Health Care - Health Care, Wellness, And Senior Living

We all get sick from time to time. Accidents happen and we get injured.

It’s nice to know skilled people and well-equipped facilities in the Tampa Bay area have us covered. We’ll be telling you where those facilities are and for what services they’re noted.

Good health, however, is about more than recovering from sickness or injury. Good health means staying well, physically and mentally. That takes action on our part. Here we’ll tell you about programs that can give you a boost toward living a healthy lifestyle.

When it comes to senior living, let’s just say we’ve had lots of experience in that field. There was a time when the Tampa Bay area—St. Petersburg, in particular—was nicknamed “God’s Waiting Room” and was noted for its number of seniors and retirees.

Those were the days of the fabled green benches that dotted the downtown sidewalks. That was back when the town boosters were pitching St. Petersburg, land of sunshine and carefree living, as the perfect place to winter—figuratively as well as literally.

The benches weren’t always green. The first benches were orange, set out by a local real estate agent and one of St. Petersburg’s early mayors, Noel Mitchell. The benches were a means of advertising Mitchell’s real estate business. Other businessmen followed suit. Before long, St. Petersburg was awash in a mish-mash of colored benches.

In 1916, Mayor Al Lang decreed the benches should be one standard size and color—green. We’re not talking just a few benches here. By the 1950s, there were as many as 8,000 benches, most of them installed back to back on the curb side of the sidewalk.

The reality was that the benches weren’t just for seniors. The benches heard the whispers of lovers, the chattering of gossips, the dickering of businessmen. They seated, in many respects, St. Petersburg’s social salons.

Part of St. Petersburg, that is. The benches did not hear much of what African-American society was saying. The reality was that the benches were understood to be for whites only.

Regardless of the realities, the image prevailed of St. Petersburg as a city of retirees whiling away their remaining days sitting in the sunshine on green benches. So much so that in the early 1960s at least one national meat packer thought it futile to advertise its products in St. Petersburg papers—people in St. Petersburg being too old to chew meat.

The benches are now gone, but we still have a larger percentage of seniors than other places in the United States.

As a nation, not quite 13 percent of our population is age 65 or older. In Florida, 17 percent of the population is age 65 or older. Tampa hovers around 12 percent of its population being age 65 or older. St. Petersburg matches Florida’s 17 percent or so. Almost 20 percent of Clearwater’s population, on the other hand, is age 65 or older.

So we understand the need for specialized services. In fact, our Neighborly Care Network has been providing those kinds of services for almost 50 years.

You’ve heard of Meals on Wheels? Pinellas County is where the first federally funded Meals on Wheels program began back in 1968, the same year the nation’s first Adult Day Care Center opened—yup, right here. One of the more popular services our senior agencies provide is employment—many of our seniors want to work, whether as paid employees or as unpaid volunteers.

While we are proud to provide these kinds of services to our older residents, we are equally proud of our intergenerational community, working together to maximize this life’s opportunities.

And, yes, our newspapers and television stations carry ads for meat.