Senior News September, 2002 Vol. 21. No.  9

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Pan Dulce Steel Orchestra

Newsbriefs

Redwood Reading Service

Spotlight on the California Commission on Aging

Eureka and Del Norte learn about communication and behavior

Brookings: Journey of life takes us to just the right place

McKinleyville: Heroes

Crossing the Border

Sand Hills, Nebraska

Southern Humboldt County

Events at HSRC

Community Calendar

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McKinleyville heroes
by Barbara Ogden

Here at the McKinleyville Senior Center, we recently received an annual report from RSVP on the hours our seniors volunteered from July 2001 to June 2002. Our seniors volunteered 2,262 hours last year. Wow! That's a lot of hours.

These hours included answering phones, cooking, tutoring, working with SCOP, calling Bingo, just to name a few. I would say we have 2,262 hours of unsung heroes here.

Looking beyond the senior center at our community as a whole, we have so many wonderful folks who just by doing their jobs are unsung heroes. We recently catered some events for the McKinleyville school teachers. Talk about heroes! These dedicated folks teach our kids, who are our future. They spent three days of their summer vacation learning new things. Teaching the kids of today is certainly a challenge in anybody's book. Our hats are off to teachers everywhere.

Our own McKinleyville Park and Recreation Department offers many, many programs for the youth of McKinleyville-programs that offer kids something to do and accomplish, not only during summer vacation, but through the year as well.

These folks are heroes. They keep our kids safe, off the streets and out of trouble by giving them a space to be and something to do.

More heroes are the service clubs in our community with the money they raise and the causes they support.

Mad River Rotary recently built redwood picnic benches for area schools and provided water for the Trinidad school's gardens. They gave beautiful dictionaries to all third grade students in our schools. This club is currently fundraising for our proposed Hiller Sports Complex.

Another hero is our own Eleanor Sullivan who writes a weekly column in the McKinleyville Press focusing only on the good things folks do. We all get our fill daily of the bad news.

Even the community service workers who keep our Pierson Park so clean are heroes.

A hero doesn't need recognition or applause, just a lot of thanks along the way. A true hero doesn't have to do anything great, just good things.

Barbara Ogden is director of the McKinleyville Senior Center. The center's phone number is 707-839-0191.