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New & Renew MembershipRenew your BDSC membership form to continue developing your organization, accessing essential social opportunities, and receiving other exclusive BDSC community and mail it to the address with your check. HistoryOn March 1986 we started a deaf senior citizens center in western Massachusetts area known as Western Massachusetts Deaf Senior Citizens (WMDSC). A meeting was planned with the help of Western Massachusetts Association of the Deaf/Hearing Impaired (WMAD/HI) and the New England Homes for the Deaf (NEHD). About twenty five (25) people were involved in the planning stage. Western Massachusetts Deaf Senior Citizens was the temporary named organization with an advisory committee and sub-committees making plans for the future. An open house for the deaf seniors from the surrounding communities of Holyoke, Pittsfield, Chicopee, Springfield, and Longmeadow took place on May 16, 1986 at the First Congregation Church in Holyoke. Our social events and regular meetings took place there on a weekly basis. WMDSC was renamed Baystate Deaf Senior Citizens (BDSC) by Frank and Alda Malaguti with fifteen (15) charter members in 1987. In September of 1987 Donna Demers, who was the Coordinator Director of the Massachusetts Office of Deafness (MOD) for Western Massachusetts in Springfield, recommended BDSC to visit the East Longmeadow Council on Aging (ELCOA) in the old school building on North Main Street, East Longmeadow. We met with Director Rosalind Reardon Clark, who was very excited to have us. She had a deaf sister who lived in Rochester, New York. Director Clark gave us one of the rooms at the ELCOA that we could use for our regular gatherings on Wednesdays. Baystate Deaf Seniors made a new history that we were granted a new tax exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code on December 22, 2010 and also incorporated on February 28, 2011. Baystate Deaf Seniors reached a new milestone celebrating our 25th Anniversary banquet at the Marriott Hotels & Resorts in Windsor, CT on June 9, 2012. Officers 2022 - 2024
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