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Seniors "Need to Be Needed"
July 19, 2004, Deseret Morning News (Utah)

By AMY JOI BRYSON

Studies repeatedly assert seniors who want to live longer, healthier lives can help themselves by helping others.You don't need to tell that to Ann Mayne, a 73-year-old Murray resident who donates her time record-keeping for Salt Lake County's Aging Services.

"If I did not have this volunteer work, I would be lost. I need to be needed," Mayne said.

Mayne is one of 4,082 volunteers who collectively donated close to 500,000 hours of service last year.

Officials estimate the dollar value of those hours at nearly $8 million - dollars that play out in services such as delivering Meals on Wheels, tutoring schoolchildren and cutting lawns.

A Texas transplant, Mayne had lived in Utah just four months when her husband suddenly died.

"I woke up one morning thinking, 'What am I going to do with the rest of my life?' I had no roots here and didn't know very many people."

With only her cat, Honey, to answer to, Mayne joined the ranks of thousands of other seniors across the state who decided to get off the couch, out of the house and into service.

"There's no reason to sit at home, be depressed and watch television all day when there is some sort of volunteer work everyone is capable of doing," she said. "This gives me a reason for being."

A recent study on volunteering by the Harvard School of Public Health and the MetLife Foundation prompted the creation of a national campaign to urge the nation's 77 million baby boomers to embrace the mantle of service once they retire. And an earlier study that tracked 1,200 elderly adults over a seven-year period found those who volunteered just a little bit lived longer than those who didn't volunteer.

Kenny Bossenberger's volunteer service gives him near daily reminders of how lucky - and healthy - he really is.

His three-hour route four days a week has the 72-year-old driving other seniors to a host of appointments - pharmacies to pick up prescriptions, doctor's offices for appointments.

The other day, he was struggling with transporting an 89-year-old woman, trying to help her down some stairs.

"This keeps me alert," he said. "If there is a little ache or pain in my knee in the morning, all you have to do is help one of those patients into the car and put the wheelchair in the trunk and then you can figure out how well off you really are."

A retired truck driver of 45 years, Bossenberger decided to take those skills to the road to help others while his "sweetie" is working during the day.

"If you saw some of these folks and how grateful they are, it makes you feel pretty good about what you are doing."

Like Bossenberger, Gaylord McCallson is a volunteer driver for Salt Lake County, a highly critical service for homebound seniors that had to turn away 147 people last month needing services. The waiting list is that long.

"The level of service which we are able to provide is because of our volunteers," said Ken Venables, the county's director of volunteer services. "We can't do it any other way. . . . The need is not an ebb and flow type of thing, it is a constant, 365-days-a-year demand."

McCallson got involved in the program at the first of this year after he stopped into the county offices to get a passport for a 50th wedding anniversary cruise he's taking with his wife, children and grandchildren.

Not only did he walk away with the passport in order, he had signed up to be a driver.

Like Mayne, you don't have to convince him of the rewards of volunteering.

"I know that on the days that I do this, I go home pumped up and feeling really good about myself," he said. "It's not about name recognition because you don't really get any of that, but it is this feeling of self-satisfaction, knowing that you are helping people get a qualify of life they would not have otherwise."

McCallson, 73, retired as an Air Force colonel at the age of 47, went on to form his own business, retired from that and has been active in volunteering for decades. "The worst thing a person can do when they get old is quit."

E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com