KAFASI honors 325 volunteers
BY BILL GUIDA
bguida@kenoshanews.com
Jack and Catherine Morris acknowledge the applause after being named volunteers of the year
during Saturday's Kenosha Area Family and Aging Services volunteer recognition event.
( KENOSHA NEWS PHOTO BY BILL SIEL )
Some 325 Kenosha Area Family and Aging Services Inc., volunteers were honored Saturday for their time and efforts on behalf of seniors, children and families.
The event, with an Olympic theme, opened with a parade of flags, each bearing KAFASI program logos, and closed with 31 individual volunteers being awarded gold medals for commitment, endurance, compassion, loyalty, dependability, most miles driven, leadership, team spirit and fundraising.
Jack and Catherine Morris were named volunteers of the year.
More than 1,000 volunteers who provided 66,882 hours of service in 2008 were honored. They’re time was worth an estimated $1,354,360 when calculated according to private sector values at $20.25 an hour, KAFASI Executive Director Gary Brown said.
Brown surprised the Morrises when he announced them as volunteers of the year for their work in support of the Westosha Senior Center.
Jack, a retired AMC worker, has been instrumental in developing a produce garden at the center that has brought in funds to help defray costs at the facility. The couple also gathers bread from various donors for distribution to the needy.
Jack said he and Catherine started going to the center to take exercise lessons.
“Then, they started talking about starting a garden, and we started helping out,” he said.
“We started picking up bread and bringing it to the center,” Catherine added, saying they recruited son Mark as a volunteer to help out with his pickup truck. “Sometimes, we have it filled to the brim,” Catherine said.
Jack, an avid fisherman, said rather than preventing him from enjoying his retirement, volunteering has helped keep him vital.
“I need to work,” he said. “I’d rather wear out than rust out.”
Said Catherine: “I guess we do it because we are retired and have the time to do it. And he gets his work done fast, too, so he can go fishing.”
George Hoffman, one of the KAFASI gold medalists and a fellow Westosha volunteer, said the work provides a lot of self-satisfaction.
“You don’t sit around twiddling your thumbs 24/7. And you get exercise doing it,” said Hoffman, who helps maintain the center, from unplugging clogged toilets to repairing the kitchen sinks.
In thanking all the volunteers, Kenosha Mayor Keith Bosman said their work continues to play the same critical role in serving the needy since KAFASI’s inception in 1969, a role, he stressed, that remains vital with the ongoing growth of the city.
“Government cannot do this,” Bosman said.
Speaking on behalf of Kenosha County Executive Jim Kreuser, Jennie Tunkieicz, Kreuser’s administrative assistant, noted the county boasts “one of the largest, if not the largest, network of volunteers” in Wisconsin for helping seniors.
She marveled at how much the volunteers get done, from delivering meals to the homebound to visiting shut-ins and transporting those in need to doctor appointments.
“You all set the example, pave the way for the baby boomers who come up behind you,” Tunkieicz said, encouraging them to each recruit three new volunteers from the boomer generation to carry on the KAFASI service tradition.
She closed by quoting philosopher William James: “‘The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast us.’”
Chris Nielsen, regional representative of the American Cancer Society, noted the work volunteers do providing transportation has been the difference between life and death for numerous KAFASI clients.
“There are so many people dying because they don’t have transportation to and from chemotherapy treatments,” Nielsen said, calling the volunteers “life savers.”
State Sen. Bob Wirch, D-Pleasant Prairie, and state Rep. Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, also added their thanks to the volunteers.
“You’re even more valuable now in these times,” Wirch said.
Barca, calling himself “an old Hubert Humphrey Democrat,” told the volunteers it is people like them “who make a place a community.”
“You measure a society by how it treats its people at the dawn of life ... and in their twilight years,” Barca said.
KAFASI Executive Director Gary Brown recognizes volunteers for service.
