TRUMBULL COUNTY After 27 years, director of elderly affairs set to retire

The department is primarily funded with grants.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The thing Jane Dickson will miss least about her job as executive director of the Trumbull County Office of Elderly Affairs has come and gone by daybreak on winter mornings.
The office, crammed in a renovated supermarket building on Youngstown-Warren Road owned by Trumbull County, coordinates weekday lunches for about 250 seniors at 10 recreation halls and community centers around the county. Drivers bring meals to an additional 300 homebound seniors every day, and run vans to take others to doctor's appointments or shopping.
Unless roads are too bad.
"You just pray you make the right call," said Dickson, who will retire Friday after 27 years with the county. "I understand people are depending on me."
When Dickson, 62, with white hair and big glasses, started working in the office, senior lunch was offered in only one location, downtown Warren. The office is now a million-dollar-a-year operation, with 40 mostly part-time employees and a fleet of six aging vans.
Over the same period, the average age of people receiving the office's services has crept up from the low 60s to about 75, she said. The change reflects the aging of the population, and medical advances that help people live longer, she said.
She said the trend is unlikely to change, and there is still an unmet need. Elderly affairs was forced to cut van routes during a county budget crisis last year and one driver is still on furlough.
Funding
All but $150,000 for the office comes from federal and state grants, and with a salary of $31,045 a year, Dickson was one of the lowest-paid department heads in the county.
Dickson runs the department from a neat, windowless office furnished with aging metal desks and computer equipment under plastic slipcovers.
The fake wood-paneled walls are mostly bare, except for a framed commendation from county commissioners and a plaque. By the desk is a small, framed picture of -- of all things -- a snow scene.
A former employee brought in small landscapes for everyone when they moved into the windowless quarters, Dickson said.
"I was out that day, so I got the black-and-white one," she said, shrugging shoulders under a dark blue jacket.
When it looks like it might actually snow, Dickson says she watches the Weather Channel in the evening, then the 11 p.m. news.
She's awake early
She usually wakes around 2:30 a.m. and peers out the window to see what it is really doing outside. Then, in the morning, she listens to the radio, sees what the school districts are doing and confers with another employee. Lunch for more than 500 people who may not get it otherwise is at stake.
"I hate it," she said of the tension involved in making that call. "I really do," she said.
siff@vindy.com