KERSEY – This town’s new community center opened in January to the delight of senior citizens who met Tuesdays and Thursdays for lunch and activities, and of parents who booked the venue for graduation parties and baby showers.

“It’s a new, bright space and we love it,” said James Neill, the recreation director for the town of Kersey.

These days, the center is locked as part of the state’s coronavirus shutdown. But those few weeks it was open were glorious.

Neill’s still at the community center on Tuesdays and Thursdays, along with recreation assistant Kaylee Guerin, assembling meals and driving them to the seniors, who are now shut in their homes for the most part.

Adella Andrijeski and her husband, John, began attending the seniors group in 2000 when they retired to Kersey. They had been dairy farmers in Pierce, north of Greeley, for 42 years. He died three years after they retired.

“I would have been lost without the Kersey seniors,” she said.

She feels a little bit lost again, with the center closed. It wasn’t just the food, but the activities. Once a month someone from the Kersey Library came to show seniors how to use cell phones and computers. (Sign me up!) Firefighters stopped by to do blood pressure checks. Those who wanted to pay for them could get pedicures.

“Thank heavens we all know each other because we still call and talk to each other,” Andrijeski said.

Welcome to life in a little town upended by a pandemic, where folks of all ages are trying to adjust.

Neill canceled recreation activities, including soccer for the kids, volleyball for students from kindergarten through fourth grade and yoga classes.

Baseball has resumed but in a very different structure. Only four or five kids practice at a time, and their parents stay in their vehicles or near them. And some moms and dads said they weren’t comfortable with their children playing sports yet.

Kersey is one of the 22 sites in Weld County that provide lunches through the county’s Senior Nutrition Program. Seniors sign up the day before to have a meal delivered. A monthly calendar provides the menu, which in May included country fried steak, beef stew and turkey pot pie.

“The meals are all good, but spaghetti is my favorite,” said Donna Reedy, 82, of Kersey.

Weld County works with the Area Agency on Aging, which suggests seniors donate $4 per meal, but the center is not obligated to charge anyone.

“We do have several individuals in and around the community who are in desperate need of these weekly meals,” Neill said. “And running a program as such does incur expenses which aren’t even remotely covered by the $4.”

That’s why Kersey town officials were so grateful for a $5,000 donation from 70 Ranch owner Bob Lembke on May 21. The 14,500-acre ranch is east of Kersey.

“The 70 Ranch has been a part of the Kersey community for over 100 years, and we wanted to make sure those who are a part of that history are taken care of,” Lembke said.

I tagged along with Lembke, ranch manager Gilbert Marin Sr., who served as Kersey’s mayor for six years, and others as they watched the food being assembled into individual containers. I handle communications for Lembke’s clients, and got the privilege of seeing how happy the seniors were when their lunches were dropped off.

The food is prepared by the University of Northern Colorado, which has a contract with the Agency on Aging. A delivery service then takes the food to the serving sites. Eighteen Kersey seniors received a meal on May 21. In addition to the soup and sandwich, the lunch that day featured a broccoli-cauliflower salad, melon strawberry salad, crunch fruit snack, nuts and milk.

The seniors also received a book by author Dana EchoHawk about the history of the 70 Ranch:

“According to local historians and residents, the ranch got its name because it is 70 miles from Denver, 70 miles from Cheyenne and 70 miles from Sterling, the three primary cattle shipping hubs in northern Colorado during the nineteenth century.

“But then again, it may have been envisaged for the year 1870 when Major James Edward Williams and James W. Macrum first grazed cattle in the grassy sand hills north of the river and branded them with the number ’70.’ “

Senior Lindia Brown accepted two meals and a book.

“This is wonderful,” she told Neill. “Thank you so much.”

The community center used to be located in a dark and old building on First Street. But with help of a state Department of Local Affairs grant, Kersey bought the Platte Valley Grange on Second Street. It had to be torn down because it wasn’t suitable for renovation.

Kersey also received donations from PDC Energy, Silicon Ranch, the Boettcher Foundation and the Daniels Fund to help it reach the match it needed for the state funds.

Kersey seniors can’t wait for the all-clear order so they can return to their new building and their longtime friends.