Dave Tosch, WVSAC Executive Director, To Retire in June

Dave Tosch, executive director at the Wenatchee Valley Senior Activity Center, announced his retirement last month. He plans to retire in June. Dave came out of retirement in 2013 to take on the role and has been a high-touch, hands-on leader of the organization throughout his tenure. Russ Alman, Communications Director for the senior center, sat down with Dave to talk about his background, why he accepted the position, and how he sees the senior center evolving through future generations.

Dave was born and raised in Cashmere. After graduating from Cashmere High School in 1970, he attended Eastern Washington University and played football. There were no scholarships for football back then, and when the ROTC visited the team and explained the opportunities available through military service, Dave decided to accept a three year scholarship and then joined the Army for a four year commitment. This ended up turning into a 20 year military career.   

Between his military service and subsequent work in the private sector in the Fort Lewis and Tacoma area, Dave had been away from the Wenatchee Valley for over nearly 30 years. But he knew he would return to the valley someday. "This is my home. I knew that I would get back here eventually," Dave said. ​

Russ Alman, WVSAC Communications Director, interviews Dave Tosch, outgoing Executive Director

Fate finally brought him back to the valley in 2010 when he visited Cashmere for his 40th high school reunion. At that event, he met Louanne Repass, who attended the reunion to represent her older brother, one of Dave's classmates. "We got to talking and we found we were both single and, you know, started dating shortly after that and got married 12 years ago." Louanne already owned a small home here and they still live in that home to this day.

Dave may have retired, but he was not the type of person to sit still. Louanne looked at him after about a year and said, "You need to go find something to do!" "I was not ready to retire, let's just say that," Dave said. 

Soon after, Louanne read in the newspaper that the executive director at Wenatchee Valley Senior Activity Center was retiring and the organization was looking for a replacement. She encouraged him to apply. 

For Dave, taking the leadership role at the senior center had personal meaning. "This isn't necessarily just a job for me. This has been a reacquainting of the people, the families that I knew growing up," he said. Dave's family owned a service station in Cashmere during his childhood and he had made many connections with adults in the community as a result. So taking the leadership role at the senior center was an opportunity to reconnect with many of those people. "Hardly a week has gone by that I haven't run into somebody that I knew 50 years ago. Those are good memories for me."

His long-standing community ties are a key attribute that has made him uniquely qualified as the executive director and public face of the senior center. There is seldom a person who enters the building with whom Dave doesn't have some sort of personal connection at one point in his life. 

Interestingly, his military experience, while providing him with the administrative background to manage the organization, is not what Dave feels is his key skillset for being the executive director. In fact, he made a point to not operate the senior center in a regimented manner. "I made sure that... the board understood that I was not going to come in here and run this place like a military organization. I don't think that would work at all. I went into this thing making sure that people realized that I wasn't going to be that way, that I was going to be approachable, that I was going to listen to people, and I think that's what the organization needs to have," Dave said.

He most enjoys attending the community lunch program hosted at the center because it's an opportunity to connect with all of the people that he knows, as well as meeting new people. "This is my family. The senior center is my family."

Dave and Louanne do not intend to leave the Wenatchee Valley after he retires. Louanne enjoys spending time in Arizona during the winter as a "snowbird," and Dave expects to be joining her during those times, but he still intends to live the majority of the year here and stay involved in the senior center and the community.

Dave is leaving big shoes to fill. The senior center is a complicated organization with a lot of moving parts, including building operations, 2,000+ members, a community lunch program, weekly schedule activities and exercise classes, an international travel program, plus a thriving retail thrift shop. In addition, the new director will oversee the capital improvement project now underway to raise $4 million to expand and renovate the facility. And while being in charge of all of these programs requires supervision and oversight, the executive director position is a "working manager" position, a hands-on role that directly interacts with the membership and the community.

The senior center is going through a transition from the World War II generation to Baby Boomers, and soon Gen Xers. The needs and interests of the latter generations are very different than the former. For example, when the current senior center facility was built in 1992, the primary point of contention was building a big wood dance floor for ballroom dancing, which was very popular with seniors at the time. Now, while that floor, which is in the main social hall, is still used for weekend dances, more often it's being used for aerobics, tai chi and Zumba.

While he understands and expects that his successor may take the senior center in new directions, he hopes that they will maintain continuity and not try to change everything at once. "There are things that need to be done differently. Any time you have an organization of this magnitude with so many things going on... I don't think it's good to turn everything upside down and start over," he said. 

At the same time, he looks forward to seeing what a new director will bring to the organization. "I am replaceable. I can be replaced by someone who has different views and thoughts and priorities. What I can say is that we need a new energy. We need new ideas," he said. "I think I would welcome someone with high energy that's trying to serve the community and loves to work with seniors and understands that it's not always crystal clear. It's got to be someone who doesn't just sit in their office all day and do paperwork."

Dave intends to stay on as an advisor for about a month and help the new executive director acclimate to the position. After that, while he may become a "snow bird" for four months in the winter, he and Louanne plan to stay in Wenatchee. Knowing Dave, we expect him to become an active volunteer at the senior center, in addition to some of his other community service work with the East Wenatchee Rotary and Appalarians.

"Hopefully, I've done a lot of the right things," Dave reflected. "One of the comments I remember from the past and I've always tried to embrace is 'It's not about always doing things right. It's about doing the right things.' That's truly what I believe. There's a lot of things that I should be doing right that I may not be necessarily doing the best way possible in some people's minds, but what I think I'm doing is, I'm doing the right things in terms of servicing our community and to provide what I think are the needs of our seniors."

Community members interested in applying for the executive director position can do so on the senior center's website at wenatcheeseniorcenter.com/jobs/executive-director

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