Manhattan Beach Spotlight: Older adults bond through walking, talking
Nell Gillis, 87, and Gwen Binegar, 88, co-leader of the walking group. Photo In April of last year, Gwen Binegar, 88, began leading a small group of seniors from the Manhattan Beach Villas in a “walking Moai” as part of the Vitality City program. The Moais are based on lifelong groups formed among people in Okinawa, Japan, a place National Geographic has identified as home to one of the healthiest, longest living populations in the world. When her Moai ended last June, Binegar told her friend Janet Murphy how much she had enjoyed the program. “I was telling Janet about the walking group, and she said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if the villas could walk around the field?'” So Murphy pitched the idea to Jan Buike, supervisor of Manhattan Beach Older Adults Program. She gave them the green light, assigning leadership to the two ladies. It has since become a prolific, popular fixture on the Older Adults program calendar. The walking group meets at the soccer field on Park Avenue behind Manhattan Village three times a week for an hour: Mondays and Thursdays at 1:30 p.m. and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. The organized stroll, which started last September, brings out an average of 10 to 15 seniors, a…
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