Seniors adjust to life at Firemen’s Field

After 45 years at the Hendrickson Park administration building, the Silver Threads senior group was relocated to the Firemen’s Field clubhouse after a severe rainstorm on Aug. 14 flooded their meeting spot.

Recreation Director Tom Roberts, who has worked for the village for 12 years, said it was the worst storm damage he has ever seen. Two or three times a year the building gets water in it, he said, but typically only a couple of inches. During the Aug. 14 rainstorm, in which Valley Stream got about eighth inches of rain in a half-day, water came up to the top of the desks.

Members of the Silver Threads are still adjusting to the move, including Senior Program Coordinator Barbara Diglio. “This is a little difficult,” Diglio said, “but slowly but surely, we’re getting there. We have to limit what we do here, where as in the other place we had two rooms to work with.”

She also cited the aesthetics of Hendrickson Park as a reason it was loved so much by the seniors and why the move was so tough. “They weren’t pleased because they loved the other place because it had the lake where they could sit and walk around,” Diglio said. “It was horrible because we lost a lot of paperwork, we lost a lot of information on the seniors, we lost a lot of records on organizations that were here. Now we’re just trying to gradually buildup and trying to bring it back.”

Members of the Silver Threads are grateful for the space at Firemen’s Field, but they cannot help but miss Hendrickson Park. “They’ve been very nice here,” Minnie Ciarcia said of the village’s staff. “I can’t say that they’re not, it’s just that it’s a strange place for us.”

Ciarcia has been a Valley Stream resident since 1967 and said that the new location is further from her house, which makes getting to and from Silver Threads meetings and events more difficult.

Virginia Romano, who has been a Valley Stream resident for more than 60 years, expressed similar feelings. “It’s more like home to us,” Romano said of Hendrickson Park. “We had a special room that was ours which made it very comfortable for us.”