Cherry Hill Super Seniors gathered at the Carman Tilelli Community Center on Dec. 4 to hear a holiday performance by the string ensemble from the Creative Arts High School in Camden.
Intergenerational programming by Cherry Hill Super Seniors continued this year with the group’s annual holiday luncheon on Dec. 4 at the Carman Tilelli Community Center.
The seniors invited the string ensemble from Creative Arts High School in Camden to perform at the event, where it played a variety of holiday music, and students intermingled with group members. About 20 of them ate with the seniors and the luncheon also included a voluntary gift exchange.
Though the lunch happens annually, the Super Seniors group has focused on creating more intergenerational opportunities since it partnered with students from Cherry Hill West’s National Honor Society for a hoedown last year.
Super Seniors president Patricia Kenny noted that since that time, the Super Seniors have seen “Rocky: The Musical” at West and other performances there and at Cherry Hill East.
Township resident Jeanine Brooks has been attending the group’s events for four years.
“It’s nice interacting with the children, because we don’t see the kids,” she noted. “We don’t have any young children living in our area, so that’s the only way we get to interact with them.”
Brooks is looking forward to the next performance by Cherry Hill students happening on Thursday, Dec. 19, at the Cherry Hill Public Library.
For students, the luncheon was an opportunity to learn valuable lessons from people with more life experiences. Creative Arts High student Virge Phillips Jr. plays the viola with the school’s ensemble.
“I feel like it’s important (to connect with people from a different generation),” he explained. “It brings perspective into what I know because I’m the more recent generation, but there’s a lot of stuff in the past that I don’t now about or that I didn’t get to experience or go through.
“So it’s just these kinds of events that help us connect with these types of people and kind of bring insight into what it used to be like, how things really changed and evolved to where it is now,” he added.
When string ensemble director Patricio Acevedo got the invitation to perform for the Super Seniors, he was ecstatic.
“They’re very talented students, dedicated, great human beings,” he observed, “so every opportunity that I have for them to share their music, their work, what they do, how they behave, how they manage – it’s a great opportunity.”
