Live and Learn at Calder Woods

By Jenny Pope

If a visitor were to join the Monday morning men’s coffee group at a typical retirement community, they might expect to hear the men talk about news or sports or recent family events. But at Calder Woods, a Buckner retirement community in Beaumont, you’re more likely to hear the men plead for WiFi hookups, brag about recent eBay sales or discuss future computer classes on burning CDs or installing XM or Sirius Satellite radio.

This is because the men, and women, of Calder Woods haven’t given up on learning new things, according to Calder Woods chaplain Craig Garrett.

“So many of our residents are anxious to learn new things,” he explained. “There is certainly a misunderstanding when people assume seniors don’t want to learn new things. You hear all kinds of sayings in our language that express that sentiment, but what I’ve found is just the opposite. Generally, our residents do want to learn new things.”

Believing that old dogs can learn new tricks, Garrett began offering a weekly computer class on campus designed to answer resident’s questions about computers and technology and to create community among its members. About eight or nine people attend each week.

“We spend a lot of time on word processing using Microsoft Word for basic tasks,” he said. “We’ve been writing letters and doing envelopes and labels, and we’ve also done a whole lot on using the internet.”

With more than 10 percent of the independent living senior adults operating a computer either in their apartment or in class, Garrett has seen an increasingly large quantity of internet shopping packages come through the doors at Calder Woods. Class members have also helped to plan one resident’s recent cruise travel, booked plane tickets, downloaded music and researched various medical conditions online.

Some residents have even found innovative ways to combat their physical challenges and still use the computer.

“I have macular degeneration, so I’m legally blind,” said independent living resident John Leggett. “So when I get a text email, I just have to hit forward and it goes to a program that brings the text up to a 36 point font or sends the image to my TV screen.”

Leggett also utilizes a special mouse with a magnifying glass to help him see the various emails and photos he receives from friends and family around the state, which according to Garrett is one of most beneficial reasons for older adults to utilize the internet.

“It tends to reduce isolation,” he explained. “It keeps them in communication with their friends and families, and it allows them to share pictures and feel more involved—possibly even more so than they were in their own home before moving to Calder Woods. It’s really opened up a new avenue of communications for them and helped enhance their lives.”

Independent living resident Dr. Jim Finney has learned to keep in touch with his family by using a computer program called Skype, “a program whereby you can talk to anybody in the world through your computer for free, if they have the program, too,” he explained.

“I have a daughter who’s at school in Spain, so I can talk to her. I talk to my grandson who has a girlfriend in Taiwan, I talk to her. I have a son in Austin, and I talk to him. And through him, I’ve talked with someone from India. I’m trying to recruit all my family so that we can all talk together for free.”

Another resident, Dr. Jack Lee, has become an expert at buying and selling used products on eBay. Since he first discovered and taught himself how to use the online sales tool, he’s sold a camera, watch and more than seven clarinets to people in Japan, Italy, Canada and around the United States.

“I gave up playing a number of years ago and
I decided at my age, I better start getting rid of stuff,” Lee said. “I really don’t find [eBay] very difficult to use at all.”

Garrett said he has seen a significant progression among residents like Lee in the two and a half years since he began offering the weekly computer class, noting above all a considerable increase in confidence.

“At first, residents were kind of scared of the computer, unsure about working with something so foreign to them. There was a lot of fear that they would somehow mess up the machine. But now, they’re not as frightened with the whole process, and they finally see the computer as a tool for things they want to do rather than something imposing they have to learn.”

Residents have even begun to bring friends to the campus to attend the classes, he said, which is a great way opportunity for them bring someone into their home and have something interesting to do.

“It’s a really neat thing that we’re doing here, and I don’t know if they’re doing this at a lot of other retirement communities or not, but it’s something that our residents have responded to better than I ever even hoped they would. It’s bigger than I ever thought.”

For more information about Calder Woods retirement community, contact marketing director David Long at (409) 861-1123.