Volunteers spring center to life

AVIVA GOELMAN

Most of us are well acquainted with the old spring saying: “Sweet

April showers do spring May flowers.”

That the Costa Mesa Senior Center continues to bloom as an

invaluable home of services and relationships for our community’s

seniors is directly due to our own “sweet April showers.” They are

our volunteers.

What better time than Spring, the season of new life and renewal,

to acknowledge the extraordinary service of the volunteers who serve

the senior center. Their unselfish giving produces so many wonderful

offerings -- the “flowers” of our Spring proverb.

April is the month our nation acknowledges volunteers in every

American town and neighborhood. They are the people who contribute

the most valuable of all assets -- themselves. At the senior center,

we have many volunteers. They are our heroes. And because they are

our heroes, we honor them with a special dinner each year. It is a

festive event that provides all of us a formal opportunity to express

our gratitude to this wonderful, tireless band of workers. Their hard

work, the selfless devotion of their time, and their enduring support

of our seniors without expectation of any return is why they are

truly the “water” that nourishes the “flowers.”

The inspiring spirit of volunteerism pervades all sectors of our

work. The volunteer board of directors is made up of wonderful people

from all walks of life, each of them contributing their skills for

the betterment of the center and the seniors it serves.

Equally important are the volunteers who support in ways to

numerous to count the daily running of the senior center. Because our

many volunteers are willing to share the most precious of all

commodities -- time -- the senior center is able to enrich the lives

of our community’s seniors through myriad programs and services.

Everyday, the volunteers of the Costa Mesa Senior Center invest

themselves in the welfare of our seniors and our entire community.

They always bring a special life and light to the senior center’s

daily routine.

Our precious volunteers are the voice you hear on the phone, the

friendly face and kind word of those who take your lunch and coffee

tickets. They are the instructor who teaches our members to work on a

computer or manage their finances. They are the very breath that

gives life to the Costa Mesa Senior Center. Without them, there is no

senior center.

Our volunteers are so extraordinary because they share themselves

as human beings, making the lives of our seniors happier and brighter

and more hopeful. Whether serving as board members or as helpers at

lunchtime, all our volunteers are talented, caring people with a

passion for compassion.

In 2004, the wonderful volunteers of the Costa Mesa Senior Center

contributed 33,966 hours to the service of their fellow human beings.

It is a staggering and humbling figure. They may just as well have

spent those thousands of hours with their own families. But they

donated them to our community’s seniors. Their attitude, I think, is

ideally summarized with the following:

“One hundred years from now it will not matter how big my bank

account was, what sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I

drove, but the world may be different because I was important in the

life of someone.”

Thank you, volunteers! May the flowers of Spring bring you special

delight.

* AVIVA GOELMAN is the executive director of the Costa Mesa Senior

Center and will write occasional columns about the center, its

members and senior issues.