In Weehawken, a youthful group of senior citizens has been taking trips with a group called the Weehawken Weekenders, heading everywhere from Yankee Stadium to Puerto Rico.
Eight years ago, Weehawken Director of Senior Citizens Carmela Facchini and Mayor Richard Turner put their heads together to conceive of a way to offer activities and travel for active seniors, something different from the BINGO of yore. The result: the Weehawken Weekenders.
“Senior citizens today are not the way they were 20 years ago.” – Carmela Facchini
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The Weekenders
Not a club with annual membership dues, the Weekenders operates on a “whatever you want to come to, whatever you want to pay for” basis by offering day trips and cruises.
Travelers have visited casinos, shopping outlets, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, and “just about anything I can come up with that people are interested in doing,” she said.
The most popular and successful events, the cruises, are offered every year or year and a half.
Facchini credits the support of Mayor Turner and the council for giving her “the freedom to try something new” and enabling her to offer reduced prices to participants. Town sponsorship facilitates anything from the mailing of flyers to use of the town’s senior buses for trips.
“I think [seniors] are not worried it’s going to vanish if they don’t make it to this particular event; they can come to the next one,” Facchini said.
Non-seniors can come, too
According to Facchini, the Weekenders group is not exclusive to Weehawken residents nor its seniors, noting that participants have ranged from ages 5 to 95, and that friends and family are always welcome.
“It’s better for everybody to be exposed to different generations and ages,” Facchini said.
She noted that for the cruises, which required flying to Florida for departure, younger participants often looked out for older participants in transit, especially with collecting and carrying luggage.
During extended trips especially, it’s easy to see camaraderie develop between participants.
Facchini told the story of a grandmother-granddaughter relationship that developed between strangers on one trip, with the elderly woman telling her afterward, “That girl you sat me next to…what a sweetheart!
The label “active seniors group,” does not exclude handicapped residents.
“This group is for people active-minded,” Facchini clarified. “If you don’t want to do anything with kids or be around active people, this is not the group for you.”
Upcoming trips
For the first time this year, the Weekenders is offering a cruise leaving out of Bayonne, rather than Florida. Already, over 50 people of all ages have signed up for the nine-night cruise to Puerto Rico, which leaves May 12 and returns May 21, but space is still available.
Facchini envisions a possible weekend trip to Niagara Falls next June, and is thinking about offering a European tour sometime in the future.
“People are always calling us asking ‘what’s going on?’, ‘what’s new?’” she said. To spread awareness of the trips, flyers are sent out to the approximately 450 senior residences in Weehawken.
Facchini, a young grandmother herself who loves to travel, puts it this way: “If like-minded people are around, why don’t we all do it together?”
Deanna Cullen can be reached at dcullen@hudsonreporter.com.