Joanna Hollier (left) shows visitor Gary Sonnevil around her apartment in Kenai’s Vintage Pointe Manor during an open house in honor of the senior housing center’s 25 anniversary on Thursday, September 7, 2017 in Kenai, Alaska. Hollier moved into the 40-unit housing complex immediately after it opened in 1992 — at the age of 67, “so I was pretty young back then,” she said — and is its only remaining original resident. At the anniversary celebration, Hollier, who came to Kenai in the mid-1940s to work as an air traffic controller at the city’s airport, recalled how she’d waited in line to get her room after the center opened and moved her furniture from her homestead house on Beaver Loop Road. Also attending the celebration were former Kenai mayor Pat Porter — who was director of the Kenai Senior Center in 1992 and is visiting from her current home in Texas — then-Kenai Mayor John Williams and Kenai’s then-state senator Paul Fischer. Porter, Williams, and Fischer recalled how the city had lobbyed the Alaska legislature for funds to build Vintage Pointe, including baking cookies for the Senate Finance Committee and distributing a photo of a senior woman in a bed outside during a snowy winter, holding a sign reading “Don’t leave us out in the cold.”
Joanna Hollier (left) shows visitor Gary Sonnevil around her apartment in Kenai's Vintage Pointe Manor during an open house in honor of the senior housing center's 25 anniversary on Thursday, September 7, 2017 in Kenai, Alaska. Hollier moved into the 40-unit housing complex immediately after it opened in 1992 — at the age of 67, "so I was pretty young back then," she said — and is its only remaining original resident. At the anniversary celebration, Hollier, who came to Kenai in the mid-1940s to work as an air traffic controller at the city's airport, recalled how she'd waited in line to get her room after the center opened and moved her furniture from her homestead house on Beaver Loop Road. Also attending the celebration were former Kenai mayor Pat Porter — who was director of the Kenai Senior Center in 1992 and is visiting from her current home in Texas — then-Kenai Mayor John Williams and Kenai's then-state senator Paul Fischer. Porter, Williams, and Fischer recalled how the city had lobbyed the Alaska legislature for funds to build Vintage Pointe, including baking cookies for the Senate Finance Committee and distributing a photo of a senior woman in a bed outside during a snowy winter, holding a sign reading "Don't leave us out in the cold." (Photo by Ben Boettger/Peninsula Clarion)
