Living 50 Plus Decatur-Morgan

By Catherine Godbey | Living 50 Plus Two months before Susan Thompson retired as the drama teacher at Austin High School in 2017, she began making plans for a project to fill her time. She called her good friend and fellow theater lover Deanna Knox. “I answered the phone and Susan said, ‘Hey, do you want to restart Dream Weavers

By Catherine Godbey | Living 50 Plus In 1980, wooden bird sculptures at Calhoun Community College’s Wildfowl Festival captivated the imagination of a then 20-year-old Danny Rodgers. “They were amazing. I thought one done by Dirk Sibrans (of Decatur) was a stuffed bird. I came home and that’s all I could talk about,” Rodgers said. That Christmas, Rodgers’ older sister,

By Deborah Storey | Living 50 Plus Stay active. Make new friends. Inspire young people. Stay sharp. For seniors and retirees, these are great reasons to volunteer. Another is that volunteering in the community just makes people feel good about themselves. Lacy Slaten, volunteer coordinator at the Cook Museum of Natural Science in Decatur, said the museum has roughly 100

By Catherine Godbey | Living 50 Plus Stories of a church founded by slaves, a bank that served as a hospital during the Civil War and a riverboat captain and his girlfriend, a brothel madam, await participants in Decatur’s self-guided walking tours. With flat streets and at a pace set by each participant, the self-guided walking tours offer seniors an

By Deborah Storey | Living 50 Plus Laura Stewart once landed her hot-air balloon in a field of cows that rambled over to investigate the stranger from the skies. They “thought we might have food,” Stewart recalled. That’s the thing about piloting a hot-air balloon — you never know exactly where you’ll end up. As the wizard famously said in

By Catherine Godbey | Living 50 Plus Perched on the edge of the wooden seat, Mike Ward braced his feet on the floor of the boat, stretched his arms out over the water and shoved the paddle into Flint Creek. That was his introduction to dragon boating. “I didn’t have a clue what dragon boating was until the Decatur Morgan

By Bruce McLellan | Living 50 Plus Bill Cassidy exited his kitchen, walked briskly past the dining room table and went into the living room. He then turned left into the foyer, moved into the hall and picked up his pace as he walked past a grandfather clock. He arrived back at his starting point to complete a loop of