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Volunteering Knows No Age Limit

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By VICKIE CHACHERE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 11, 2008

Anyone who needs to have their faith in humanity restored (and who doesn't these days?) need only spend the morning with Diana Diaz. Or Otilia Alvarez. Or Maria Lopez.

They are three of the hundreds who volunteer through Seniors in Service. On any given weekday you will find Diaz and Alvarez working with children at Tampa Bay Boulevard Elementary School, or you might find Lopez making her rounds at J.L. Young Apartments, a housing complex for the elderly and disabled.

Like many of their contemporaries, these three volunteers spent their lives working to raise families, and thought their golden years would be spent relaxing. Now in their late 70s, these dedicated volunteers are on the go taking care of others every morning.

They are not alone. The non-profit agency Seniors in Service of Tampa Bay puts more than 200 volunteers to work, producing an estimated 250,000 hours of volunteers services worth about $3 million for our community each year. On a daily basis, these volunteers touch the lives of more than 1,700 children and seniors.

They work getting meals to those who are shut-ins, or doing light housekeeping and errands for those who are not mobile. For many, it means the difference between staying independent and going to a nursing home.

These volunteers dedicate themselves to others at no small personal inconvenience. One volunteer who doesn't drive tolerates hourlong bus rides to and from his assignment. Another in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease fights off its effects by keeping busy helping others.

Some juggle nursing ill spouses with their volunteer duties. Some who find themselves the beneficiaries of services for the aging turn and volunteer their own time to help others in need.

And their touch is a multigenerational one.

Through the Foster Grandparent program, volunteers have gone into local schools, Head Start programs and shelters to tutor children, work as teachers' aides and spend a little extra time with little ones who need them. Their jobs there are so important, they are not addressed as "Mrs." or "Mr." - the proper title is "Grandma" and "Grandpa."

For their efforts, the senior volunteers are paid a small stipend of $2.65 an hour - barely enough to even cover their travel expenses to and from their jobs these days.

But for these seniors, the pay is a secondary reward to the lives they touch each day.

At Tampa Bay Boulevard Elementary, Grandma Diaz walks the same hallways she walked as a child of West Tampa. She attended the elementary school 72 years ago, and returned two years ago to work as a teacher's assistant.

"I feel like I am wanted," observes Diaz, who has eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

"I feel like I am doing something good today."

One a recent weekday morning, Grandma Diaz sat at a table with a group of first-grade girls who are all recent immigrants - they read to her in near perfect English, an amazing feat considering none was proficient in the language when school started in August.

Nearby, a little wide-eyed boy named Ronald tells of his grandmother, who still lives in Cuba, but makes sure a visitor understands just how hard Grandma Diaz works to help him learn.

"She is a good person," the perceptive Ronald notes.

Grandma Alvarez also attended Tampa Bay Elementary as a child - and shares a special kinship with the many recent immigrant children she now helps teach. Alvarez, a native of West Tampa, says she didn't speak English either until she went to school.

For many of these children, it's not just that their parents speak no English, but they are illiterate in their native tongues.

Thankfully, Grandma Alvarez is there with an extra pair of hands to help with classwork and an extra pair of ears to hear them work their way through a story.

Maria Lopez' wards might be a little bigger, but no less needy. At J.L. Young Apartments, Lopez' has shuttled among her clients on a motorized chair for 14 years - cooking their meals, running their errands, doing their laundry and keeping them company. On many days, bypassers will see her motoring to the nearby Kmart to do their shopping.

On this day, she is fixing lunch for Jessie Lundy, who at 85 has been housebound since 1970. With no family nearby, Lundy said all she has are volunteers to keep her independent.

"Without her, I would have been in a nursing home a long time ago," she notes gratefully.

The month of May has been designated Older Americans Month - a time to contemplate the strength that still lies within the group dubbed the Greatest Generation. The volunteers at Seniors in Services are living proof their generation's contributions are far from over.

On Tuesday, Seniors in Service of Tampa Bay will welcome the public to learn more about its programs. Please join themat The Centre Club at Urban Center, 123 S. West Shore Blvd. Registration is at 7:30 with breakfast and program from 8-9 a.m. To RSVP or for more information, call (813) 932-5228, ext. 226.

Vickie Chachere is a Tribune editorial writer.

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