A chance to give back: Senior volunteers reach out to help
FAIRFIELD — Janelle Hawkins still misses Pogo, the possum.
The little animal used to cuddle and fall asleep in her arms. Hawkins would hide grapes in the ground and she’d find them. Normally, as a volunteer at the Suisun Wildlife Center, she isn’t supposed to allow the wild animals to imprint, but Pogo was special.
“A lady thought she’d be a good pet, but she found out later she wouldn’t . . . but by then (she was) imprinted,” Hawkins said of Pogo’s life before the wildlife center became home.
Before Pogo died a couple of months ago, he was part of the traveling entourage that the wildlife center took to schools, senior centers and the like.
“As soon as I was done with everything, I would go get her and bring her out to the garden,” Hawkins said. “Now I don’t have her to take care of.”
Once baby season starts up again, the 68-year-old volunteer will be busy with a multitude of wild animals. Some will end up as permanent residents of the facility but others — either injured or orphaned — will be released back to the wild.
Hawkins is one of the many over-50 Solano County volunteers who aren’t ready yet for a slower life. Charlotte and Marty Murphy — a Fairfield couple in their mid-60s — just left for a volunteer five-month teaching mission in South Africa and Kendall Wright said he’s as busy now as a literacy tutor and an airline passenger advocate for FlyersRights.org as he was in his “working” life.
When talking to the volunteers, the passion for what they do is palpable in their voices.
“I want to be productive,” said Charlotte Murphy. “Just because we retired doesn’t mean we’re done doing things.”
For the animals
As she walks around the Suisun Wildlife Center, Hawkins’ love of animals is obvious. Her face lights up as she talks about and to the animals — her interaction is decidedly maternal, but with those that are going to be released she knows to keep her mama instinct in check.
“We try not to name them,” she said of those that will eventually be released.
Among the permanent locals is Tom, the turkey who won’t leave the premises. Rosie the kestrel — or sparrowhawk — bobs her head like a cockatiel and enjoys rather intense eye contact with visitors. Kaiu the coyote also found a soft spot in Hawkins’ heart — she keeps a stern eye out for anything that might be agitating the one-eyed critter.
Hawkins retired from the Fairfield Police Department as a records clerk after growing up on a parcel of land the family owned — a ranch that once was outside the city limits but is now around Alaska Avenue. The building on Heath Drive in which The Leaven is housed is her childhood home.
An animal person from the start, her father used to bring home orphaned lambs, wild ducks and birds from their ranch in the Elmira area of Vacaville. She would nurse them back to health, she said. She called the animals her “best friends.”
“I’d just sit and talk to them,” she said. “I loved to help the ones that needed the help.”
Not much has changed.
Hawkins, who has been at the center for a couple of years, works the morning shift, which she said means lots of poop shoveling plus pen- and cage-cleaning. The facility is also scrubbed from one end to the other on a regular basis. Most of the animals are fed in the evening, but there are a few she feeds in the morning. A year ago she became a shift supervisor so now she also trains the new volunteers.
It’s not unusual for Hawkins to spend her own money — she adorned the cages with Christmas stockings over the holidays and is hoping for donations, she said, laughing. She buys Kaiu dog cookies and chew toys.
“He plays just like a dog,” she said, with a big smile.
Each week she looks forward to her shift, often staying well past the time she’s supposed to leave. She said, laughing, that she’d love to be at the center every day but her husband “probably wouldn’t like that.”
“I just love being with the animals and knowing I’m helping them,” she said.
For more information on volunteering at the Suisun Wildlife Center, go to http://www.suisunwildlife.org.
A reason to live
Kendall Wright lost his wife in 2008 to early onset Alzheimer’s. It’s a battle he said they fought together for seven years until her death.
He said volunteering has given him a “reason to get up in the morning.”
“I think it saved my life,” he said.
Wright, 65, a former Air Force aviator and consultant for major computer companies, mourned his loss for quite a while but then decided one day he needed to get out and do something. He’d already gone back to tutoring for the Solano County Adult Library’s Adult Literacy Program, but he needed more.
“After a year of ‘Law and Order’ reruns, I reached a decision point — grieve on the couch forever or reach out for a new life. I chose the latter,” he said.
He stumbled upon an airline passenger advocacy group called FlyersRights.org in 2010. It’s the largest nonprofit airline passenger advocacy group in the world, Wright said. As a fairly frequent flier himself, he began to devote more and more time to the group, becoming passionate about its issues.
“I’m sick and tired of being treated like a crate of mangos instead of a human being,” he said.
He calls it a challenge — “the opportunity to use old skills in new ways.” Both volunteer positions keep him busy and fulfilled.
“It’s the opportunity to give back to my community with literacy work and to my country with pushing for public law to protect airline passengers.”
Much of his advocacy work is done from the computer at home. He does a lot of writing, such as press releases and letters to members of congress. He’s also the editor of the newsletter. He’s worked his way up to director of support operations and is secretary to the board of directors and also the FlyersRights Education Fund — the educational and service part of the advocacy group.
He tutors twice a week at the Civic Center branch of the library, specializing in preparing students for their general education diploma.
He called his professional careers “rewarding” but said his volunteer careers are equally so and this time he’s not “doing this for the money.”
“Many people my age lose loved ones and come to the decision point I mentioned,” he said. “I can attest that reaching out to find a new life is a path that works.”
Wright said FlyersRights.org could use some volunteer help with Internet research. For more information, call 332-0622.
We’re going where?
Marty and Charlotte Murphy are already ensconced in Johannesburg, South Africa. Finally. It was touch-and-go for a while before their visas arrived two days prior to their departure date.
But it wasn’t too long ago that Marty Murphy, a volunteer pastor at New Life Church and a retired officer from the Los Angeles California Highway Patrol since 2000, was going through his garage and packing up theological books to take to the Nazarene Theological College in South Africa.
Going that far away for so long was totally “off the radar” for Marty Murphy just a short time ago.
His wife added, with a smile, “It wasn’t off my radar.”
While Marty Murphy will be teaching for a semester, his wife, Charlotte Murphy, who retired as the transportation director for the Fairfield-Suisun School District in 2001, will probably do administrative work.
The couple will not be paid for the work they do nor their food but will have their housing and utilities paid — but that’s of little consequence to the volunteer-driven Murphys.
“When we made the decision it wasn’t a matter of how much it cost — it was what we were directed to do by a higher spirit,” said Marty Murphy. He added that the money involved was not a deal-breaker.
The drive behind the decision to leave friends and family for so long was the ability to use his skills where they are most effective. Both of them serve their church in a multitude of ways — he in the pastoral area and she with such things as church projects and working in the church nursery.
In preparation, they went through a cultural immersion program and have been learning some Zulu words, since the head of the college is Zulu.
“It’s a chance to do that somewhere else,” Charlotte Murphy said. “We’re not here to just do things for ourselves. We’re supposed to help other people.”
Reach Susan Winlow at 427-6955 or swinlow@dailyrepublic.net.
Short URL: http://www.dailyrepublic.com/?p=131168
Posted by Susan Winlow
on Feb 9 2012.
Filed under Seniors, The Other Side of 50. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
