PORT ANGELES — A missed bus and the need for food can cost four hours of waiting in the rain in Neah Bay.
So poor they can’t buy a car, Quileute tribal elders have had to wait that long for the next bus to take them to a store just 30 to 45 minutes away, Lorraine Cress, tribal senior center program coordinator, said during a luncheon at the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Center on Friday that focused on that kind of problem.
The event heralded the award last week of $750,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest health-care philanthropy.
The funds will pinpoint — in connected, coordinated fashion — transportation, health care and myriad other problems afflicting Clallam County’s sizable elderly population from Neah Bay to Sequim eastern boundary.
Within those borders lives a vital population — both tribal and nontribal — of 60-and-older residents.
They comprise about one in every four residents in Clallam County, roughly 17,000 strong — a total only slightly less than the population of Port Angeles.
State health secretary
Issuing the clarion call to action Friday was Mary Selecky, secretary of the state Department of Health.
She was the keynote speaker at the invitation-only sit-down at the tribal center.
On the menu was wild salmon baked and fried and platters of plaudits for the grant recipient, a blanket of a group, Community Advocates for Rural Elders Partnership.
It’s a multi-layered amalgam of more than 100 individuals, social services agencies and groups, Olympic Medical Center, United Way, Clallam County’s Native American tribes and organizations, many with different functions and one goal: to better serve the elderly and all connected with them.
“This partnership is extremely special,” Selecky said to 60 guests seated in the tribal center multipurpose room.