Aging In Place in Columbia: AARP Brings the Village to Busby Street
- Javar Juarez
- 3 minutes ago
- 9 min read
By Javar Juarez | CUBNSC Thursday, June 11, 2026 | Columbia, South Carolina
There is an old African proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child. What they don't always tell you is that it takes the same village — rebuilt, reconfigured, and resourced — to let an elder die with dignity in the home they earned.
On Thursday afternoon, that village showed up at the Busby Street Community Center, 1735 Busby Street in Columbia, South Carolina. It was packed. The kind of crowd that tells you, without a single word needing to be said, that this is a need — not a program, not a pilot, not a press release.
AARP South Carolina, in partnership with the City of Columbia Parks and Recreation and FoodShare, hosted its Café Voyage: Taste of the Carolinas event — a cooking demonstration, community health fair, and vendor showcase rolled into one.
Led by Chef Pearl, the event offered Southern-inspired healthy meal preparation using local ingredients, a free BBQ food truck, giveaways, and a sweepstakes prize.
On the vendor floor: Prisma Health, ETV, Noma Steam, FoodShare, SC Thrive, Memories in Writing — and the irresistible smell of barbecue courtesy of Smoke It Up, a local favorite food truck, and Karen's Kitchen Catering. Inside, participants played Vegetable Bingo and enjoyed fellowship, networking, and community building.
But beneath the food and the fellowship was a harder conversation — one Columbia can no longer afford to avoid.
"Wherever You Are on Your Journey"
Charmaine Fuller Cooper, the State Director of AARP South Carolina, put it plainly when asked what brought all of this together at Busby Street on a Thursday afternoon.
“Today’s event is about connecting people with the resources they need to live healthier, fuller lives,” Fuller Cooper said. “Whether that means learning about health and wellness, exploring self-care practices, staying active through exercise, or discovering how to prepare nutritious meals, we want people to know that their options are limitless. Too often, people think healthy eating means giving up the foods they enjoy.
In reality, there are many ways to prepare and enjoy those foods while making healthier choices. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of moderation, but our goal is to empower people with knowledge, resources, and options.”
On the question of aging in place — the policy and human challenge of allowing older adults to remain in their homes and communities as they age — Fuller Cooper was direct about both the vision and the gap.
"How we look at aging in place is being able to age the way you want, where you want," she said. "We are so thankful to Columbia Parks and Rec for collaborating with us on this event and allowing us to use this wonderful space at the Busby Center. A lot of communities don't have recreation facilities that community groups can use."
She called on residents to take action beyond the event floor: "We encourage people to talk to their legislators, to talk to their local council members about aging in place options."
AARP's programming in this space is concrete and community-level.
Fuller Cooper described home safety workshops — what she called "Home Fit" planning — that address hazards most people don't consider until it's too late: the distance between a sofa and a coffee table, the grip on a doorknob, the type of appliance that reduces the risk of burns and fires. She mentioned wheelchair ramps being built through community challenge grants — over $100,000 awarded this year alone, with 13 recipients statewide, the announcement expected within two weeks.
"If you're putting that new patio on your house, that new deck on the back porch, go ahead and consider putting a ramp while you have the money before you need it," she said. "If you're making slight modifications to your kitchen, go ahead and put those handles on your doorknobs that are easier to pull open in case you start having mobility issues."
She was emphatic that AARP's mission is not defined by age but by journey. "AARP is a destination. We are here for people wherever they are on their journey."
The Volunteer Infrastructure Behind the Mission
Cassandra Addison, who serves as State Volunteer President for AARP South Carolina — representing the organization's volunteer base across the entire state — made clear that the infrastructure holding this work together is people, not just programs.
"We are spreading the word that AARP is not only discounts for you," Addison said. "You can go online with our Senior Planet. There are an array of classes that you can take right in the comfort of your home — wellness classes, exercise classes, there are even AI classes that you can take so you can keep abreast of what's going on outside of your home."
The volunteer pipeline AARP has built is cross-generational in ways that challenge the assumptions people carry about senior advocacy organizations.
"We have them as young as 35, we have them 55, we have some at 18 years old who are volunteering," Addison said. "They may not volunteer like the regular AARP volunteer, because they don't have all that time, but when they can, they step in and do things."
Volunteer opportunities are available at aarp.org, where residents can sign up at the state or local chapter level.
The Y Is in the Building — Literally and Figuratively
Jessica Bacon, representing the Downtown YMCA at 1447 Hampton Street in Columbia, brought a clinical and community-level perspective to the conversation about aging in place. The Y's partnership with AARP at this event was not incidental — it was institutional.
