Every Monday and Wednesday, Richland Campus student Glen Pierre wakes up at 6 a.m. sharp to have breakfast, get dressed and catch the earliest bus from South Dallas to Richland. Pierre’s two-fold mission: pickleball and steel drums.
He arrives on campus at around 8:30 a.m. and heads to the gymnasium in Medina Hall, where some of his peers have already begun stretching for a workout led by Richland men’s basketball coach Jon Havens. The workout, a series of single-leg balances, light jogs and ball passing, lasts nearly an hour before Pierre and the rest of the group separate into clusters and queues to play pickleball.
Pierre is 70 years old. A former fisherman and camera operator the 1980’s television series “Miami Vice,” he spends most of his days cooking, baking, teaching music or running The Caribbean Connection Island House. That’s a cultural recreation center in South Dallas. He is also a part of the Lifelong Learning Program, a program offered by Dallas College that provides Dallas County residents 55 and over with free enrollment of up to six credit hours per semester.
Participants of the program are required to be nondegree-seeking and primarily enroll in courses designed more for personal enrichment, like physical education or culinary arts. Some members, like Navy veteran Robert Barretto, have been a part of the Lifelong Learning Program for about 20 years, and praise the strength and community that has fostered as a result of their participation.
“Based on my and other seniors’ beneficial experiences with participation in the program,” said Barretto, “we are motivated to have a lifelong focus of staying physically, mentally, socially and structurally engaged in the community college.”
The Lifelong Learning Program provides seniors with a consistent routine to strengthen their muscles and enhance their mobility through physical exercises. It also builds on their crystallized intelligence with educational courses. Perhaps its most significant contribution, however, is the intimate and uplifting community that emerges through a shared experience of the program.
As they stretch, workout or play pickleball, the seniors greet each other, exchange gossip, reminisce on fond memories and share a silent moment of peace over steaming cups of coffee. Everyone knows one another and new members are quickly acclimatized. The gymnasium becomes vacant after 10 a.m., but the laughter and shared conversations almost seem to linger for a while longer.
“It’s not fun doing things by yourself,” Pierre said. “You could know everything, but it’s not fun. We all come here with nothing and we’re gonna leave with nothing, so why don’t we share and enjoy what we have here?”
And sticking to his words, Pierre has successfully shared his passion for music with his pickleball competitors, inspiring a cult-like following within the group after teaching them to make and play the steelpan, an instrument originating from Trinidad and Tobago. Seeking to inspire more students to learn to play the steelpan and other percussion instruments, Pierre is pushing for the creation of a steelpan course. He hopes it will be offered by Richland’s Music Department soon.
