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Community Corner

Her Senior Moments Make Life Better for the 'Post-Work Crowd'

Pam Breeden runs Cobb Senior Services with an army of volunteers and advocates who are anything but retiring.

Traffic roundabouts have a way of confusing and irritating senior citizens.

They can also frighten a teenager who will grow up to be 's strongest advocate for seniors.

Life is a circle.

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"That roundabout had three lanes!" said Pam Breeden, director of , thinking back to when she was a terrified kid in New York practicing to get her driver's license. "Daddy said, 'You've got to do it. You've got to get in there and do this before you take your test.' I said, 'I promise I'll never come this way.'

"Anyway, I did it."

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Fast forward to a recent town hall meeting Breeden had before a roundabout was built in West Cobb. "Seniors have a fear of roundabouts," she said. "We had a lot of complaints."

But once it opened? "Not one complaint since they built it."

Breeden had worked for the county since 1974, coming up through the ranks of Parks and Recreation and Senior Services. She became the head of CSS more than eight years ago and has run the department through times of tough budget cuts and a rapidly growing senior population.

A recent CNN/Money magazine report named Marietta as one of the 25 best places in the country to retire—places that offer "amenities galore for the post-work crowd."

Breeden would not argue with the judges, but she might widen their boundaries just a bit.

"Sometimes I'm just amazed at what we do," she said. Her staff and about 500 active volunteers offer a variety of programs and activities throughout the county, from to Tai Chi classes.

Volunteers, Breeden said, drove about 80,000 un-reimbursed miles last year. "They always say, 'I didn't think I'd get this committed,' but once they get into it and see the impact and get to know the clients, it's like a hook."

When she took over as director, county commissioners asked her what changes she wanted to make. "We need advocacy," Breeden told them. "We need seniors down at the courthouse, at the statehouse, talking.

"We get people on the advocacy team who were probably take-charge people in their (working) lives. They're not going to take no for an answer. They don't get frustrated. You need people like that.

"I hear from other people in government, 'Oh, you just sick seniors on them and you get anything you want.' I don't look at it that way. They come to the team wanting to help other people, but at the same time it helps them to continue to feel needed. People who have been movers and shakers have the hardest time in retirement."

Breeden and her staff work out of an old two-story building on Fairground Street, next to a tattoo parlor. By this time next year they should be moved into the 42,000-square-foot Senior Wellness Center now under construction on Powder Springs Road.

The building will become the hub of CSS operations and include a fitness center, a clinic proposed to be run by Wellstar staff, a café and an art studio.

The Meals on Wheels operation also will relocate there, and a teaching kitchen will offer classes on healthy cooking and special-needs diets.

Plans for the center were put on hold last year after county officials discovered the land they had bought was in the flight path for . Regulations initiated after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 restricted using federal funds to build in such areas. The property was an abandoned shopping center when the county bought it.

Breeden said the county shifted the HUD funds to replace a senior center in Austell, which had been flooded. The unrestricted money appropriated for that center was shifted to the Powder Springs project.

"It wasn't an even switch, but it was enough to keep us going," Breeden said. "The appropriations never went away, just the HUD money. We tried to fight it. We made several appeals. We argued that we were not building, just renovating. We lost."

The readjusted funding, along with other grant money and fundraising efforts will allow for the completion of the wellness center, Breeden said, and she expects it to be open next spring.

Breeden herself is old enough to take advantage of many of the services offered by CSS (55 and older). "Now that I'm in this place where the seniors are, there are so many things that I can relate to that I've heard all these years," she said.

"My first job I was offered out of college was at an assisted living facility—we called them nursing homes back then. Turned it down. Why would I want to work with seniors? I came here and was the fourth employee that had worked for Head Start in our younger years. Like the rest of them I came to this later in life. We get very few young people who go into aging (services)."

That may change as millions of aging Baby Boomers retire, move into private senior housing, and go looking for activities.

"It shouldn't be a time that you dread," Breeden said. "It should be a time that you look forward to. You worked hard all your life and you deserve this. After we open this facility, it'll only be about 6½ years before all Baby Boomers will be eligible for our services.

"We decided we need to be prepared."

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