EVERYDAY HEROES:

Bill Bornheutter

By Arlene Jensen

            Volunteering is not just an occasional thing for Bill Bornhuetter.  It’s an every day, sometimes all-day thing.  It’s a way of life.

Bornhuetter drives veterans to Milwaukee for hospital visits.  He delivers meals to shut-ins and drives seniors to doctor appointments.  And when he’s not behind the wheel of his car, you’re apt to find him coordinating Bingo for the Senior Action Council and Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP).  He helped raise over $15,000.00 in 2004!   

            Last year, Bill logged an amazing 1,670 volunteer hours for various agencies that come under the big umbrella of Kenosha Area Family and Aging Services (KAFASI).  To put that number in proper perspective, the normal work-year is about 2,000 hours.  That makes the 69-year-old Bornhuetter nearly a full-time volunteer!  

            “I like to help,” says the retired postal service letter carrier. “I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

KAFASI named Bornhuetter its volunteer of the year in 2004.

The reasons are apparent in the numbers:

* 391 hours as volunteer driver for the Disabled American Veterans Transportation Network.

* 346 hours coordinating Bingo for the Senior Action Council of Kenosha.

* 434 hours running bingo for KAFASI and RSVP, plus 70 additional hours of at the Kenosha County Fair.

* 170 hours as a KAFASI volunteer escort.

* 30½ hours transporting and delivering Meals on Wheels.

Volunteering is nothing new to Bornhuetter. His first volunteer job was filling in for Santa Claus at the Great Lakes Naval Base, while he was stationed there with the U.S. Navy.

In a nearly 20-year naval career, from 1954 to 1973, he saw the world, “at DaNang, Vietnam and Singapore, and from as far north as Greenland and as far south as the Cape of Good Hope.”

While stationed at Bahrain in the Mid-East, he volunteered to don the familiar red suit and white whiskers to play Santa for a group of American school children, the youngsters of military personnel and civilian workers assigned to the Persian Gulf area.  

 “They were really surprised to realize that Santa Claus knew where they were, so far from home,” recalls Bornhuetter.

Now, some 35 years after he started portraying the Jolly Old Elf during the holiday season, he’s still playing Santa, but concedes with a smile that he no longer needs as much padding around the middle as he once did.

His Santa services are free to families with a handicapped, retarded or otherwise incapacitated child.

When he left the Navy in 1973, he went to work for the U.S. Postal Service.  For the next 21 years, he walked Kenosha streets, delivering mail.  After those years of walking, he says, driving is his favorite form of volunteering.

            So far, he has logged 25,000 miles driving for the Disabled American Veterans.  His ambitious target is 50,000 miles!

            Using a DAV van, he picks up veterans around Kenosha and

drives them appointments at the Veterans Administration’s Clement J. Zablocki Medical Center in Milwaukee.  Medical appointments being what they are, it usually takes much of his day before his passengers are ready to head back to Kenosha.

            But it’s not just veterans who need transportation. KAFASI’s Volunteer Escort program is available for seniors and shut-ins who have no other form of transportation.  Bornhuetter drives elderly residents to doctor appointments, for dialysis treatments, for hair appointments and to the grocery store.

            “I even drove a woman to Racine for a birthday party,” he remembers.

            Those trips are rarely boring, either for Bill or his riders.  While driving, the former mailman gives his passengers the benefit of his vast knowledge of Kenosha history.  He even challenges them with informal “name that building” contests.

Born in Kenosha, Bornhuetter moved to Milwaukee in 1946, but returned here after his military service in 1973.  He is divorced and has two grown children, William and Ann, both of them living in Kenosha.

His still growing record of volunteerism in Kenosha began one Sunday morning in church, when he heard an appeal for drivers to deliver Meals on Wheels.  He answered the call and hasn’t slowed down since.

“I help wherever I can,” he says, “And I like to think there will be somebody to help me out when I need it.

”For those who would like to learn more about volunteering, all it takes is a no-obligation phone call to KAFASI at 262-658-0237.