environment.

Public Places columnist JANE SPILLER welcomes suggestions for places of interest. Contact her c/o VOICES or at jane.spiller@latimes.com