Wednesday, September 18, 2024
By James Card
Andrea Wanty is the new director of the Waupaca Senior Center.
Previously she was the director of assisted living at Bethany, a position she held for the past seven years.
Before that Wanty worked for 18 years at the Weyauwega Health Care Center (now called Crossroads) where she specialized in working with memory care patients.
She studied at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and at Fox Valley Technical College and is a licensed practical nurse.
There has been one theme throughout her career: she often worked with patients at the end-stage of their life. She admits that caring for people near their end took its tool. The pandemic made it worse.
“There was a moment. I took care of end-stage everything: end-stage life, end-stage diagnosis, everything like that. Families would always say to me, ‘I wish you would have known them when they were younger and happy and doing things they enjoyed,’ and I would hear that over and over again,” said Wanty. “It sparked when this position opened. This is my opportunity to be with people when they are happy and healthy and still working with an aging community but not at the level that I was. So I applied and took a leap of faith.”
Wanty is a Waupaca native. She graduated from Waupaca High School in 1997 and has a husband and two teenage children.
“I feel like I might have underestimated the power of this place when I was just learning about it. I did not know the magnitude of people that came through in a day. And the classes—how many people attend the classes. Cardio drumming has 50 people in that class. It’s impressive,” said Wanty.
Line dancing is also popular and both of those activities will be featured in the Fourth of July parade this year.
She has been on the job for two weeks and she already has two new programs ready to be rolled out in June.
One is the Fox Valley Memory Project. It’s a support group for people with memory loss and their caregivers. It will be held twice a week and it includes their Mindworks program which promotes brain health and overall wellness.
Another is building a partnership with the Aging and Disability Resource Center though Waupaca County. They have a variety of resources for the older population of the community such as transportation, food and other basic needs.
