Jo Nell Lingo said she would have to wean herself from the Cape Girardeau Senior Center following her retirement in late September.

After 15 years as the center's director, Lingo said someone else should have a chance at running it.

"I'm going to miss it," she said, "but I want to give the next person to try things without me being around. I don't want to be here to say 'we used to do it this or that way.' But I'll have to train myself to stay away."

The center on North Clark has welcomed area seniors for more than two years. Services at the center include in-house and delivered meals, several activities and rooms for meetings, quilting or watching television.

"Sometimes people just need to have someplace to come," Lingo said. "That's what we try to be here."

Seniors might play cards, quilt or simply chat with friends and strangers in the comfortable setting.

Lingo said since moving into the newer building, seniors taking advantage of the center have increased by more than half those using the previous buildings.

"We've been on the west side, then the east side," she said in her office with her groundbreaking shovel as part of the decorum. "This is more centrally located and I think more people come here because of the location."

Because of the pushing of two men, Russel Faust and Jack Slaughter, she said the center was built. The shovel Slaughter used to break ground for the center hangs in the dining area. "He wanted it to go here," Lingo said. "He died the weekend we moved into the building."

She said Faust enjoyed the center for a year before he died. Because of the time and money he donated to the center, the administrative offices were named in his honor. "This wouldn't have happened without them," she said.

Lingo said her career as a director or coordinator of senior centers began 18 years ago when Jim Chronister of Chaffee asked her to run his city's center. After three years, she took the job at the Cape Girardeau Senior Center. "I left there with tears in my eyes," she said.

But she said she has enjoyed her job in Cape Girardeau. She said if she hadn't liked the work, she would have left a long time ago. "You have to really like what you're doing, and I did," she said.

Besides visiting her two grandsons in Arizona, Lingo and her husband, Bill, have no significant plans following her retirement.

"I'm not much for traveling," the Jackson resident said. "Maybe I'll just go home and relax -- but I doubt it."

She also will probably leave this center with tears in her eyes.