As the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest NJ dedicated the Ronald I. Coun Center for Creative Maturity Dec. 4, its namesake proclaimed it “the happiest day I have ever worked in this agency.”

“This honor is unbelievable,” he told NJ Jewish News at the end of an hour-long ceremony. “I never would have expected it. I was just a kid growing up in a neighborhood. I never would have believed this would happen, but it did, and I’m glad. That’s the truth.”

Coun, who began working as a job counselor at JVS in 1965 and retired as its executive director June 30 of this year, stepped down to spend more time with his family and intensify his long personal battle with cancer.

“Over the last 11 years, without my wife and my family I wouldn’t have made it,” he told his audience tearfully.

The center will be located at JVS headquarters in East Orange, with the Wallerstein Foundation for Geriatric Life Improvement underwriting an endowment fund.

Its mission is to “help seniors, the aging, retirees, pre-retirees, the frail elderly, the healthy mature adult maximize and redefine life’s potential,” said Coun’s successor, Leonard Schneider.

Schneider said he was “privileged to be Ron’s perfect partner in a 17-year ‘marriage’ to one of the most beloved leaders in the Jewish communal service field, a moral compass who pursued an unwavering social justice agenda to restore dignity and self-sufficiency to the unemployed and the most needy of our community.”

Ending his introduction, Schneider called Coun “a teacher who helped his colleagues navigate the ever-churning waters of government, the organized Jewish community, and the world of philanthropy,” as well as “an inspiration whose zest for life and positive spirit are not only contagious but enable him to cope with the harsh realities of life.”

Seated in a wheelchair, Coun spoke with a shaky eloquence on the need to increase services to the aged and the disabled.

Declaring that he wanted “to deal with the 800-pound gorilla in the room — my disability,” Coun said, “It’s not just me. People who have disabilities need to be included in the society. You’ve got to remember these folks. My mind is still active — as you can tell,” he said, joking that he still needs “to listen to NPR.

“Sometimes you look at things that help you a lot,” Coun said, then recited a Dylan Thomas poem:

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

“I’m not very angry about this,” he said. “You must know that. But I am very determined, and I’ll hang in there as long as I can.”

Following Coun, three experts on vocational services and elder care spoke of America’s need to provide for its growing senior population.

Keynote speaker Kathy Krepcio, executive director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, noted that many corporate moves to freeze and scale back pension plans for retiring workers, along with a sharp decline in rainy-day savings by older adults, have created conditions requiring the Baby Boomer generation to continue working past the traditional retirement age of 65.

Quoting former President Bill Clinton, Krepcio said, “We owe older workers the opportunity to continue working as long as they desire.”

But, she noted, many may face physical disabilities and age discrimination issues that impair their potential for earning living wages.

“Our aging population is presenting this country with a crisis that will strain our financial solvency and our future prosperity,” she said. “We must work together, sooner rather than later, to turn things around.”

Thomas Jennings, director of the NJ Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services and a colleague of Coun “for at least 38 years,” said, “As we age, disability sets in; we are very much aware of that. So, many of these individuals are going to need the proper support and guidance to make the transition to their new occupations” with vocational retraining, transportation, technological assistance, and job placement.

Karen Alexander, director of eldercare services at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, defined aging as “multiple losses — the loss of health, the loss of friends and family, and the loss of mobility. When you get that constellation, you begin to get old, as opposed to a concept of becoming older — deeply reflective, gaining insight, wisdom, benefiting from life experience, having the time to pursue interests and maybe develop mastery of things you only got a chance to play with when you were working full-time — and having the health and wealth to enjoy that time.”

She said that according to statistics, people who are now 65 years old can expect to live until age 84. People over 85 are the fastest-growing segment of the population, “and their needs are going to include heath-related services that preserve their independence and quality of life” and help them remain in their own homes. Help will also be needed “for their Boomer children in coping with a three-headed hydra” — work, raising their own children, and caring for aging parents.

Alexander said that from the perspective of the Jewish community, which has a higher percentage of seniors than the general population, there is a “vested interest” in creating new programs and services that “meet the needs of older adults.”

“As Bette Davis once said, ‘Getting old is not for sissies.’ But as more of us live longer, we’ll need help figuring out how to get the best out of the added years we’ve been given.

“Our entire society is aging,” said Alexander, “and growing old is not a spectator sport.”