Alice Reynolds, from front Sherry Hanson, and Cathy Tennant, on left, and Midge Walton, from front, Mary K. Kaczmarek, and Flo Timko attend Senior Services of Belmont County’s annual bingo event.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE – Senior Services of Belmont County took a time machine back to the 1980s for its annual bingo event.

The day aimed to bring seniors from all 10 Belmont County senior centers, fostering community interaction and providing information about available services while playing bingo.

The event’s theme was the 1980s, which saw the senior center decorated with 1980s decorations while attendees wore their best 1980s retro fits.

Executive director Lisa Kazmirski said that Belmont County is unique in that it has 10 staffed senior centers and an 11th volunteer center in Glencoe.

“Without our levy funding, our county could not support so many off-site centers,” Kazmirski said. “In addition to the services at the centers, we regularly invite all centers to the main office for large events. These events offer seniors an opportunity to socialize with friends from other centers. Our generous vendors throughout the Ohio Valley support these events with prizes and manpower. We appreciate all they do for older adults.”

She added that the bingo event’s attendance was a huge success and thanked everyone who continues to annually attend the fun event.

“We thank the seniors who attended, they are why we all come to work every day,” Kazmirski said.

She added that the 10 senior centers in Belmont County provide the city, town, or village’s center to keep its identity but the large events allow all of the seniors an opportunity to come together.

Event organizer Susan Tarr said that the event brings all of the seniors together to play bingo, which is one of their favorite games.

“I invite different businesses and different organizations from the community and we each call a bingo game, and present one of our prizes. We talk about ourselves for like a 62-second commercial,” Tarr said. “And we let everybody know what services we have to offer to the seniors in the area, and then we call our bingo, give out our prize, have lunch, and then continue to play more bingo after that.”

She added that the event gets everybody out and about in the community, to hang out and interact with people.

“When you get older, sometimes you don’t have a lot of people around anymore. Either they don’t live around here anymore, or they’re gone. So we just want to bring people together to come out and just spend time together,” Tarr said. “Especially since it’s March,It’s been a hard winter, so we want to get everybody out to mingle together and get ready for the sunshine coming in a couple weeks.”

She added that she believes that the senior center does a wonderful job setting up the decorations and helping to make the event a smashing success.