Fitchburg Senior Center

FITCHBURG — An Older Americans Month celebration held on Wednesday at the senior center featured a continental breakfast and speakers including state Sen. John Cronin, D-Lunenburg, Mayor Stephen DiNatale and Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis.

Senior Center Executive Director Joan Goodwin welcomed the dozens of seniors sitting around several round tables dotted with “Fitchburg Senior Center Stands with Ukraine” stickers. She thanked her “colleagues who support our seniors” and “distinguished guests” including the officials mentioned above, Fitchburg Housing Authority Executive Director Doug Bushman, and many others who focus on the care of seniors including staff from area senior care facilities, “friends of ours always supporting our older Americans.”

“We remember and think about our older Americans, past and present,” Goodwin said. “I honor all of you.”

Goodwin spoke about the senior center being a thriving community center for generations and “all these clubs who support our seniors” including the Golden Age Club back in the 1970s that was highlighted with photos on a trifold board as well as Civic Days now and then photos on another trifold. She talked about the recently launched cafe kitchen program at the center that offers up hot meals three days a week, “a new gem in our crown,” and gave a shoutout to the dedicated chefs who make it happen.

“It’s a wonderful new thing happening in our senior center,” Goodwin said.

Evangelidis joined Goodwin in thanking those involved in assisting seniors, saying “we all work together” and praising their collaborative efforts.

“We are all in this together,” he said.

He mentioned the house numbers program for seniors his office offers, which are free of charge and made at the jail and recalled how he “personally delivered” the wooden signs to the senior center last fall. Evangelidis then invited the seniors to register for the second annual Worcester County Sheriff’s Office-sponsored senior picnic on June 4 at the Scandinavian Athletic Club Park in Shrewsbury, which was held last year and was such a great success that they decided to do it again this year “safely.”

“You gave us the model,” Evangelidis said to Goodwin, noting the drive-thru Older Americans Month celebration she organized at the senior center last May during the pandemic, which attracted many people.

He talked about senior focused quotes including one from Will Rogers, “The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting for,” and joked that at 60, “all of these things apply to me now.”

Evangelidis presented Goodwin with a framed proclamation honoring her upcoming retirement on June 30 and her “dedication and commitment” to the senior center over the last 17 years as director.

“She has been one of my favorite senior center directors,” he said. “Joanie is amazing, I’m happy and sad at the same time. There are special people that come into our lives.”

When he handed her the proclamation, he joked that “this is a get out of jail free card.”

Next up to speak was Cronin, who said that “no people having been more affected by the pandemic than our seniors.”

“We are here to help you,” he said before listing off services the senior center, his office, and the city offer including helping with food, heating costs, transportation and other needs.

“Thank you for being here,” Cronin said to the seniors. “It’s great to be celebrating with you.”

DiNatale thanked Goodwin “for all her years of service to the city and the older population.”

“The services that this senior center provides couldn’t be more important to our citizens,” he said before mentioning that he turns 70 on Thursday and that he and the rest of the City Hall staff are more than willing to help the seniors.

“Let us know, you can always call my office as well.”

FITCHBURG — Painting is more than just a form of creative expression for artist Barbara Eisenzopf; it has been a welcome distraction after wading through decade-old grief that is a result of every parent’s worst nightmare — the loss of a child.

“I couldn’t paint after my son died,” she said. “I am just starting to get back into it little by little. For me, I had to be in the zone. I couldn’t do it.”

Eisenzopf’s work was showcased at an exhibit at the Fitchburg Senior Center mid-September after Director Joan Goodwin approached her about doing a show there. Eisenzopf has been going to the senior center for years, beginning with taking yoga classes there.

“Joan has been an amazing supporter and encourages me,” Eisenzopf said. “That has been very endearing and inspiring to me.”

Many family members and friends stopped by to support Eisenzopf as well as community residents who checked out the over 20 paintings on display. The retrospective featured still art, portraits, nature and flora, landscapes and more. A silent auction was held for one of the paintings and Eisenzopf sold note cards of her paintings at the exhibit, with proceeds benefiting the senior center.

“It raised a little money for the senior center,” she said. “It was a great experience, a huge success all around.”

Her son Jason, who was a Sentinel & Enterprise paperboy when he was younger, was killed in a skydiving accident in 2012 at the age of 30. One of his photographs was on display at the exhibit, a groundbreaking shot he took above an airplane and skydiving team while in Florida that was included posthumously in the annual Fitchburg Art Museum regional exhibit, of which Eisenzopf has been a frequent exhibitor.

