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Senior dance ‘a winner’
Hilda and Roman Metzger, married for 55 years, said they used to go dancing every Saturday and Sunday when they were younger. St. Celestine Church and area seniors danced to the music of the Brighton Park Connection Sunday afternoon. | Jon Langham~for S
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Updated: September 17, 2012 12:11PM
ELMWOOD PARK — Sunday afternoon in St. Celestine Catholic Church’s gymnasium seemed more like Saturday night — with music and dancing.
As the church’s senior group Young at Heart started dwindling in numbers, Barbara Mares, the church’s pastoral associate, was given the task to come up with activities to reinvigorate the church’s older population.
She planned an afternoon of dancing.
“Considering this is the first time, I think we did well,” she said
Along with eating refreshments and socializing, the group of about 90 people listened to music performed by Brighton Park Connection. The seven-member band, which has several musicians who are priests, played a variety of music, some from 1940s and a few polka tunes that got people off their feet and on the dance floor.
“They enjoyed singing along with some of the oldies songs that they were playing,” she said.
Church parishioners like Colette Bodenbender of Chicago who attended the event, told Mares it was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Mares said since they received such a positive response about this event they will have more like it in the future.
“We will do it again,” she said. “I can see doing it in the spring and in the fall again. It was a winner.”
