Clients Have Changed, but Needs Haven’t

The Oldtimers Foundation had served southeast Los Angeles County less than 10 years when its mission to help retired union workers already seemed outdated.

It was the mid-1980s. Most major industries had abandoned the area. Hundreds of thousands of union workers, looking for new jobs, had left for the suburbs. And the region was becoming a gateway for poor Latino immigrants.

But the organization founded by steelworkers stayed on.

“We had a new [kind of] senior citizen coming into the area, and they had even greater needs,” said George Cole, the foundation’s executive director and a former mechanic at the Bethlehem Steel Plant in Huntington Park before it closed in 1983.

Today the organization is one of the southeast area’s leading community nonprofits, a part-volunteer effort that provides food, transit and other services for seniors. Operating with a $5-million budget, it also builds low-cost housing, puts on health fairs and offers computer classes.

In all, the organization serves 600,000 meals per year in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. In the southeast county, workers serve 950 meals every day at senior citizen centers from ranging Bell to Lynwood. An additional 450 meals are delivered directly to homes of disabled seniors.

“Thank God for the Oldtimers,” said Linda Luz Guevara, a Huntington Park councilwoman. Without the foundation, she said, many seniors would rarely get a decent meal.

The organization’s charitable works were inspired by tragedy.

In the early 1960s, the wife of a retired steelworker was killed in a fire after she tipped over a candle. Steelworkers at the Kaiser Steel Plant in Fontana later learned she hadn’t been able to afford to fix the lighting in her kitchen.

The Fontana workers formed a plan: Match the skills of retired union workers with the needs of senior citizens. Why waste the talents, they reasoned, of retired electricians or mechanics with time on their hands? The affectionately named Oldtimers Foundation was formed and then grew to provide meals and transportation.

In 1977, Bethlehem Steel workers opened a branch in South Gate intending to do similar things. But their mission expanded dramatically after the industry pullout that left thousands jobless.

Emergency rent payments, counseling and advocacy services were a few of the foundation’s new services. It even funded a theater group of unemployed workers that at one point performed in Hollywood.

Eventually the demographics shifted, and the foundation evolved again. Bilingual workers became necessary, and additional federal funds enabled the organization to hire a full-time staff. It grew so fast that Huntington Park became the foundation’s headquarters, with a satellite office still in Fontana.

Though many steelworkers were involved in the foundation over the years, Cole, 51, is the only one left. He keeps his battered blue hard hat in a glass case behind his desk--a reminder of the foundation’s union roots. Lining the walls of his office are framed posters of Cesar Chavez and a campaign poster declaring “Steelworkers for Walter Mondale.”

Cole, a longtime Bell councilman, said the foundation stayed put because the community never recovered from the economic upheaval of the 1980s. Although union workers had pensions and Social Security benefits, many immigrant residents didn’t.

Worse still, community institutions, such as churches and business associations that once helped former union workers, were decimated by the economic upheaval. “We saw the social structure disappear,” Cole said.

The foundation’s center of operations is the Elks Lodge on Gage Avenue in Huntington Park, where seniors congregate for lunches or activities ranging from bingo to billiards. The building houses a computer center and other offices that serve as home for various community groups.

The center comes alive around lunchtime, when seniors start arriving for lunch. Many cannot afford cars and are brought to the center in vans as part of the foundation’s dial-a-ride program.

Josefina Andrade, disabled since birth and in a wheelchair, said she lives alone and has difficulty cooking. She has reached the $200 limit on her credit card, and sometimes can’t afford to pay $5 for a meal at one of the ubiquitous fast-food joints in the area.

“I love the food here. It’s nutritious,” said Andrade, 58. “The only food I can afford to eat outside the center is greasy, buttery food that is so unhealthy.”

For many seniors, saving money is only part of the reason they come. They also enjoy the fellowship, the sense of community. Some end up volunteering, bringing full circle the charitable spirit that helped start the foundation.

Lupe Ramirez, 76, who lives alone in South Gate, said the foundation lunches with friends are the high point of her day. “The food is good,” Ramirez said, “but we enjoy the company even more.”