[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 99 (Tuesday, July 17, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1346-E1347]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            COMMEMORATING THE RETIREMENT OF MARGARET L. HUNT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 17, 2001

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in both celebration and sadness 
to commemorate the retirement of Margaret L. Hunt, senior citizens 
advocate extraordinaire, from Toledo, Ohio. A pioneer in the Toledo 
area senior citizens'movement, Margaret takes with her 45 years of 
experience in senior services.
  Born in Kentucky, Margaret has been a Toledoan since the age of two. 
She has lived in South Toledo, graduating from Libbey High School and 
raising a family. She and her husband, Daniel, to whom she was married 
for more than fifty years, have four children: Rebecca, Nancy, 
Margaret, and Daniel. Margaret is also grandmother to eleven 
grandchildren and seventeen great-grandchildren.
  Margaret got her start in Toledo area services while a young mother. 
Even while she was employed by a local bakery, she helped to establish 
Teen Town in Highland Park, working with the City of Toledo's Parks & 
Recreation Department. During that time it became apparent that 
although Toledo actively developed programs for young people, the same 
could not be said for older Toledoans. Margaret was charged with the 
task of developing and implementing such programming. She started by 
promoting the formation of neighborhood social clubs that met regularly 
in park shelter houses. Prior to the days of the Older Americans Act 
and thus with no kind of senior nutrition program available, Margaret 
took the creative approach of encouraging weekly potluck luncheons. 
While enjoying each other's camaraderie and a hot meal, the seniors 
participated in games and crafts and planned outings. Soon this very 
successful program was expanded into local senior housing complexes. 
These groups were the precursor of the modern senior centers. In fact, 
Margaret was instrumental in the establishment of Toledo's first senior 
center, Senior Centers Inc.
  In 1981, when the idea of senior centers was still in its infancy and 
there were just a few beginning locally, Margaret took on the task of 
growing a center in native South Toledo. The South Toledo Senior Center 
was born in August of that year, with Margaret at the helm as Executive 
Director. In the twenty

[[Page E1347]]

years that followed, Margaret fostered unprecedented growth in the 
center, which is now in a large and airy freestanding building and 
continuing to grow. The South Toledo Senior Center serves hundreds of 
seniors a nutritious lunch every day, and is the only one in the area 
serving lunch on Sunday as well. Its programs are varied and all-
inclusive: if it's something seniors enjoy doing it's being done at the 
South Toledo Senior Center. I cannot imagine it without her, nor not 
being greeted with her cheerful smile upon my visits there.
  Hayes's belief that ``Old age is not something to which I have 
arrived kicking and screaming. It is something I have achieved,'' 
Margaret Hunt has arrived at this place in her life with grace. While 
we wish her a wonderful life of retirement, we yet look to her for 
continued quiet greatness.

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