Everyday Heroes
By Arlene Jensen
Helen Sakolowski
“Don’t ever tell me you’re bored,” says Helen Sakalowski. “Volunteer! Volunteers get out, make friends, are more alive and feel good about themselves!”
Helen’s friends don’t dare plead boredom. They never say they’ve nothing to do. If they did, they know, quick as a wink, she would have them signed up for one of her favorite volunteer jobs.
Since she began volunteering her own time five years ago, Sakalowski, a 73-year-old retiree, has logged an amazing total of 5,380 hours, most of them in the Daybreak West program at the Westosha Community Center.
Putting her well over 5,000 volunteer hours in perspective, that is like working a fulltime, 40-hour-a-week job for more than two and a half years!
She spends nearly three days each week working with Alzheimer’s patients at the center.
“We sing, dance, paint, do crafts. I even made a sawhorse to resemble a cow. Everybody gets a chance to milk the cow.”
Daily exercise is also on the schedule. On good days, program participants walk outside. In bad weather, there is ample room for walking indoors.
The most rewarding part of the job, according to Sakalowski, is seeing the change in people as they become involved in activities.
“When they come to us, many are very quiet. They just sit by themselves. Then to see them come alive is wonderful,” she says.
Under the auspices of Kenosha Area Family and Aging Services, there are two identical programs, Daybreak West at Westosha Community Center in Bristol and Daybreak East at the Dominican Professional Building in Kenosha.
From 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., the programs provide activities and socialization for people in the early to mid stages of Alzheimer’s disease or similar dementia. In addition to activities for those afflicted with memory loss, the program offers a break, respite and assistance for family members who are their caregivers.
The program costs a reasonable $36 a day and, according to KAFASI staff, there are openings at both locations.
Besides her work at Daybreak West, Helen is a member of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) Chorus.
The musical group, 18 women and two men, sing at schools, nursing homes and churches, performing for both elderly and youth audiences.
“When we’re finished singing, we go around the audience, shaking hands and giving hugs,” she says.
The RSVP Chorus, directed by Helen Trabert, sings familiar oldies like “I Believe” and “Let There Be Peace.”
Helen was born in Chicago, the daughter of David and Minna Thompson. Her father was an ice, coal and fuel oil delivery man. Her mother worked beside her husband, selling ice. With long ice tongs, she wrestled the heavy chunks of ice from the loading platform onto customer’s wagons.
By the end of World War II, electrical refrigeration had made such inroads into the old fashioned ice business that her parents concluded it was time to find a new way of making a living. They moved from Chicago to Camp Lake in Kenosha County and a new life as a farm family.
Sakalowski recalls that she and her mother were reluctant to move, but her sister said she was willing, as long as the new home had running water and a flush toilet.
Living on a farm, Helen tried to sign up for agriculture classes when she enrolled in Wilmot High School. But she was turned down.
“They said I couldn’t be in agriculture classes because I was a girl. I fought the issue, but they wouldn’t change their policy. They said that ag class was only for males.”
But a classmate, a boy, befriended her and loaned the ag course books. With them, she taught herself what she needed to know so she could help on the family farm.
After high school, she went to work in Kenosha at Cooper’s.
“Since I was 16,” Helen remembers, “I’d been praying to meet a nice Catholic boy. And I finally met him when I was 18.”
That “nice Catholic boy,” Leonard Sakalowski, was working at Sheahan’s Implements, Antioch, Illinois, when Helen’s father hired him to come over to the farm and treat a sick cow. After the cow recovered, David Thompson hired Leonard to do other chores around the farm, baling hay and combining oats.
Helen and Leonard began dating and were married in May, 1951. Helen quit her job at Cooper’s and put her self-taught ag skills to good use on the family farm at Wilmot Road and Highway 45.
Besides working the fields with her husband, Helen knew how to milk cows. She recalls the times when storms took out the electric power and the couple had to milk 55 cows by hand.
“Wouldn’t you know it, just about the time the last cow was milked, the lights would come back on.”
Leonard died in 1997. Helen describes her late husband as “an easy going workaholic. He loved to be in the fields. After he got his own work done, he would go off to help the neighbors.”
Ted Sakalowski, one of Helen and Leonard’s six children, now runs the family farm. Helen lives on the farm and does the bookkeeping for her son.
One afternoon, during a visit to her husband’s grave, Helen met a woman who encouraged her to volunteer at Daybreak West. She promised she would consider the idea and, not long after, she began her volunteer work.
Looking back, Helen says she was attracted to the Alzheimer’s program because its participants are treated with dignity and compassion.
“It makes me feel useful and it was just what I needed to make me feel good about myself.”
Besides her work with Daybreak West and the RSVP Chorus, Sakalowski volunteers her time at St. Scholastica Catholic Church in Bristol. She serves her parish as a steward and greeter.
She has no patience with people who stay home and complain that they have nothing to do.
“Volunteering is what gets me out of bed in the morning,” she says. “No job could match in money what I get from volunteering. I get back way more than I give.”
More information about Daybreak programs for those with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, call Daybreak West, (262) 857-4481, or Daybreak East, (262) 657-8089.
Or if you’re considering becoming a volunteer, like Helen Sakolowski, you can get full information by calling Kenosha Area Family and Aging Services at 262-658-0237.
