Members bid farewell

“Goodbye old friend,” Oasis Senior Center member Lin Tallman, 86, wrote on the cinder block wall of the Oasis cafeteria Friday.

Tallman began attending classes at Oasis after her husband died 20 years ago. Today she enjoys taking ukulele and singing classes.

When Tallman broke her hip a few years ago, she got back in shape by taking chair aerobics classes at the center.

“It’s given me a whole new life,” Tallman said. “I hope I’m still around in two years when they open the new center.”

Local seniors scrawled on the walls of the Oasis Senior Center with magic marker as part of a demolition party Friday. Messages like “So long, beautiful old Oasis” and “We’ll miss you” filled the walls.

The center is slated to be bulldozed this spring to make way for a new $20-million senior center that city officials hope will be completed in two years. The senior center moved all of its classes out of the building at 800 Marguerite Ave. this month to various churches and community centers scattered around Newport Beach. The Oasis administrative offices are moving into a cluster of temporary buildings in the park across the street from the center.

“What’s missing is a place for people to hang out,” said Celeste Jardine-Haug, director of the Oasis Senior Center. The staff plans to dedicate a small meeting area in the temporary buildings for seniors to stop by, chat, read the newspaper and have a cup of coffee, Jardine-Haug said. She hopes it will keep many seniors involved in Oasis while the new center is being built.

Oasis Senior Center offers a vital support system for many local seniors, who say they are sorry to see the old center go.

Earl and Florence Yingling, 79 and 88, met at the senior center about nine years ago. Both of their spouses from previous marriages had passed away.

“I was married for 48 years and thought that was it,” Florence Yingling said. “But everything just fell into place. It was good from the beginning.”

The Yinglings were married seven years ago and credit Oasis for bringing them together.

“She keeps me on my toes,” Earl Yingling said Friday at the senior center, wearing a shirt that read “I’m too good looking to be this old.”

The couple danced on stage at Oasis on Friday to the tune of the Chiffons’ “One Fine Day” and said they will be sad to see the old senior center bulldozed.

“We met right over there at that doorway,” Florence Yingling said, pointing toward the glass double doors of the building.

The couple said they will still attend Oasis classes, but they worry seniors won’t get to interact as much without a central meeting place like the old senior center.

“Seniors don’t really like to drive that far,” Florence Yingling said. “Just like when you take classes anywhere, you meet people, mingle, hang out.”

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.