Appreciative audience for singing seniors
Young at Heart group provides music for soul of listeners, performers

By Jeffery Kurz
Record-Journal staff
MERIDEN — Here’s what a fourth-grader at John Barry School had to say after the Young at Heart singing group, an offshoot of the LaPlanche Clinic at the Max E. Muravnick Senior Citizens Center, performed at the school: “I hope you come again soon. Let me tell you something, just because you’re old doesn’t mean you have bad voices. I mean, you have better voices than me. Thank you for coming to my school. I’m the one the guy in the front row winked at.”
A stellar review and thank-you note all in one, and an appreciation that fairly well mirrors the reception the group gets when it performs at area nursing homes, schools and organization events. On Tuesday morning the group was rehearsing for a performance next week at the Coccomo Memorial Health Care Center. Led by Jackie Hackbarth, the La Planche Clinic’s clinical coordinator, and Rita Kowalchik and Julianne Johnson, social workers with the city Health and Human Services department, the 20member group went through a lively rendition of songs, including “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” “When the Saints Go Marching In” and ”When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” to name but a few.
“They’re cute,” said Kowalchik. “They’re the highlight of my week.”
The La Planche Clinic, run by MidState Medical Center, was established in 1979 and named for Oscar and Peggy La Planche, volunteers who played a pivotal role in setting up the clinic at the senior center. The clinic provides screenings, counseling, guidance on nutrition and health seminars, among other efforts, to promote healthy living among seniors.
The Young at Heart program started in 1989 as a discussion group that involved a handful of seniors. It grew rapidly to include a number of activities and reached a peak membership of about 50 participants. Today there are about 30 members.

One of the discussion group’s activities involved putting together a song book of oldies, and a natural offshoot was to organize a group to sing them.
At 96, Floyd Tassmer is the oldest member of the current incarnation. Tassmer was a vocalist for a seven-piece band, called the Knights of Melody, that performed locally and in the Hartford area 70 years ago. Each band member earned $2 for a night’s performance, he recalled.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said of the Young at Heart singing group. “Everybody’s happy.”
“This is the greatest piano player in the world, right here,” Tassmer said, as he put his arm around Vera Ferson, an 88year-old who’s been accompanying the group the past five years. Ferson, noted Hackbarth, “plays everything by ear.”
The group meets every Tuesday to rehearse, and performs about once a month. The most fun, said Lillian Semolic, 87, is seeing how the old tunes lift the spirits of the audience. “But at the same time, we’re happy ourselves,” she said.
“Music is good for the soul,” observed John Varley, who is 68. “It brings back memories for people. It makes them very happy.”
Along with singing, the Young at Heart group hosts lectures on health-care topics and has outings, an annual picnic and a Christmas party. It had a float in the parade for Meriden’s bicentennial celebration.
“It’s amazing how many different things we do,” said Varley. “It’s a close-knit group.”
The singing group also performs for pre-schoolers, said Hackbarth, “and the kids love it.”
“First we sing to the kids and the kids sing with us, and then the kids sing us their songs,” she said. “It’s adorable. We teach them to chicken dance and the hokey-pokey.”
“Some of the people in our group don’t have grandchildren, so it’s more fun for them to interact with the kids,” she said.