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GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS  |  2020 – 2021 27 The Yellow Springs Senior Center is no ordinary small- town senior center. In 1968, the year of its nonprofit incorporation, this Yellow Springs institution attracted national acclaim. The Ohio Administration on Aging called it “one of the finest all-around programs for aging in the United States,” according to a 1968 article in “Aging,” a publication of the U.S. Depart - ment of Health, Education and Welfare. The nonprofit center at that time served 365 of Yellow Springs’ 400 seniors, about 91%. By 1968, the center was already well established as a hub of services and programs for local seniors, having been started in the old opera house on Dayton Street, which is no longer standing, a decade earlier, in 1959. When that building was condemned, the center’s operations moved to what the “Aging” article called “the rear of a dime store” — the site of today’s Emporium. The founder and first direc - tor of the senior center that drew such widespread notice was the Rev. Wesley Mat- thews, “a true community builder,” according to Katie Egart, who with fellow villagers Karen McKee and Cathy Hill is spearheading an effort to honor Matthews with a bronze plaque. Matthews was a pastor in the AME church and a longtime champion for older adults, according to the Blacks in Yellow Springs Encyclopedia. As pastor of Yellow Springs’ Central Chapel AME Church for two years, 1941–42, he created a playground in a vacant lot next to the church, established an enrichment pro- gram for boys, set up volun - teer-led recreational classes and led a sit-in to integrate the Little Art Theatre. Active in SPOTLIGHT | YS Senior Center ‘one of the finest’ village life for decades, he and his wife, Ruth “Pat” Fields Mat - thews, moved from Springfield to Yellow Springs in 1962, integrating the street on which they bought their home, Pleas - ant Street. Matthews helped organize and subsequently directed the Greene County Commission on Aging for seven years, retiring in 1977. He ran the Yellow Springs Senior Center from 1960 until 1977, as well as having had a hand in founding nearly every Greene County senior citizens group. Just as today’s senior center plays a vital role in the lives of Yellow Springs’ growing senior population, the center in its early decades was vibrant and indispensable. Services included a transportation program, according to the 1968 “Aging” article. Hot meals were prepared in the Antioch College cafeteria. The college contributed to the early senior center in other ways as well. In cooperation with the center, and pioneered by retired president Arthur Morgan, Antioch provided a comprehensive adult education program, with reduced-tuition classes in weaving, creative writing, mathematics, public speaking, home care and other subjects. “As far as I know, there are very few clubs anywhere with as varied a program as Yellow Springs,” the then-president of the National Council of Senior Citizens is quoted as saying in 1968. Matthews called the program’s depth and reach “a tribute to the planning of Dr. Morgan and to our commu- nity’s sense of looking out for each other.” The “Aging” article further notes that the center even included a thrift shop whose items were refurbished and distributed for free to low- income older people — more evidence of the community spirit. The YS Senior Center now occupies a 3,500 square- foot space at 227 Xenia Ave. and offers transportation, homemaker, health and social programs, and enrichment opportunities and hot meals. A plan was considered in 2011 to significantly expand and relocate the downtown center, but the idea never came to fruition. Since 2013, the center has been directed by Dayton area resident Karen Wolford, following in the footsteps of David Scott and Rodney Bean, a longtime direc - tor who served from 1999 to 2010. —Audrey Hackett PHOTO: WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVE The Rev. Wesley Matthews founded the Yellow Springs Senior Center in 1959. Its first home was in the building that now houses the Emporium. PHOTO: YS NEWS ARCHIVE Longtime Senior Center volunteer Anna Streuwing at the center in 1971. program — in a second-hand station wagon purchased for the purpose — that ferried seniors to medical appoint- ments and the grocery store, and facilitated a “motor meals”