Schoon retires from Ronan Senior Center
Megan Strickland
Linda Schoon works her way through a puzzle at the Ronan Senior Citizen’s Center with Andrea Lohf, the new director to fill Schoon's shoes.
Megan Strickland
Linda Schoon works her way through a puzzle at the Ronan Senior Citizen’s Center with Andrea Lohf, the new director to fill Schoon's shoes.
Megan Strickland
Linda Schoon
Megan Strickland
Ronan Senior Citizen’s Center employees include Andrea Lohf, Lynette Corum, Linda Schoon, Brandie Dillard, and Kim Bauer.
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RONAN – For more than two decades Linda Schoon has worked pressed against a glass looking onto a scene of retirement, her days spent with the town’s aging residents at the Ronan Senior Citizen’s Center. After Wednesday, Schoon will join the ranks of those she’s served for so long on the other side of the glass and pass the torch to a new nutrition director for the center.
“I enjoyed it,” Schoon said. “I’ve worked every position here. I started out as a substitute then as hostess that delivered meals on wheels, an assistant cook, a head cook, and then supervisor. I’m going to come back and my next job is going to be a grouchy old senior citizen.”
Schoon expects to spend a lot of time hanging around her old workplace. She jests that she just doesn’t know when to stop giving people orders.
“They aren’t going to know what to do without me,” Schoon said. “I’m kidding. They’re going to do just fine.”
Center patron Dorla Scott is counting on Schoon being around, even if she’s not in charge.
“She’s done a wonderful job,” Scott said. “We’re not really going to miss her because she’s going to still be here.”
Sarah Tobel also said Schoon has excelled at her position, and that her sense of humor will be missed.
“She always comes up with funny jokes, especially for us old fogies,” Tobel said.
Schoon looks forward to finally having free time to work on whatever puzzle is laid out in the center’s recreation nook. An uncle has teased Schoon for years about how the puzzles are a part of her job. In reality, there’s a lot more to be done each day by the director. She comes in and starts the day with purchasing and meal planning and then moves onto bookkeeping and office work. A hodge-podge of whatever else has to be done follows: cleaning and putting up decorations on some days. In recent years helping find more funds in light of shrinking revenues has become an increasing uphill battle.
“I do what needs to be done,” Schoon said.
In retirement Schoon plans to spend more time with her children and grandchildren. She also wants to get outside and enjoy the outdoors more. Quilting projects that have been on the back burner are also something to be tackled.
Her position will be filled by Andrea Lohf, who has worked for the Western Montana Area Council on Aging. Because of her age, people have given the 38-year-old both grief and praise for her decision to work at the center, but Lohf enjoys seniors.
“I absolutely love working with seniors,” Lohf said. “They have so many stories. I love to get to know them and their stories.”
Lohf said she tries to have a meal with her 87-year-old grandfather Earl Fercho once a week, and now that she’s running the center she is looking forward to seeing him almost every day.
Lohf said she has big shoes to fill.
“Linda does stuff we don’t even know about,” Lohf said. “She does so much stuff for the center. One of my clients tried to talk me out of this job because they said it would be so much work.”
