By Conrad Dudderar
Senior Staff Writer
The public is being asked to help residents of Yukon’s largest senior community send messages to family members and friends.
The Spanish Cove Auxiliary at Spanish Cove Life-Care Retirement Village needs to replenish its dwindling supply of greeting cards.
“We try to keep cards for our residents so they can send them to their loved ones,” Spanish Cove Auxiliary member Wanda Beaman said. “This is like a real ministry here at Spanish Cove. A lot of our residents don’t have the ability to go out and get cards.”
There is a desk inside the Cove’s Plaza Hall where residents can come pick up a variety of cards – congratulations, birthday, anniversary, get well, sympathy, thank you, and thinking of you.
Cove residents are asked to make a small donation to support the Cove Auxiliary for the greeting cards they take. Free note cards also are offered.
Beaman and other auxiliary members are now asking for help from Yukon residents since many Cove residents have been unable to leave the campus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve really gotten low on cards,” Beaman explained. “If anyone in Yukon has unused greeting cards, we’re asking they consider donating them to the auxiliary.
“People can leave them at the ‘guard’ gate off Redbud on the east side of the campus.”
DEALING WITH COVID-19
Visitor access is restricted at Spanish Cove’s campus, near Vandament and Cornwell, due to COVID-19 safety precautions.
Pandemic-related restrictions, in place since March 2020, have kept many nursing and assisted living residents from seeing family and friends face-to-face.
So Spanish Cove residents especially look forward to having a new selection of greeting cards so they can write to loved ones.
Spanish Cove CEO Don Blose credited Beaman for her efforts, calling her a “jewel.”
The Cove auxiliary’s card desk was especially popular over the Christmas holiday, when residents took about 530 cards.
“All the money the auxiliary receives goes to a good cause and stays here at the Cove,” Beaman explained.
Funds collected are used to buy Christmas and birthday presents and other items for nursing home and assisted living residents at the Pavilion, and for monitors for the nurses there.
Spanish Cove is a “continuum of care” retirement community offering amenities and programs for every phase of senior life.
Anyone with unused greeting cards to donate to the Spanish Cove Auxiliary should call Beaman at (405) 354-2285 for more information.
