The Prairie Pioneer Center in Broken Bow is celebrating its 45th year of serving the area. The center started as a place for seniors that would provide a well-balanced nutritious meal. The center is partially funded by the South-Central Nebraska Area Agency on Aging. Partial funding is supplied through the Older Americans Act to help pay for meals and help keep the center running. Cathy Larson, current director of the center, was a recent guest on KCNI’s Public Affairs and said that she is very thankful that the center has been able to remain open while other centers have been forced to close.
“There are centers that are closing all over. It’s really remarkable that we’ve been able to stay open with everything that has gone on. Through COVID and they redid the street in front of us and we had to close down so we are still struggling to get our numbers back but also we lose our older members and that’s always sad to see but those that are faithful to us are very faithful.”
The Prairie Pioneer Center will be commemorating its 45th anniversary with a special open house from 1-4 p.m. on April 24th. The center was built and opened in 1980. Larson said the center was built through private donations and was the result of people in the community believing in the project.
“Right, we’ve decided that we just need to acknowledge it and sometimes we have a really big Sunday open house but this year we’re just kind of laid back a little bit but it’s on a Thursday and there will be some card players there so we’re going to have the open house so that we can just enjoy people coming in and have time to visit. I would also like to mention that 45 years means that we’ve been open since 1980, that’s when the building was built, and something I did not know until I started researching the center is that we were the first center built with no government funds.”
The center will also host a ribbon cutting on April 24th to introduce the new blood pressure hub that will be implemented at the center. The center is open five days a week and offers a wide variety of programs and services including meals served at the center as well as home delivered and carry out meals.
