State report ranks counties on important senior issues w/ link to Missouri Senior Report

By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

An invasion of sorts is under way in the Joplin area, but you wouldn’t know it unless you looked at the Missouri Senior Report for 2007.

The report indicates the senior population in Southwest Missouri is growing because of migration into the area. The population of seniors age 65 and older has grown about 4 percent in five Southwest Missouri counties between 2000 and 2006.

Lillian Hermann and her husband, Harry, are among them. They have been married 57 years and are both in their late 70s. They moved to Joplin in September after living 13 years in Roswell, N.M.

“We moved here because our daughter moved here and our son lives in Cassville,” she said. “But those aren’t the only reasons.”

When their son moved to Cassville, they would stay in a motel on South Range Line Road when they came to visit him. They checked out Joplin while they were here.

“We nosed around and found the people here to be warm, outgoing and friendly. They were very helpful,” she said. “The feeling we got was that it was a nice place.”

When their daughter got a job as a teacher in Joplin, they decided it was time to move because if they waited any longer it might have become too difficult to move because of their age. It wasn’t easy to leave Roswell.

“We had access to health care there. It’s a retiree’s town. They bent over backwards for you there. There was a senior discount for everything,” she said. “And it was fun. Harry and I had our own alien driver’s licenses.”

The Hermanns probably would not have moved if Joplin hadn’t been so attractive. They liked the selection of retail stores. They liked the fact that Joplin is growing, citing the 600 jobs that AT&T has brought to the city. They liked the way their Realtor treated them and the affordable home they found. And, they liked the choice of restaurants.

‘Having a ball’

“We are trying a new restaurant every Friday evening. We are having a ball. We can’t believe the delicious, wonderful and tasty restaurants that are here. It is something we are enjoying very much,” she said.

When told the Missouri Senior Report — the first of its kind in the nation — can be a planning tool for the future of a community, Hermann said she understood why that is important: “There’s going to be a lot of old folks around for a long time because health care is getting better and better. You have to take that into consideration.”

Charisse Pappas, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which compiled the report, said: “The surge in the senior population is the biggest public policy issue of our time. Seniors will outnumber youth and children for the first time in history by 2050.