She Brings Together Young and Old

As he describes it, Charlie Speers had gotten lost in himself.

A retired commercial artist, Speers, 75, lost interest in art a few years ago. He had become withdrawn and moody, and his wife asked him to go to the Mark Taper Intergenerational Center in Van Nuys.

“Basically, my wife engineered it,” Speers said. “She thought I should come.”

There, because of the Mark Taper JOY (Joining Older & Younger) program, Speers found himself working with art again, this time with toddlers and young children.

Speers can’t tell if any of the kids may be budding artists yet, but he does know he enjoys seeing them open up creatively. It’s opened him up too, he said.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Speers, who lives in Van Nuys.

Since the Organization for the Needs of the Elderly created the intergenerational center four years ago with a $1-million grant from the Mark Taper Foundation, Marilyn Fried has seen a lot of bonding between toddlers and the elderly.

“There’s a lot of love here,” said Fried, ONE’s executive director, as a group of elderly residents sat with 2-year-olds. They took turns throwing a tennis ball for a white terrier someone brought for a visit.

The toddlers were sitting on the senior citizens’ laps, playing and hugging.

“We’re trying to re-create the old neighborhoods when seniors and children used to live nearby one another,” Fried said.

The center--located in what had been a teen center on Victory Boulevard--has separate licensing for both child day care and adult day care in separate buildings, with scheduled times for joint activities. The program can accommodate 60 senior citizens and 78 children who are between 6 months and 5 years old.

Three-year-old Karina Zack of Reseda said “going to the neighbors”--what the seniors are called--is the best part of her day. A normally talkative child, Karina shyly explained that she likes to read stories with her “neighbors.”

The daily casual contact with elderly residents does a lot to eliminate the fears and misunderstandings children may have about older people, Fried said. And it reminds the elderly that they are still valuable, said Eileen Haller, director of the intergenerational center.

“They may be singing ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm,’ ” Haller said, “and then tell the children about how they grew up on a farm.”

The intergenerational program helps seniors with debilitating conditions, Haller said. For example, those who have little verbal ability may at least try to speak to the children or when they’re holding a 6-month-old baby.

“The baby draws them out,” Haller said. “They also seem to make more of an effort to communicate.”

For Fried, the intergenerational center is a better alternative for families considering placing a loved one in a nursing home. Using this adult day care center gives the spouses or children of the elderly people a break from the constant care giving and also keeps the seniors active.

For Speers, it’s caused him to pick up his brushes again.

“We really save lives in doing this,” Fried said. “They come in here and it’s life again for them.”

In recognition of the Mark Taper JOY program, the Organization for the Needs of the Elderly was recently awarded a Community Partnership Award from the Los Angeles Times Valley and Ventura County Editions.