COA Executive Director fights ageism

By Matthew Boyle | mboyle@flagler.edu

The way Cathy Brown runs the St. Johns County Council on Aging like she thinks seniors should live their lives: with an upbeat, positive mentality. She won’t quit helping them until she physically can’t anymore.

Since she took on her role as the executive director at the St. Johns County COA in 1999, Brown has shunned ageist stereotypes by trying to show that the people she works with aren’t simply “old.” Everyone has his or her own personality and no one is the same.

“We desperately want to call them something, so then we can think about them not personally, and not think that they’re passionate or had their heart broken, or that they yearn,” Brown said. “We try to just think about them as a box.”

It’s unfair, she said. Why should seniors get put in a nursing home to die? Do they get a choice?

Brown is a hands-on director. She doesn’t manage from behind her desk; she walks around the St. Johns County COA’s campus to see what people want and what they need.

Shortly after she started at the St. Johns County COA, she asked some of the senior that were eating in the cafeteria what dish would make them happier. They wanted fried chicken, which is something the kitchen staff wouldn’t make because they thought it was “against the rules.” Brown looked up “the rules” to find that there wasn’t anything against fried chicken.

They got their fried chicken because Brown didn’t accept the status quo.

Brown chooses to go above and beyond what’s expected from the St. Johns County COA Executive Director. Way above and beyond.

“Loneliness is a terrible, terrible condition,” Brown said. “All people, I think, but I know for sure seniors suffer from loneliness, isolation and depression. To be marginalized by something that you are, your box, rather than who you are, is a terrible thing.”

Brown advocates for seniors. She encourages them to fill out their census information and send it back, regardless of what opinions they have of it. She wants them to get funding now and deal with whether the census is right or not later.

Brown’s most impressive accomplishment, though, is her dedication to the new COA River House. The elegant white building, adorned with black shutters, overlooks the Matanzas River and just recently opened its doors to St. Johns County’s seniors.

The fact that the building is finished and open for seniors countywide to use is amazing; what Brown had to do to get the project started is unbelievable.

Where the River House is now, she said, there were two trailers that functioned as office space for about 40 years. Once again, Brown questioned the status quo. She pitched the idea of building the River House there and moving the office space into what was previously the senior center.

“It [the River House] took a year to build and it took four years to conceive and then get support,” Brown said. “When anything marvelous happens, somebody’s got to have an idea and then somebody’s got to look and see what it takes to get it done and then really work at what I call ‘enlisting people,’ on behalf of that idea.”

Brown never sets goals based on what’s good for her. It’s always about what’s best for the community.

St. Johns County COA Communications Coordinator Susan Johnson thinks what keeps Brown going is simple: insanity.

She’ll never stop questioning the status quo and she certainly won’t quit helping the community. Ever.

“What else would I be doing?” Brown said. “You can only play so much golf.”