JCCOA Warm Hearts Winter 2025-2026 Fundraising Campaign (Rita Bostic)
Rita Bostic
Campaign: Warm Hearts: JCCOA Seniors Who Kindle Our Community’s Spirit
Call to Action: Learn More. Join Us. Give
Much to Write Home About
Devoted card writer and former school librarian Rita Bostic started a new chapter of life at JCCOA, where every person she meets is a living story worth knowing.
Rita Bostic loves sharing stories. For 17 years she was an elementary school librarian, matching children with books and watching their horizons expand. But when health issues forced her to retire, those busy days came to an abrupt stop. All that changed the day she walked into the Jefferson County Council on Aging senior center.
“I look forward to coming here, you know.” Rita says. “It helps lonely people, and I have to admit, I was lonely sometimes.”
At JCCOA she discovered a different sort of library- one of people, not pages. Around the bingo tables, at lunch, on bus rides home she and newfound friends trade memories of coal towns, small schools, classic films, horses, and the West Virginia hills. Let someone mention a place or name from the past, and another person will pick up the thread. “Oh, you remember so and so? Let me think now….” she says. “Maybe tomorrow someone fills in some of the gaps.”
At the senior center Rita has befriended contemporaries with similar memories of yesteryear, a world before cell phones and Facebook “friends” in which families ate together and townspeople knew each other by name. Such connections mean everything to her. Each day she phones one kindred spirit to fill respective gaps in the local paper’s crossword puzzle. While another friend she made at JCCOA has since moved away, they keep in regular contact with cards and phone calls. “I never would have met any of these people unless I came here,” she says.
Rita’s love of connection also remains written in ink.
Her grandmother was a devoted correspondent through World War II, sending letters and cards to her serviceman son and his buddies. Rita proudly follows in her footsteps and over the years has written to countless family members and friends, as well as such celebrities as Elizabeth Tayor, Joan Crawford, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Randolph Scott- sometimes to share admiration, other times to offer sympathy.
Closer to home, her cards to family and friends have extended a quiet lifeline. In 1980 Rita wondered if she was spending too much on stamps. Then the phone rang. One the other end of the like was a childhood neighbor dying of cancer. “She says, ‘Rita, how do you know the days I feel the worst is when I get a card from you?” A young man also stricken with cancer similarly told her, “Rita, I think you and God are working together, because on days I feel the worst, I get a card.” After that she couldn’t stop.
Even now Rita sends out at least 280 cards each Christmas, not to mention dozens of birthday, anniversary, and “thinking of you” cards year-round. Two friends living in nursing homes receive a card from her every week. Even her orthopedist, Dr. Joe Cincinnati, is on her list of regular recipients. Rita’s own most treasured letters are ones from her grandmother, weaving a tangible thread of love and memory across generations.
On her visits to JCCOA Rita spends time filling out cards and helping others drafts their own. For such sessions she maintains a writing station stocked with donated cards and envelopes, available to anyone who wants to reach out.
Rita is also grateful for the center’s range of services, including exercise classes, home-delivered meals, rides to doctor’s appointments, seminars on how to spot scams, and more. “If you need something, they can help you,” Rita says. It all adds up to what she calls living independently “with help if I need it.”
Rita understands that JCCOA’s support of seniors is one way to keep a community’s history alive. The stories her senior center cohorts share- of working the mines, raising families, serving in wartime, watching towns change- offer both reminiscence for those in her age bracket and wisdom for the young. “They’re gonna be seniors one of these days too,” she says with a gentle smile.
At JCCOA Rita has found a circle of friends who value what each person carries within their minds and souls. With every visit, every shared memory, every handwritten card, she helps ensure those voices continue to be heard.