CHESTERFIELD — Longtime resident and former Chesterfield Council on Aging Director Janice Gibeau is being acknowledged by her community Saturday, after a lifetime career devoted to the elderly and 40 years of active service to the town.

“I’m just a girl who can’t say no” she Gibeau, quoting the Broadway song by Richard Rogers, expressing that she has repeatedly attempted to retire but has always found reasons to keep working. Now, the 85 year old hopes to “get the most out of each day” as she enters the newest chapter of her life that began after her mid-October retirement.

A native of New Hampshire raised just north of Concord, Gibeau said she “grew up in the country and am retiring there.” Although eras of her life have also been spent in big cities, namely New York and Washington, D.C., she moved into a late 1700s home in Chesterfield in 1984 after her wife was offered a job at the Smith College School for Social Work.

Gibeau continues to be in love with the town’s “openness and warmth, and the people who are so down to earth and generous.” She calls it “a great place to grow old.”

During her 10-year tenure as director of the Council on Aging (COA), Gibeau ushered in a new era for the center by expanding exercise classes, developing technology programs to help “narrow the digital divide,” and introducing other classes and programs for both old and young residents.

In Chesterfield where 40% of the population is over 60, “The problem is people always think they’re too young to go to the senior center ... but we’re all old enough to go there,” she said.

She sought to expand the concept of a senior center into Chesterfield’s Community Center — a place for the old and the young.

“We have one of the most attractive community centers in the area,” Gibeau said.

A big reason for that is the support COA receives from the Northern Hilltowns Consortium of Councils on Aging, a nonprofit that in the past has helped fund renovation projects at the center. She also credits the town’s Council on Aging Advisory Board, and state Sen. Paul Mark and state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa for their support.

Sabadosa described Gibeau as a “force of nature” who always put the needs of the senior community first.

“She excels at bringing people together, advocating for her community, and never letting anyone forget that life in the Hilltowns is just a little bit different from other places,” Sabadosa said in an email. “When Jan speaks, people listen, but her hallmark is doing tough work with such joy and ease that everyone feels welcome and accepted.”

Prior to serving as Council on Aging director, Gibeau served on the town’s finance and school committees. But the majority of her career has been spent working in elderly health care, including for the Center to End Elder Homelessness, and at Massachusetts General teaching nursing.

Gibeau graduated from Mary Hitchcock Hospital training school for nurses in Hanover after a three-year program, and began her career at a federal hospital in Washington, D.C. While she loved the work, she said those were “mixed years” to be in nation’s capital, with the assassinations of both JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. having taken place, and because as a young lesbian she was also surrounded by McCarthyism and the Stonewall riots.

During her time in New York, she worked as clinical director at SAGE USA, an elderly LGBTQ outreach center, where she described her work as “saving people from neglect and abuse.” She said “it is a very different time now” with regards to social stigmas surrounding gay lifestyles.

Born in 1939, Gibeau said that “one wouldn’t even think” as a kid about being gay, and in her 20s began to realize her sexuality. She shared a “sad” memory as a kid living in the country, when her mother cautioned her not to visit the two ladies who lived with each other. This had struck her as odd because up to that point in her life, she “hadn’t been told not to go somewhere before — except maybe the sand pit.”

But her background in working with the elderly and experiencing personally what it is like to be outcast allowed her develop her personal mission, which she described as, “helping people to live where they want, to be who they want to be, and be with who they want to be with, all while being respected at the same time.”

Gibeau retired mid-Otober, making room for her successor Brooke Bullock, who’s hiring was announced Thursday, and will transition into the position beginning in November.  According to the Town’s website,  Bullock, “has experience in managing non-profits, has worked extensively with populations living in rural areas, and has a successful track record of writing and managing grants.”

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.