Photos and text by
Kevin Gutting
Each second Sunday of the month at American Legion Post 271 in Hadley, Meli Morash hosts a ballroom dance night for people ages 50 and over. Morash, who hails from Turkey, also runs a weekly Friday-night salsa meet-up that’s been going strong for 10 years. But recently she saw a need for a venue for “more mature” people who learn to dance but then have no place to go — though she’s quick to add that “our doors are open to anybody who likes to dance.”
Amy Rothenberg and her husband, Paul Herscu, of Amherst seem to fit that bill. Rothenberg says they started taking dance lessons three years ago, “when our kids left home.” Herscu had told her that learning to fly was on his bucket list and she said, “I am never getting on an airplane with you — what’s the next thing on your list?” That was a ballroom dance class. “I said, ‘Sign us up!’ ”
Last Sunday, Mother’s Day, yielded a smaller-than-usual crowd of about two dozen people who took to the dance floor and, between songs, chatted at the tables decorated with roses. For Morash, a full-time Realtor who just turned 72, the dance events are a hobby. “I’ve been dancing all my life. It keeps us young.”