Senior Center to hold gospel music event
The Grovetown Senior Center is holding a bluegrass gospel festival this weekend to urge residents to join or volunteer.
"I would like to have probably 10 or 12 new members; that would help us a lot," said Betty Laverty, the center director.
The Byrd Family, a musical group led by Randy and Mary Byrd, will headline the free concert, scheduled for noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Grovetown Senior Center at 103 W. Robinson Ave., across from City Hall.
"Our group, The Byrd Family gospel singers, have always done what we call outreach ministries, where we go into nursing homes, senior centers, anywhere you can hopefully lend a voice to help encourage and just be a part of hopefully brightening somebody's day," said Randy Byrd, co-pastor with his wife of the Bible Fellowship Church, which meets at the Belair Conference Center on Belair Road near Interstate 20.
Byrd said his group performs once a month for the senior center members.
Laverty said the senior center currently has 43 members on the roll books, 25 of which are regular-attending members. The members regularly play different kinds of bingo three times a week, do arts and crafts, enjoy lunch and socializing together and organize and hold bake and yard sales to support the center. All proceeds from events and small donations from members go back into the center's treasury to support trips or bingo prizes, Laverty said.
The members go on special trips, including those to the Metter gardens of Dr. Michael Guido.
"The facilities are there, all the things they offer and all the things they do for the community are there, but more (seniors and potential volunteers) need to know about it," Byrd said.
Members and volunteers also take meals to homebound elderly Grovetown residents daily. Those trips are what Laverty said she needs volunteers to help with.
"The ones that have been doing it have been sick, challenged and some have passed away, that were very eager and very involved," said Byrd, who tries to stay active with the center by supporting all of its events and performing at the center regularly.
Byrd said in addition to The Byrd Family, others members of his church, including The Roberts, Frank Greiner, Tom Sturdivant and Jean Lovell, will be performing along with members from the Community Worship Center in Millen, where his stepmother, Wilma Byrd, is pastor.
"If the weather's pretty, we're going to be out on the front parking lot there with a PA system, with guitars and with banjos and with coffee and hot chocolate flowing and everything," Byrd said, adding that the festivities will move inside if inclement weather develops.
Byrd said the event will feature lots of bluegrass gospel.
For more information on the free event, call the Grovetown Senior Center at 210-8699.