“It was important to expose people to something like that, it is not something you see every day,” Eisenzopf said of her son’s photo.

After her son died, she put away her brushes and canvas, in too much pain to create anything. It was Eisenzopf’s therapist who urged her to get back into painting.

“I still have a lot of anger about my son dying, and my therapist said you should work on that through your art,” she said.

She said her daughter Kristin, who recently graduated from Salem State University and plans to work as a grief counselor, has also pushed her to paint again and that her son “was a big supporter of my work.” At 71, Eisenzopf said she as some regrets when it comes to not painting over the last ten years until recently.

“Your eyesight changes and you are getting arthritis here and there and not as energetic as you were 10 years ago,” she said. “I am running out of time. I want to get some work done that is important to me, I am trying to discipline myself.”

Regardless, Eisenzopf’s prolific art career is impressive. She majored in art history at Boston College and has taught art to children in different settings over the years, including as a Girl Scout leader for an art badge, and was a lifeguard and swimming instructor in a program for inner city children while in college.

“I love working with kids,” she said.

She and her late husband moved from Medford and bought house in Fitchburg in 1985. Eisenzopf was an aide at the old Hosmer Elementary School for a year, working with kindergarten, first, and second grade teachers and students, a job she said was one of her favorites.

“They knew I had talent,” Eisenzopf said. “I would lay out huge, floor-size pieces of paper and draw things for the students to color in. It was so much fun to do that with the kids, I loved that. I personally think everyone can do art, there is a little bit of artist in everyone. What a child creates is pure and innocent.”

While at Hosmer, a teacher asked Eisenzopf to duplicate and enlarge an 8-by-11 print that featured a pyramid of children of all colors, a painting that was hung in the school library.

“She was just taken aback and very pleased,” Eisenzopf said. “She eventually had it framed.”

She has sold pieces at the Fitchburg Art Museum and won awards for paintings she submitted for the museum’s juried regional art show.

“I was thrilled to get something in, it made me feel really good,” Eisenzopf said. “I was lucky to at least get one piece exhibited, sometimes two, every time I entered into it. When you are in a competition like that you are humbled pretty quickly. There are so many extremely talented people, you realize you are not the only one and that there are so many people out there doing beautiful work.”

She said art has never been a monetary thing for her and that when she sold pieces at the museum she put “a low price tag on them.”

“I wanted them to be affordable for somebody, and I will continue to do that,” she said.

As a member of the Leominster Art Association, she has also participated in its shows, and said her two favorite artists are Norman Rockwell and Michelangelo.

“When I do my artwork, I like to tell a story,” Eisenzopf said. “I tend to do something that has people in it. I can interpret what I see, and I like to do things out of my head. Children, two old people walking together. I like to invoke a response and I try not to get caught up in making a statement. For me, I just want to get my work out there. I want someone to go away feeling it is beautiful.”

Although she has not painted her son, she said she “has hinted of him” in her paintings, including one that features a little boy playing baseball with the number 21 on the back of his jersey, an ode to her late husband’s birthday. She is dipping her toes back into painting regularly and recently started doing pet portraiture and is working on a piece for a couple getting married.

Eisenzopf said she was thrilled to do the senior center exhibit, checking an item off her bucket list.

“It was a great experience,” she said. “I am so grateful to Joan for making that happen.”

She said she enjoyed seeing her body of work on display.

“Some of them I have not seen in a while, it was a little overwhelming,” Eisenzopf said. “I said to my daughter, ‘I guess I really am an artist.’ You are your own worst critic and I tend to be a perfectionist, but I work good under pressure.”

She said painting has helped her to focus on something other than her grief, and that art can be very beneficial for people going through painful times.

“Art therapy is a great thing for people who are in crisis and trauma,” Eisenzopf said.

She said that whether she is making a painting for someone else or for herself, “they are your babies and there are times you don’t want to let them go.”

“Art is very subjective,” she said. “It is a record of history if you look back on the centuries, and it is to encourage people to react and to appreciate what they see. It is a statement of conditions, and it is also a reflection of not only beauty but horrible things too.”

Eisenzopf said that ultimately, while she is painting, she feels good about creating something, “something that no one else has seen that is coming from inside me.”

“I consider myself very lucky that I have a talent like this,” she said. “Someone sees a piece of my soul, something that is tangible that lives on. It is a tremendous gift to be able to leave that behind. When I pass away, my daughter will be able to say, ‘My mother is in that.’”