[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 13564]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 13564]]

            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 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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