East Lyme ― There is a legion of older adults in East Lyme who will remain forever grateful to Cathy Wilson, the senior center director retiring at the end of the month after 28 years.

Mary Bollman, 80, is one of them. A longtime widow, she came to town from California to live with her daughter after the death of her son in 2010. She described that phase of her life in stark terms.

“I was so desperate at the end, I just wanted to die,” she said. There were no friends around; she had no one her age to talk to.

Bollman credited Wilson with saving her life. The director helped her find an apartment and introduced her to the wing of the town’s community center where people over the age of 55 gathered for classes, clubs, advice and solace five days a week.

“When I came here, I had a new spark of life,” Bollman recalled. “And she gave me that spark, so I will be eternally grateful to her.”

Last week, Wilson donned a tiara in front of hundreds of well wishers at a retirement party in the senior center.

“I’ve often remarked that this is my queendom,” Wilson said to the laughter of an appreciative court. “Thank you, my people. Thank you.”

She described it as a realm of fighters.

“What we try to do is battle,” she said. “Battle loneliness. Help with physical health. Help with mental health. Financial security. Transportation. That’s really sort of our bag. That’s what we do.”

And ranks are growing. East Lyme’s percentage of the population over the age of 65 when Wilson started as director in the 1990s was 13%. Now, it’s 23%. Six active adult residential communities encompassing more than 300 households have been built during Wilson’s tenure.

A history provided by senior center program coordinator Candy Heikkinen shows the senior center has grown from four classes in 1994 ― fitness, ceramics, line dancing and cards ― to more than 30 current programs. They range from monthly safe driving classes, to ukulele lessons, to pickleball.

Wilson recalled a “bingo regular” early on who delivered one of many life lessons at a time when the senior center director was dancing and giddy over the prospect of a three-day weekend.

That woman told Wilson she didn’t like long weekends. She confided to biding her time until the bus pulled up to her home so she could get a ride back to her friends.

“All these years later, that’s still in my head,” Wilson said with a hitch in her voice. “Because you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. You don’t know the loneliness.”

No filter

Wilson related other lessons, too. Chief among them was that if you ask older adults for their opinion, they’re going to give it.

Getting older is about “becoming more of who you are,” according to Wilson. It’s when some deliberately lose their filter and some just lose it.

“So what comes into your mind, comes out of your mouth,” she said.

Sometimes it’s the mundane things, like dry chicken at lunch. Other times it’s as heavy as the pandemic-fueled fear and isolation that no remote video meetup can assuage.

She described efforts to maintain some senior center offerings remotely via the Zoom video conferencing platform during the COVID-19 pandemic as “marginal bridge at best.”

First Selectman Kevin Seery last week told The Day Wilson’s ability to solve problems without complaint was evident over the past several years.

“She understands seniors have suffered with COVID as much as children have,” he said. “They needed that face to face interaction and she’s done everything she can to try to help people have direct connections with each other.”

Wilson told those at her retirement celebration that almost thirty years working with older adults taught her the best and the worst parts of her job must be seen up close and in person.

She called it a privilege to watch social circles expand among people who didn’t know a soul when they first arrived.

But that means she sees the decline that comes with aging, too. Sometimes it’s physical; sometimes it’s mental. All of it is cumulative.

“For me, it got to the point where I knew it’s time for me to retire because those things weigh so heavily on me,” she said.

Wilson’s last day is March 31. Then it’s off to Greece for three weeks with her husband, Scott. She has a trip out West planned for the summer, and itineraries waiting to be filled for the fall and winter.

Seery on Wednesday said the hiring process for Wilson’s replacement could be completed this week.

Bollman, the one who said Wilson saved her life, told The Day she has faith in any transition plan that the outgoing senior center director is involved in.

She invoked the same lesson Wilson’s queendom taught her early on.

“We’re old,” Bollman said. “We’re going to tell them if we’re not liking something.”

e.regan@theday.com