Volunteer Week Honors Those Who Inspire By Example

By Shannon Hicks

Newtown is full of volunteers. Residents live here and volunteer elsewhere, they volunteer to help fellow residents, or they are helped by people who come in from other towns. There are volunteers who work on their own — leading children’s programs at the library; coaching teams of baseball, softball, soccer and others. There are those who donate food and toiletries to FAITH Food Pantry — handing off to the people who are there, voluntarily, to collect, sort, and provide those items to the people who need them.

Some people volunteer their vehicles and time, driving fellow residents to medical appointments they might not otherwise be able to get to (FISH) or driving around town to deliver meals to people who are shut in their homes, short- or long-term (Meals on Wheels).

There are volunteers who stand up for animals (The Animal Center, Canine Advocates of Newtown, Spay and Neuter Association of Newtown), and those who even spend some of their time providing for the care of the cemeteries in town, like Lands’ End Cemetery Association and Newtown Village Cemetery Association.

National Volunteer Week returns this year April 15–21, and the theme for this year is “Inspire By Example.” The weeklong observation was created in 1974 when President Richard Nixon signed an executive order to establish the week as an annual celebration of voluntarism.

Opportunities are always available, for all ages and interests (see “Volunteer Opportunities” on this page). Sometimes you have to go looking for an opportunity, and sometimes they come up when you least expect them.

That was the case for Gretchen Saccone, a Monroe resident who has been volunteering at Lockwood Lodge and Ashlar of Newtown for more than a year. In April 2006, Ms Saccone was attending the Volunteer Recognition Dinner at Ashlar of Newtown (AON) as one of the evening’s honored guests. She had been invited because she brings students from Jockey Hollow Middle School in Monroe to the assisted living facility on Toddy Hill Road, and AON staff wanted to make sure she and those students were among those being thanked for sharing their time.

The Jockey Hollow students were are part of the school’s Student Activities: Kids Who Want To Make A Difference program. For that program, Ms Saccone and other volunteer parent advisors Jami Whiteman, Joanne Bauer, Suzanne Bates, and Alice Berrywork work with students who write letters and collect items to send to local soldiers in Iraq, work at soup kitchens, collect clothing for the homeless, and visit the residents at AON and Lockwood Lodge. At Ashlar and Lockwood, students make crafts with the residents, offer manicures, and simply visit. For that reason the students and their advisors were invited to the Volunteer Crew Recognition Dinner last April.

“During that dinner Yvonne [Bachand, the marketing and community relations manager for Ashlar and Lockwood Lodge] mentioned that they needed additional volunteers for Lockwood and Ashlar. I asked her what she specifically needed, and her first mention was help at the café.”

The Commons, a small café off the lobby of Lockwood Lodge, is located next to the barber shop/beauty salon shared by residents of Lockwood Lodge and AON. When it is open, the café offers fresh coffee and a selection of muffins, munchies, cold soda, and even small bags of snacks (peanuts, candies) and small bottles of soap, small boxes of tissues, and other sundries residents might want to stock up on. It has tables with comfortable chairs, and it is of course fully handicapped accessible.

The coffee shop doesn’t charge residents for its coffee and muffins.

“It’s not here to make money,” said Ms Saccone. “It’s here to give them a place to go, and I’m happy to help them. I’m happy to see them each week.

“I feel bad because the only time the café is open is when they can get a volunteer to be here, and it’s perfect for them,” Ms Saccone said. So for the past year Ms Saccone has been at the café every Friday morning from 10 am until about 12:30, brewing up the coffee and sharing conversation with residents of Lockwood and AOL, as well as staff members and friends of residents who stop in for a visit.

Ms Saccone’s weekly visits to The Commons Café has also brought her creative side back to the surface. The mother of two teenage boys “who have no interest in arts and crafts,” she said, Ms Saccone found that many of her ideas — painting T-shirts and caps, creating decoupage plates, and creating scrapbooks, among others — were very popular with the residents.

So a few months after starting to visit The Commons, Ms Saccone added volunteer craft leader to her schedule. She visits Lockwood to do art therapy classes at least once each week. In that capacity she has worked with residents who have dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, helping them create their own items for the Residents’ Annual Holiday Fair. She and residents have also made bags to hang on their walkers so that they can carry items more easily, decorated wreaths, and even created gingerbread houses from foam cut-outs.

