Keppner now ‘flying solo’ as she takes over as WCIAAA director to work with aging population

QUINCY — Efforts to form the West Central Illinois Area Agency on Aging began in 1972 with a door-to-door surveying endeavor by 20 Quincy College students to determine what the aging population needed. The organization was founded two years later in 1974, according to a 1974 article published in The Herald-Whig, with Harold Voshall of Pittsfield serving as its first president.

Roughly 50 years later on Monday, a new era for the WCIAAA began, with Vanessa Keppner taking the reins as the organization’s new director. It’s hardly new territory for her, having served as the agency’s assistant director for the last seven years alongside former director Michael Drew.

“I was very happy that the WCIAAA board recognized Vanessa’s experience and development as a leader to take the organization into the next 50 years,” Drew said in an email. “Vanessa has been integral to the organization’s survival and recovery from the pandemic and growth over the past 7 years… I am confident Vanessa will continue to find ways to help more people in our area.”

Drew and Keppner were hired together upon the retirement of former director Lynn Niewohner, who worked for the organization for more than 40 years. Drew’s business skills and Keppner’s expertise complemented each other during their tenure. 

Drew now is the director of business development for Home Instead, a home care franchise affiliated with WCIAAA that allowed his father to stay at home for the last 10 months of his life following a 14-year battle with Parkinson’s disease. Drew’s last day at WCIAAA was Friday.

“Today is my ‘flying solo’ first day,” Keppner said. She “unofficially officially” became the new director in early August. 

Keppner was born and raised in Newfoundland, Canada, where she met her Quincy-native husband who was working there at the time. When he moved back to Quincy in 2016, she followed. She’s been here since.

“I miss the ocean every day, even though it’s not a swimmable ocean,” she said of the frigid Atlantic waters. “The Muddy Mississippi doesn’t cut it. But I like that there’s four seasons here. I love hot summers … there’s a lot less snow here in the wintertime, so that’s a plus.”

The daughter of a longtime nursing home facility supervisor, Keppner fostered her passion for working with aging communities from a young age. She grew up performing dance recitals and attending garden parties and Christmas parties at the facility her dad worked at until becoming an employee there herself after high school. She had several jobs throughout university, the first of which was a companionship program.

“We would watch ‘The Golden Girls’ and go for walks, and she would drink some wine and she wanted to learn to play the ukulele,” Keppner said. “And she was, like, 91. She was amazing.”

After that, she worked at Daffodil Place, a “miniature hotel, but strictly for cancer (patients)” funded by the Canadian Cancer Society. She also worked as the SMART (Seniors Maintaining Active Roles Together) coordinator for the Victorian Order of Nurses, a charity organization that provides accessible and comprehensive services to aging communities.

She received her undergraduate degree in psychology and her master’s in gerontology, described by the Gerontological Society of America as “the study of aging processes and individuals across the life course (that) includes: the study of physical, mental and social changes in people as they age; the investigation of changes in society resulting from our aging population; and the application of this knowledge to policies and programs.”

It’s safe to say that becoming the WCIAAA director seemed to be written in the stars for Keppner.

“When I came to Quincy and saw this building, I was like, ‘I want to work there,’” she said. “So I started volunteering with the Meals on Wheels program, and then would just kind of keep my eye on any job postings.”

Seven years later, she’s leading the organization into its next phase of life as it celebrates half a century of serving the area’s aging population.