Helping Others Helps Us
As a professional couple, raising two daughters, my wife and I did little in the way of volunteer work. At the end of each year, we gave a few thousand dollars in charitable contributions to the needy and less fortunate, a way of lowering our taxes a little and making us feel a bit more generous.
One year in my 60s, I joined members of my chorus in singing with homeless women at a Boston lunch place in a church basement. And a couple of times long ago we served the homeless on Thanksgiving with our younger daughter.
But that was about it. Volunteering was not a significant part of our lives.
Now, two of my favorite hours each week are spent at the Falmouth Service Center, a remarkable support program on Cape Cod for those in need. It serves at least 600 families and individuals food weekly, treating these clients with respect and providing them with quality food without proof of need or even residency in the town.
Except for a few high school kids, including our granddaughter, the vast majority of the volunteers on my shift are retirees, a fair share in their 70s, some pushing 80. My “co-workers” include a former college president, retired lawyers, a labor leader, business people, teachers and more.
Each week I do one of two jobs. One is to be a shopper, which means wheeling around the warehouse with a shopping cart, pulling tuna fish, peanut butter, macaroni and cheese and other nonperishables from shelves; then waiting in line for dairy products, fresh vegetables and frozen meat before the whole order is weighed. As we shop, we manage snippets of conversation and are energized by soundtracks from Motown, Elvis, Sinatra and more.
My other job is to wait outside, just past the scale, to push the loaded and weighed carts down a ramp, where those collecting the food are waiting. At times we help them load the food into their cars.
This, I’ve found, is the job that gives me special pleasure. The clients—young families and older individuals, able-bodied and infirm, the down-and-out and the working poor, immigrants and lifetime Cape Codders—congregate by the parking lot, waiting for the number signifying their order to be called.
They speak English, Spanish, Portuguese and more. Most are incredibly gracious, thanking me for the food as if I’d personally supplied it or saying things like “thank you for your hard work.” The young families in particular socialize with each other as they wait, often looking through racks of free clothing in the back of the center.
Many of the clients have a sense of humor. “Thank you, young man,” a middle-aged guy said to me last week. “Have a happy Easter.”
As I read and hear the exaggerated or fake “news stories” ricocheting around the Internet about the unwashed masses of dangerous migrants pouring into our country, I think of the little kids I meet who take great pleasure when they get a chance to call the number of a client into the megaphone we use. Or of the woman with an impeccable British accent whom I steered to where she had to fill out her food order. Or the young couple who flashed a smile when I said, “de nada,” roughly 10 percent of my total Spanish vocabulary. I think of the clients who bring back empty carts after loading groceries into their cars or who consolidate the paper bags the center gives them, handing back empty ones so they can be used again.
At a time when housing and food costs strain and break the budget of even working families, many people in society are one illness, one layoff, one breakdown away from needing the services of places like the Service Center. I’m proud to live in a town that mostly cares and to work at a place that helps them and does so in a manner that respects and affirms those who need a hand.
Every time I go to the service center, however, I also can’t help but think of those living in gated communities, some with guards and mega-houses that stand empty most of the year. That’s also part of the Cape landscape.
I think of acquaintances who pooh-pooh the need for affordable housing on an island where a sizable portion of the workforce sits in standstill traffic each morning and evening trying to get to work over a bridge from the somewhat more affordable mainland. I think of families who live in their cars or campgrounds from June to September, forced out of rentals that jump in price by four or five times during weekly summer rental season. I think of those living in the cape’s woods year-round, some working during the day.
Cape Cod has its own unique set of issues, but the yawning gulf between those in a tiny tier atop society and the growing percentage of those scrambling to simply keep up is universal. If America’s needy are too often invisible so, too, increasingly are we, the boomers, as we age.
Yet there’s no need to feel less visible, no need to feel less valued after we retire, no need to feel bored as by filling days watching TV, playing cards or joining dining-out clubs. My bad foot hurts after I take 7,000 or so steps each week on my volunteer shift. But I feel great inside, part of a community that includes those helping and those being helped.
Give it a try. I wish I had volunteered more much earlier in my life. Next year, I’m going to cut back my paid part-time work from 20 hours to 10. I’ll likely use the extra time to write a bit more—and to pick up a second shift someplace where I can help someone else.
Everyone needs help sometimes. And everyone, volunteers included, needs to feel appreciated.
Jerry Lanson is a retired journalism professor and a former newspaper editor. He still coaches writing part-time virtually for the Harvard Kennedy School.