Ms Saccone also made time to create centerpieces for the tables at the café. In the summer there are small pails filled with sand that hold everything from gold coins and seashells to American flags. For the spring she painted glass iced tea bottles and put plastic flowers in them.

Ken Nash, the director of Ashlar, called Ms Saccone “a shining example of volunteerism.”

“Volunteers are integral and critical to our operation,” he said. “We have over 100 volunteers at times. Not everyone takes off like this, but some folks, like Gretchen, are people who are here, get into the experience and we see that we can count on them. She has moved out of her initial role and into additional roles.”

 Meanwhile, in her original role as a coffee shop volunteer, Gretchen’s donation of time to others has become a reward itself.

“I love it here,” she said. “People ask me ‘Isn’t it depressing there?’ and I say No. These residents need normality in their lives and I can offer that. They’re wonderful. I love doing arts and crafts, so that was easy. I don’t have room at home to do arts and crafts, so this is good for me too.

“I love to listen to them. They have amazing stories. It’s incredible to listen to them,” she said. “Plus I miss my grandparents. I come here and I feel like I have a whole group of grandparents.”

Still Teaching, By Choice

 Thanks to The Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) of Northern Fairfield County, which connects retirees and senior citizens with groups and opportunities to which they can apply their life experiences, Newtown resident Michael Asselta has been steadily busy in the 2½ years since his retirement.

“They’re constantly calling me and offering me places where I can go talk,” Mr Asselta said this week. “Maureen Farrell [from RSVP] called me recently to see if I wanted to speak in some schools, and now she’s helping me set that up.”

Mr Asselta was a history teacher for a few years (“back about 100 years ago,” he said this week with a laugh) before he spent much of his life running his own art supply store. His heart always remained with American history, however, and he has been giving history talks on a biweekly basis at The Homesteads at Newtown almost since his move to the area three years ago. His nickname is The Armchair Historian.

“I started with the Civil War, and then the Revolutionary War,” Mr Asselta said. “I’m working my way through the American Presidents — I’ve done programs about Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe. I’ve also done a program about women during the Revolution, and Jamestown.”

He used to offer similar talks at Cascades in Bethel and Lockwood Lodge in Newtown, and has started presenting similar programs as part of a series called The Learning Exchange at Danbury Senior Center’s Elmwood Hall. This is a program that brings in guest speakers on a regular basis to speak about topics on which they are knowledgeable.

His next program at The Homesteads will be on Tuesday, April 17, at 2 pm (the public is welcome; call 426-8118 for details), and it will “probably” be about Lyndon Johnson.

“I get to talk about what I want, so I’m debating right now who I’m going to be talking about,” said Mr Asselta. “The gals over there have been asking to hear the Women of the Revolution talk again, but I’m working on the Johnson piece now and it should be done by then.”

Mr Asselta will then be at Elmwood Hall on Thursday, April 19, at 9:30 am (contact the senior center, which is at 10 Elmwood Place, by calling 797-4686).

His enthusiasm and continued volunteer efforts recently earned him a President’s Volunteer Service Award from The President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation. That honor included a letter from President Bush thanking him for “dedicating 4,000 hours to serve others.”

He was surprised by that honor.

“I don’t do this for money or publicity,” said Mr Asselta, who constantly does research for new presentations. “I wasn’t expecting that at all. I just do this on my own, because I love it.”

He is not done educating others, either. Mr Asselta, whose daughter and triplet grandchildren live in Ridgefield, has begun volunteering time at Keeler Tavern in Ridgefield. He has ordered his own set of clothing of the Revolutionary War era and as soon as they arrive, he will begin offering tours each weekend, he says.

So why volunteer? People have different reasons: to make a difference, to be a role model, to be a good citizen, to improve the community, to help someone, to meet new people, to save lives, to improve the environment, to teach someone, to inspire others, and for many other personal reasons.

1-800-Volunteer.org is a national website that can help anyone find an opportunity that is right for them. The organization is a service of the Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., dedicated to engaging more people and resources to help solve social problems. 1-800-Volunteer.org makes finding volunteer opportunities in local communities easy. So does the list of “Volunteer Opportunities” in this week’s Newtown Bee.