Senior Services Director And Successor Reflect On Time Together With Clients

Sometimes, when she was working on a budget or another dry, administrative task, Liz Dwyer, the retiring director of Southampton Town Senior Services, would stop for a break. Leaving her office in the Hampton Bays Senior Center, she said, “I can go and take a spin around the dining room and be reminded why we’re doing this.”

The quick visits would put her back in touch with clients and remind her of the rewards her career in caring for Southampton’s older citizens has bestowed.

Retiring after a quarter century with the town this week, Dwyer reflected on her decades-long journey, as colleagues and clients offered their well wishes.

Staff from the senior transportation department stopped in to share warm goodbyes. Senior shuttle supervisor Rita Lamison brought a gift-wrapped pack of libations. She directed Dwyer, “Every time you remember one of us who did something wrong, you take one out.” The retiring director joked that there were only 12 bottles.

Out in the center’s main room, a tap dance class was beginning after a chair yoga class wrapped up. Instructor Beth Scholz was lavish with praise: “Liz Dwyer is an amazing force of goodness for the entire Southampton community. She takes great care to care for others and provide services to safely support and encourage all generations. She and her colleagues are emissaries of hope, heart, health and well-being.”

Beverly Brown, a visitor to the center for some 10 years, was pithy. “She’s wonderful!” the smiling senior chirped.

“This is a great place, a community,” Nancy Kandel enthused.

A recreation major at SUNY Cortland college and originally from New Rochelle, Dwyer began working part time with the town in 1995. She planned activities in the adult care section in the town’s Flanders facility. Lots of those activities — like bingo — are still popular today.

She joked about stealing ideas from her son’s nursery school to create craft projects for her seniors. “He’d come home with a squirrel with a phragmites tail, and I’d say, ‘Hmm, that’s a good idea,’ and I’d go clip some phragmites.”

Becoming full-time daycare supervisor, she eventually took on the role of site manager. When the Hampton Bays center opened, she moved over as senior citizen program supervisor, working under Director Pam Giacoia, whom she credits with the expansion of senior programs. Adult daycare, senior meals, shuttles and residential repair services are among the programs Dwyer oversaw at the town’s trio of senior centers.

Moving from a site on Jackson Avenue downtown brought a new, diverse group of clients to the programs, Laura Pettit, Dwyer’s successor, pointed out. Sitting together in one of the center’s meeting rooms, the affection between the pair of longtime colleagues was clear, as they reminisced about early days together.

“It almost tripled when we moved here, if not more,” Pettit said of the numbers of clients. “It was a real culture shock — it just exploded,” Dwyer said.

The numbers ratcheted up again during the pandemic. Dwyer and Pettit pivoted, brainstorming strategies for keeping meals available for seniors once the shutdown began. They split their crew in half, working one day and half the next. “Laura was the head of one team and I was the head of the other,” Dwyer related. “We never saw each other,” Pettit interjected.

They organized food deliveries to all their seniors, and no one was laid off. “That was a very stressful time,” Dwyer said.

Still, the pair seemed proud of obstacles they overcame and community needs they fulfilled, like organizing vaccinations for clients, helping them secure appointments, and filling out paperwork over the phone for seniors who weren’t tech savvy. “Computer access was a huge obstacle,” Pettit said

The Hampton Bays center was the first to reopen once the shutdown waned. Once the reopening occurred, staff met new clients, people who came out from the city and never left, people who came by for grab-and-go meals.

Even with some seniors still cautious about returning to group settings post-COVID-19, last week senior services saw 456 clients just for meals alone, Pettit reported. She recalled that when the center reopened, while some clients continued to stay away out of an abundance of caution, others were clamoring and shedding tears of joy, so happy to be back. Unlike other town departments, program participants aren’t constituents, they’re family.

And the center’s popularity grew over the years. The biggest challenge, Dwyer said, is dispelling a stigma about using senior services. People think it’s only for low-income seniors. “That’s not in any way what we’re about,” she said. The whole concept of congregate dining is to provide nutrition, keep chronic disease at bay and combat isolation. Lonely people can be poor, rich or in between.

Pettit, who was officially appointed director by Town Board resolution this week, said she’s coming to terms with the departure of her mentor, colleague and friend. They’ve worked together throughout both women’s careers and for the past eight years their desks have been next to each other.

Of taking the lead, Pettit said she was looking forward to the challenge. “You’ll put your own stamp on it,” Dwyer reassured.

And for the outgoing director, what’s next? A trip to Ireland is in the cards, as is time relaxing on the beach. “I haven’t done that in 30 years,” she said.