Everyday Heroes
By Arlene Jensen
Ione Kreamer
Kenosha’s Walk for the Health of It is not a race for the swift, but that doesn’t mean there is no winner.
Kenosha’s elderly will be the big winners in June’s fundraising walk through the city’s Harbor Park area. All proceeds from the third annual event will help support the senior activities and programs of Kenosha Area Family and Aging Services Inc. (KAFASI)
Nobody knows that better than 89-year-old Ione Kreamer who led the pack in fundraising in last year’s Walk for the Health of It. The retired librarian, teacher and dedicated walker solicited donations of $800 to top all of the 2004 participants. This year, she’s aiming to meet or beat that total.
She’ll have competition, she knows, but the more the merrier! The important thing is to get more participation, both walking and financially supporting the walkers-for-a-cause.
“We have many affluent people in Kenosha and they should be educated about the need for donations to this event,” Kreamer says.
“The community needs to know how the money is used, what we are doing for elderly people. The money we raise goes for food programs, for transportation, for health care.”
KAFASI’s senior services include Meals on Wheels, Volunteer Escort, Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, Adult Nutrition, Friendly Visitors, Daybreak, CAMP, Eldereach, Benefit Specialist, and Information, Assistance and Access.
This year’s city Walk for the Health of It will step off at 10 a.m., June 4th at 5500 1st Avenue in Harbor Park. A second fundraising walk, the first in the western county, is planned for 10 a.m., June 25 at Fox River Park in Silver Lake.
Honorary chairman of the 2005 Walk for the Health of It events will be award-winning actor and Kenosha native, Daniel J. Travanti.
Anyone interested in joining Travanti in the walk is urged to call KAFASI at 262-658-0237 for more information.
Of course, his longtime friend, Ione Kreamer will be there too. She is no stranger to walking. She gets her exercise daily, walking at least 20 blocks around her neighborhood in fair weather. It is a habit she developed as a youngster. When the weather is bad, she walks at the YMCA.
And for anyone who doubts the benefits of that lifestyle, Kreamer tips the scales at 110 pounds and can still wear the same clothes she wore 50 years ago.
Volunteering, too, is a way of life for Kreamer. It started when she, and her late husband, Kenneth, retired in 1976.
“When we retired, I decided my community had served me all those years – it was time I paid back,” she says. “And it gives me satisfaction to know I’m doing something.”
Her first volunteer activity came about when Kreamer was asked to serve on the board of the newly formed Southeast Wisconsin Area Agency on Aging.
After participating on another board that helped create the Kenosha Senior Citizen Center, she was one of two representatives from Wisconsin to be invited to a White House Conference on Aging. She was also appointed to a Wisconsin group that advised the governor on issues affecting the elderly.
Kreamer has also participated in the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups and Wisconsin Retired Educators, and she has been active in many activities of her congregation, the First United Methodist Church.
She has been honored for her efforts over the years, including receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on behalf of the elderly, presented by Kenosha County in 2004. She also was the recipient of the 1990 Alfred Hirsch Award for advocacy for the elderly in Wisconsin.
When groups designed to help the elderly population began to gain strength in the early 1970s, the focus was mainly on developing social programs, Kreamer says. But organizers soon realized there was a growing need for other, more basic services, such as food and transportation programs.
The Older Americans Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, outlined the goals of providing necessary programs for seniors, but state and county groups brought those types of programs to life at the local level.
Life has improved for seniors, Kreamer says. Now there are resources, such as KAFASI and the Kenosha County Benefit Specialist, where seniors can turn when services are needed. But those needs are growing, particularly in the areas of transportation and affordable housing, which are not being met.
And there is an escalating need for health care for low income women, she says. This need is especially acute among elderly widows, since with their husbands’ deaths, many lose retirement income and are forced to exist on Social Security only.
“We desperately need decent low income housing.” notes Kreamer.
Talking about issues affecting the elderly, Kreamer’s biggest gripe is Wisconsin’s lack of a Patient’s Bill of Rights for people living in nursing homes. New York recently became the first state in the union to pass such a law, she says. Wisconsin has yet to do so.
Kreamer’s roots are deep in the community. Born in rural Kenosha County in 1916, the daughter of the late Sam and Thora Mikkelson Smith, she grew up in a home on North 22nd Avenue, then known as Howland Avenue.
After receiving her teacher training at Racine-Kenosha County Normal School at Union Grove, Kreamer taught in the Town of Paris, at Thomas Jefferson, Paris Corners and Bullamore Forks schools.
Later she taught in city schools, fifth and sixth grades at Frank, Roosevelt and Sunnyside Elementary schools before returning to college for a degree in library science. Her career in city and rural schools spanned 42 years before she retired.
And it was then, of course, that she began her second career as a volunteer to her community!