"One of the things that I love about the Y, and it's right in our mission statement, is that we are for all," Bacon said. "We love having members of all ages, demographics come into our doors at the Downtown YMCA."
The Y offers classes specifically designed for active older adults and runs a specialized program for individuals with Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders — the same program featured in the flyer distributed at Thursday's event, held at 1447 Hampton Street every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 to 10:15 a.m. The class is led by a certified instructor and incorporates chair exercises, light resistance training, cardio, calisthenics, Tai Chi, weights, bands, and exercise balls. The flyer's tagline was earned: "The more we move, the more we CAN move."
The Y also holds a strong institutional partnership with USC Brain Health and its Alzheimer's program.
Bacon testified to outcomes she has witnessed directly.
"We see not just that physical improvement, but that social emotional improvement as well," she said. "They build community at the Y."
She described participants in the Parkinson's program approaching her directly — not to report problems, but to express enthusiasm and ask to be included in community events like Thursday's AARP gathering.
"I have a really passionate group of not just the instructor but the participants in her class that come and they talk to me and they're like, 'Hey, this is going on — can we be a part of it?'" Bacon said. "So that's why I'm out here today."
The Downtown YMCA is open to YMCA members; scholarships are available for those who need financial assistance.
Memory Is the Heirloom: Cyrita Walls and Memories in Writing
Among the vendors present on Thursday was one whose work may carry the longest legacy of all. Cyrita Walls, founder of Memories in Writing, was on the floor gathering stories — which is precisely what her business does across South Carolina.
Memories in Writing was born from grief and love in equal measure. Walls's grandmother developed dementia, and the family found itself slowly losing the living record of her life — her recipes, her migration story, her values — to the confusion of the disease.
"My inspiration was my grandmother," Walls said. "I gather things that I've learned from her as being younger — learning to cook, and you know those different values and things along the lines, and her root stories from how she may have came from the South, went to the North, migrated back to the South — would have been such an inspiration to be able to hear from her directly."
What began as a family effort to hold on has become a statewide service. Memories in Writing works with families across South Carolina to record personal histories, capture photographs, and publish the whole of it as a hardcover book — a physical heirloom.
“Our business gives people the opportunity to preserve their stories and capture their memories in a meaningful way, much like the family photo albums that have been passed down through generations,” Walls said. “What makes it unique is that we pair those memories with the stories behind them. We collect and organize that information, then publish it as a professionally bound hardcover book. Years from now, families can pass those books down to future generations, ensuring their history, experiences, and legacy are never lost.”
To date, more than 100 families across South Carolina have shared their stories with Memories in Writing. The storytelling service is provided free of charge; only the publishing of the final book carries a cost. The organization's goal is to eventually expand beyond South Carolina.
"Everyone has a story to tell," Walls said, "and we're here to get it."
When asked about the connection between her mission and the broader work of aging and memory, she offered something close to a credo.
"We never lose our story."
Her website is MemoriesinWriting.org.
What Columbia Owes Its Elders
The Busby Street Community Center is not in a wealthy part of town. It sits in a Columbia neighborhood where working-class Black families have lived, labored, and aged for generations. That it was nearly at capacity on a Thursday afternoon in June speaks to something deeper than a well-promoted event — it is a measure of how much this community has been waiting for, and how little has consistently come.
This city is gentrifying. The housing market has shifted. The cost of utilities has climbed — Dominion Energy's rate hikes are not a rumor; they are a bill. And older adults, particularly those on fixed incomes, are caught between the desire to stay in homes they have spent decades building and a system that seems engineered, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, to push them out.
What Thursday's event offered — across food, exercise, memory preservation, health, and conversation — was a partial answer to a structural question. The rest of that answer lives in City Council chambers, in the South Carolina General Assembly, in the offices of utility regulators, and in the decisions developers and lenders make every day.
AARP South Carolina will host a free performance of Mama Girl, a faith-based comedy about caregiving, on Saturday, August 22 at 2:00 p.m. at the Richland Two Performing Arts Center. Produced by Garrett Davis Productions, the event is free but requires advance registration, as seating is expected to fill quickly. More information is available at aarp.org/sc or on the AARP South Carolina Facebook page.
The village showed up at Busby Street today. The question is whether Columbia's institutions will meet them there.
Javar Juarez is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Urban Broadcast Network (CUBN), a member of the South Carolina Press Association, and President of the Capital City Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. Follow CUBN at CUBNSC.com.
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