REAL Services

Founded 1966, out of the Studebaker closing — the county's agency on aging and community action

Founding: REAL Services was founded in 1966 by Lester J. "Les" Fox, and its own history states the cause plainly: Studebaker's closing in the mid-1960s had stranded the plant's oldest workers, and Resources for Enriching Adult Living — REAL — was the response. The documentation is the organization's own timeline, corroborated by a Congressional Record tribute of 3 February 2016. In January 1967 a 38,683-dollar research-and-development grant from the U.S. Administration on Aging launched a one-year pilot; in February 1967 the first offices opened at 1201 South Main Street; and with First United Methodist Church the agency established what its timeline calls the first program in the country of congregate meals, recreation and socialization for older persons — the claim printed as the organization's own.

Course: REAL incorporated as a private nonprofit in July 1969 and became a United Way member agency. In September 1973 the state designated it the County Council on Aging, and in May 1974 Governor Otis Bowen designated it the Area Agency on Aging for five counties. The poverty programs followed: the organization's own account dates its Community Action Agency designation to 1985, while the Congressional Record says it "expanded its reach in 1981 to include assistance programs for poverty-stricken Hoosiers" — the two print side by side, expansion and designation as separate mechanisms. In 2005 it was designated a federal Aging and Disability Resource Center; in 2013 it merged in the Alzheimer's and Dementia Services of Northern Indiana. Today it stands at 1151 South Michigan Street with more than twenty programs serving some 30,000 people a year across northern Indiana, in its own figures. Long-serving president and chief executive Becky Zaseck retired in the succession its 2022 annual report records, and a third president and chief executive took office.

Sources:

1. REAL Services, organizational history and timeline (realservices.org) — the 1966 founding by Lester J. Fox and the Studebaker cause; the January 1967 Administration on Aging grant of 38,683 dollars; the February 1967 offices at 1201 South Main Street; the congregate-meals first; incorporation July 1969 and United Way membership; the 1973, 1974, 1985, 2005 and 2013 designations and merger; the present 1151 South Michigan Street, twenty-plus programs and 30,000 people a year.
2. Congressional Record, 3 February 2016 — the fiftieth-anniversary tribute: the founding, and the 1981 expansion into poverty assistance.
3. REAL Services, 2022 annual report — the presidential succession.