NEDERLAND — A lively group at the B.A. “Booty” Ritter Senior Center will be “rocking for a cure” to cancer.

Just last month the center’s director, Diane Lapoint, decided to get a team together to participate in the upcoming Mid-South Jefferson County Relay For Life, which will be held on April 27 at Nederland Bulldog Stadium.

“I realized some might not be able to walk (the track during the event) but they can rock,” Lapoint said from the TV room at the center. “ So we’ll have Seniors Rocking for a Cure.”

Nearby, Herb and Myrtle Foreman held hands while posing for a photo in a pair of rocking chairs. The couple, wed for four years who but have known each other for 45 years, joked and laughed with other members of the center who were arriving for lunch on Tuesday.

“I keep this place rocking,” Herb Foreman said. “If I’m gone for a week or two and come back they say ‘here comes trouble.’”

The couple will do some rocking, and some walking, during the event they said.

Other senior citizens who will participate with the team by either rocking or walking include; Vernice Gratham, Virginia Randen, Caroline and Charlie Wells, Nancy Bernard, Jackie and Mary Faubion, Diane Lapoint, Doris Stuckey and Earnest Chance. There will also be non-senior citizen participants who include family members and friends.

T-shirts, donated by Lapoint’s son, will feature a team logo and be worn during the event, Lapoint said.

“I love the senior center organization and Diane is the best director we’ve ever had,” Myrtle Foreman said as Lapoint, humbled by the comment, dropped her head a tad and smiled.

Lapoint explained that the center has a lot of history behind their reasons to raise funds for Relay For Life. Myrtle Foreman lost her father to cancer two years after he retired and Lapoint lost her husband, James, to cancer in August 2010.

“They (Foreman’s) will do anything and everything for the center, whatever I ask,” Lapoint said.

Indeed they do. Herb Foreman is known to donate a $20 bill here and there and the couple help with fundraisers and garage sales as well.

The fledgling team has raised $247 to date, the director said.

“We haven’t had any fundraisers because we only got the idea to get a team together in March,” Lapoint said. “But as soon as this one is over we will start getting ready for the next year. There is a team meeting coming up and I know some of the teams have raised $1,000 or even $5,000.”

The senior center, located at 914 Boston Ave. in Nederland, sees upwards of 45 to 50 visitors daily during the week for lunch, fellowship, movies, Wii Bowling, cards, quilting and bingo.

mmeaux@panews.com