Elyse Bertucci, left, is retiring from her director position at the Ishpeming Senior Center. Ashley Roberts, right, will be taking over the job starting Tuesday. (Journal photo by Taylor Johnson)

MARQUETTE — The Ishpeming Senior Center will be welcoming a new director, Ashley Roberts, to its team on Tuesday. Roberts will replace Elyse Bertucci, who has been the director since 1995.

“Since I started it’s been an amazing stream of people that I’ve got to meet and get to know. I’ve always have really great staff here. It’s a great place to work,” Bertucci said.

The director of the center has many duties including being responsible for day to day operations, grant administration budgeting, supervising all staff, arranging and facilitating activities and programs, looking for fundraising and grant opportunities, and socializing and interacting with people.

“That is one of the best things about this job, is the variety of the things you do. It’s hard for this job to get old,” Bertucci said.

For Bertucci, the director position was an easy fit for her. “I always had an interest in gerontology. I had such a good relationship with my grandparents, on both sides. I always enjoyed working with seniors, and interacting with them,” she said.

Bertucci was working at the Ishpeming library when she applied for the director position. She admits she was a little intimidated by the grant management portion of the job, but she found once she started working, she got the hang of it and actually enjoyed it.

She was 40 years old when she took the job. She became pregnant at 41, and had her daughter when she was 42.

“So that was a challenge, continuing to work and juggle, because the job is demanding. But it worked out,” she said.

When she started as director, she noticed a lot of the seniors that visited the center were men who were World War II veterans. “One of the things that was unique to my center, compared to the other ones when I started, was that my lunch crowd at that time, it wasn’t real big, but it was thirty-some guys every day. We were the only center that had guys that came for lunch.” The reason for this, she noted, were that some of the men were widowed, and others were older than their wives so their wives were still out working.

The center was a place the men could hang out and share their war experiences with each other. Bertucci remembers fondly that the men were willing to volunteer and help out with various things she did at the center.

One of the first changes she made at the center was making the inside of it smoke free (back when it was legal to smoke indoors). The walls and ceiling were all yellow and saturated with smoke, she recalled. She wanted to repaint the walls and replace the ceiling to freshen up the building. So, the men who visited the center, a lot of them from the Ishpeming Pioneer Kiwanis Club, helped her repaint and install a new ceiling that had been donated.

“That was a big job,” she said. “They were so good spirited.” The men would also help her make pasties, and help with rummage sales, among other tasks. Women who visited the center would cut flowers and bring them to the center, and make pies for pie socials, Bertucci reminisced with a smile. “It was always a really good group.”

When she first started the job back in 1995, she made a bucket list. On the top of the list was a new building. She worked hard to make that dream became a reality. She played a huge role in attaining a grant for the new building the center is currently in. The building opened its doors to the public in the summer of 2021.

When asked what her hopes are for the center in the future, “I hope it gets better and better,” she said. “I expect the center to be used more and more and to reach out to more people.”

Her plans for retirement include spending time with her husband and dog, visiting her brothers out east, and hanging out around the house reading and crocheting.

The advice she gives to new director Roberts is to “trust yourself.”

“Ashley’s coming from a point of view with case worker services, though she kind of has to put that cap aside. She’s worked here, she’s been here… she has a grounding in it,” Bertucci said.

Roberts had previously worked with Bertucci when Roberts was a community health education student that did a memory program student intern project at the center through Northern Michigan University. Then, in 2011, she was hired as a center aid. She left that position to work elsewhere, but went back to the center in 2020 where she was hired as a case worker.

“When Elyse said she was going to retire, I just knew that this is what I wanted to do, because I was so passionate about working with the center previously as a center aid and coming back as a case worker,” Roberts said. “I have very big shoes to fill. I know that Elyse has done an excellent job and I know how hard she worked to get the grant for this building, and the people that supported her. It will be a lot for me to take on, but I’m excited to see it come together. It’ll be great.”

Taylor Johnson can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 248. Her email address is tjohnson@miningjournal.net.