Henry County was a much different place in the fall of 1990 when a stay-at-home mom named Diane Reed, with both of her children finally in school, secured a part-time job with the county’s parks and recreation department.
County government was much smaller, serving a population totaling about 25 percent of what it is now. Senior Services was a division of Parks and Recreation at the time, and that was where Reed began working. She became a full-time employee in the spring of 1991, and she will retire next month after eight years as director of a stand-alone Senior Services division with more than 60 employees and a $3 million budget.
This career track was nowhere on her radar 30 years ago.
“I just started part-time and wasn’t even thinking into the future,” she said. “I had stayed home for a while with my kids and just went to work when they went back to school.”
She assumed the director’s role in 2012 upon the retirement of Susan Craig. By this time the county had just opened its third senior center, purchasing a building across from Warren Holder Park in Locust Grove from the city and retrofitting it to serve senior citizens on weekdays. Several years later the department opened its fourth center in Hampton, a county-constructed facility that also serves as a recreation center.
“Our core group of services hasn’t really changed that much,” said Reed, referring to Meals on Wheels and other activities that have long been a staple of senior offerings in the county. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered the senior centers for the most part, eliminating group activities, with no timeline for their reopening. Drive-thru meal service is done according to health guidelines, and the Heritage Senior Center in McDonough has served as a COVID-19 testing site. Most of the home-based services have continued, she added.
Reed has been actively involved in such annual events as the Miles for Meals Walk in Heritage Park, a major fundraiser for the department, and the Veterans Day breakfast hosted at Heritage Senior Center in conjunction with the city of McDonough. A favorite part of her day-to-day activities before the pandemic was the regular interaction with the people her department serves. That was a special aspect of the job she realized early in her career.
“It is something that you fall in love with,” she said. “Once I started having contact with the seniors, that was when I really started to enjoy it and wanted to stay.”
As she was promoted over the years to the top spot, her days were naturally filled with more administrative work and fewer of the activities she loved. As she put it, “You can instruct people how to do reports, plan activities and such, but you cannot teach compassion for others nor enthusiasm for helping people.”
The past several months have been especially hard with the total elimination of working with seniors directly. Another sad note is the fact that she will not be able to say goodbye to many of them in person before she leaves her post January 8.
Her immediate plans for the upcoming months will not involve a lot of sitting around. She and her husband, who is also retired, purchased an RV recently and are looking forward to the opportunity to use it for more than just a few days at a time.
“We’re going to head south,” she said of their initial plans, noting the approach of winter. “We want to travel while we are healthy enough to do it.”
