Volunteer coordinator feels bond with `experienced’ citizens

County Crown Jewel

HOULTON — A popular television commercial once said, “You’re not getting older, you’re getting better.” Patrice Hipsley of Houlton couldn’t agree more.

For the past three years, Hipsley has been the volunteer and Seniority Program coordinator at Houlton Regional Hospital.

“I think people have images of senior citizens as being old and sitting in rocking chairs,” she said. “That’s not the way it is. They’re not old. They’re experienced.”

Hipsley’s job, which she describes as the best job at the hospital, is to coordinate jobs for hospital volunteers, and to organize activities for members of the Seniority Program.

The program provides social and educational activities for people age 55 and older.

Programs that Hipsley has organized for the Seniority members include potluck lunches, bingo games, bowling, picnics, day trips and card games, in addition to educational and health seminars. She also is considering an old movie festival and a Sadie Hawkins dance.

The hospital volunteers deliver flowers, sort mail, transport patients in wheelchairs when they are being discharged, read to or play games with patients, work in the gift shop, or help with mailings. Others put in time at the local soup kitchen, or work out of their homes if they can’t get out.

Last year, Hipsley said, the volunteers put in about 12,000 hours of their own time. That’s a 600-percent increase in three years, she said.

“Seniors don’t get enough credit for what they do,” she said. “I don’t know what we’d do without them. They’re the busiest ones of us all. They can outrun 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds. They love what they do.”

Hipsley doesn’t hog the credit for what she does with the volunteers, but puts all the credit on them.

“What I try to do is make them feel good about themselves,” she said. “It’s not that I do that much, but I take time to help them. A lot of (senior citizens) I seem to meet to begin with are very shy and timid. A lot of them (lost spouses recently). I try to listen to what their fears are. I give them the chance to explore. Then they become part of a group and they feel that they belong.”

Working with senior citizens seems to come naturally to Hipsley. A native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., she noted that 80 percent of that community is made up of senior citizens and that probably had a lot to do with her outlook.

When she was 14, she worked as a volunteer in a long-term care unit for the elderly. When she was 16, she worked in a nursing home.

She said she always has had a close bond with senior citizens. One time when she worked at a nursing home, she said she felt a patient was not being given enough food. She was not aware that the patient was a diabetic and had been placed on a limited diet by a doctor.

She said she thought the patient was being starved. She called in sick and didn’t go back.

“It upset me so bad because I thought they were doing something wrong,” she said. “It devastated me.”

Now 37, with a husband and two sons, she says her views of senior citizens have not changed, and have probably grown even stronger.

“I prefer seniors,” she said. “That’s my favorite age group. I can relate to them. They’re honest. They tell it like it is. You know where you stand with them and you know what they expect of you. The people who are my age are more materialistic and more interested in themselves.”

Another reason too, she said, is that she never really knew her own grandparents, who moved away when she was a child.

“I didn’t really have grandparents or other relatives,” she said. “I don’t have family here either. I think maybe that’s why I love (senior citizens) so much.

She said her mother has told her that she was born 50 years too late.

Because of her association with senior citizens, Hipsley says she doesn’t fear old age like so many others do.

“I don’t dread it at all,” she said. “I hope I have the stamina and the energy and the desire that they do.”

Hipsley said she hopes she’ll be doing the same job in 10 years, but perhaps expanded so that it includes even more activities in the community.

“When I was offered this job, I was really honored to have it,” she said. “I’m very proud to be associated with the elderly. I try to give them 120 percent of myself.”