“We lived over on Gordon Street, and I have memories of walking from school to the Community center,” says Margaret Williams.
The year was 1935 and the building was the very first Midland Community Center, built in 1919. Margaret, age 92, says that her brother Larry used the center to play basketball, but she and her sisters joined her mother for evening classes.
“I wasn’t very athletic,” she says, “so my sister and I tagged along with my mother who went at night to learn how to knit.”
Margaret Williams
Margaret grew up, got married, moved to Texas with her husband in 1950, and moved back to Midland 10 years later.
“When we came back, a friend of mine and myself started taking exercise classes here and we’ve been coming ever since,” she says.
Initially, Margaret only came to exercise classes on Tuesday and Thursdays.
“But now I come almost every day because it gets me out of the house and everybody is so darn nice,” she says. “There’s plenty of places to meet people, but this is a fun place to come.”
Asked how her life would be different not being a member of the Community Center, she says that she would be both less active and less social.
“I certainly wouldn’t get up every morning and start walking. I’d probably just sit around and read the paper,” she says. “And the people I’ve met I wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
Looking back on her 84-year-long history with Greater Midland, Magaret sees the lasting effect it had in her life.
“I still knit, and learning how to knit is one of the best things that has ever happened,” she says, “and my quality of life is so much better with Greater Midland being a part of it.”
—
CLICK HERE to read more stories.
