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To aid dementia care, Chula Vista nonprofit conjures memories of historic Padres field

The new activity room at Glenner Town Center will look like Lane Field, where the minor league baseball team played in the 1930s through 1950s Glenner Town Square in Chula Vista, California, is providing an adult day care center to assist in the process of immersive reminiscence therapy for people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The therapy aims to reduce the confusion and anxiety associated with dementia by immersing residents in familiar settings from their past. Glenner also has a new Town Square location under construction across the street from Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, which is projected to open this fall. To create Lane Field, Glenner enlisted the help of muralist Hanna Daly and two baseball historians: Tom Larwin, president of the San Diego Ted Williams Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research, and Bill Swank, author of 10 books on Padres history. After walking through the replica, Swank became tearful thinking back to the long-gone games he attended at Lane Field.

To aid dementia care, Chula Vista nonprofit conjures memories of historic Padres field

Published : 12 months ago by Lauren J. Mapp in Sports

Walking through the doors of Glenner Town Square in Chula Vista is like stepping out of a time machine into the 1950s.

To assist in the process of immersive reminiscence therapy for people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, the adult day care center is designed to look like small town San Diego of yesteryear. In one corner stands a diner serving as the facility’s cafeteria; in another, participants can go out to the movie theater.

The therapy aims to reduce the confusion and anxiety associated with dementia by immersing residents in familiar settings from their past.

Town Square participants will soon have another reminder of mid-century San Diego, in the form of a new Wiffle ball court designed to look like Lane Field. The former downtown baseball stadium was where the Pacific Coast League Padres minor league team played when they first moved from Los Angeles in 1936, until the team transitioned to Mission Valley’s Westgate Park in 1957.

Glenner Town Square has about 120 clients with around 70 people attending the day care center each day. Throughout the day, groups of eight move together from room to room, “shopping” in the boutique, having lunch, playing puzzles and exercising in the center of town to 1950s rock and roll music.

Once completed and approved for client use this summer, the 1/15th scale Lane Field replica will be added into the rotation of Town Square activities.

While brainstorming ways to use the facility’s extra warehouse space for programming, George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers CEO Scott Tarde considered how deeply rooted baseball is as an American pastime. During a visit to Town Square last week, several participants were hanging out in the replica sports pub decorated with baseball players’ photographs or donning Padres attire.

Baseball has been engraved in the childhoods of so many Americans, and the sport can help trigger memories, a key element of the care clients receive at Glenner Town Square.

Through immersive reminiscence therapy, mental activity is stimulated through the use of various tangible prompts like music, film or sports. Those prompts evoke memories for people experiencing Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, which can help reduce agitation and improve the mood, sleep and well-being of someone living with it.

“I always like to say it’s kind of like hardwired in,” Tarde said. “It’s a lot of life’s firsts if you talk about those ages 10 to 30 — it’s graduating high school, graduating college, marriage, children, all these things and they just kind of map in.”

In 2018, George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers — a nonprofit that operates small, traditional adult day centers throughout the county — opened Town Square. A year later, Glenner sold the design so an outside company could franchise it. There are now seven franchises open nationwide, with another 16 in development.

Glenner also has a new Town Square location under construction across the street from Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, which is projected to open this fall.

To create Lane Field, Tarde enlisted the help of muralist Hanna Daly and two baseball historians: Tom Larwin, president of the San Diego Ted Williams Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research, and Bill Swank, author of 10 books on Padres history.

On one wall, Daly painted the Santa Fe Depot train station, which had been visible while sitting on the Lane Field bleachers, along with palm trees and a plane flying overhead. In the foreground, a “Fenway green” fence constructed from horizontal wooden planks is adorned with ads and a chalk-style painting of a player with his bat mid-swing.

Soon, artificial turf will be added to the floor to make up the field under home plate and the three bases.

After walking through the replica, Swank became teary eyed thinking back to the dozen or so games he attended at Lane Field as a teenager. While he said the replica does a great job of hearkening back to the long-gone stadium, the 82-year-old did have a couple of accuracy notes for the muralist — like adding the phrase “No Pepper,” a pre-game exercise that was often verboten in ballparks of the era.

“This isn’t history, it’s baseball. It’s got to be accurate,” Swank said.


Topics: Baseball, Nonprofits, California, San Diego Padres, Chula Vista

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