Senior Center Gala

This is the GLITTER event of the year! It is awesome to watch the parade of shimmer and shine as seniors enter to find their respective tables. I definitely need to expand my shopping sites!

Past Leschi CC President, Thurston Muskelly, with Lisa Moland, Leschi School Principal, Janice Merrill Brown, current Leschi CC president, and Henrietta Price, Leschi crossing guard. Photo courtesy Karen Daubert

The Leschi Community Council table was delighted to have past LCC president and past Senior Center Board president Thurston Muskelly as our guest and many thanks to another past LCC president, Karen Daubert, for bringing him. He was definitely THE guest of honor as many seniors came to pay their respects for his long years of service to this community.

Precise Catering offered the guests salmon or chicken plates and then the infamous Dessert Dash took place! Each table collects donations from their guests and submits them for totaling and ranking. The highest bidders get first choice but there was no lack of good options, so it was a win-win for all. Volunteers contributed their most decadent desserts to the cause and there were several pieces de resistance from Indulge, a West Seattle bakery, which is the first place I’ve heard that bakes the Southern Classic Hummingbird Cake.

The music was the Eugenie Jones Quartet; Eugenie is a Seattle based jazz singer who performs up and down the coast. She has a powerful voice and treated us to both jazz and holiday numbers.

Senior Center Director, Dian Ferguson, elegantly glad in shimmering gold, filled us in on the quest to own the Senior Center. In the ongoing battle to get the city to acquiesce, the last hurdles to be jumped require the Center to submit separate 990s; as part of Sound Generation, their annual figures had been lumped with all the other Senior Centers and now must be pried loose from that all-inclusive report. Although the Center is hoping that this hurdle is the last, one wonders as it has been apparent that the Mayor does not want this to happen. She is still fixated on affordable housing for this property, even though the geo-tech studies indicate an estimate of $16,000 plus to stabilize the steep hill to accommodate any housing. Stay tuned as this saga should continue well into 2020.

~Diane Snell