Nonagenarian volunteers spice up Mayo Hospital

DOVER-FOXCROFT – A call to the volunteer office for assistance in day surgery sends Merna Doore to her feet.

The 93-year-old Dover-Foxcroft woman grabs an empty wheelchair and maneuvers it around the curves until she reaches her destination in the newly renovated Mayo Regional Hospital. There, Doore applies the hand brakes, helps a much younger woman, who has been discharged, into the wheelchair, and releases the brake.

Barely 5 feet tall, Doore cannot see above the woman’s head, so she peers around the wheelchair to ferry the woman to a waiting family member.

It’s a process that Doore, one of three nonagenarian hospital volunteers, repeats often during her daylong shifts on Monday and Friday.

Older men and women like Doore, Marion Race of Sangerville and Marie Luise Kemp of Dover-Foxcroft, both 90 years old, have found that volunteerism not only provides an important service to the community, it also keeps them active and healthier.

“It’s really good for me because I get exercise,” Doore said. “I can push a wheelchair better than I can walk.”

The women, three of 75 volunteers who serve the hospital, have volunteered for many years. Doore and Race began volunteering at the former Mayo Regional Hospital and helped when the new hospital opened in 1978. Race served as a tour guide when the hospital opened, and Doore assisted with moving.

Mayo Regional Hospital volunteers contribute 10,500 hours a year, according to Tom Lizotte, director of marketing and development. That’s the equivalent of five full-time people, he said.

Doore has volunteered about 8,000 hours, and Race and Kemp have volunteered more than 5,000 hours.

“Having that many hours donated creates a tremendous impact to the hospital and the types of services we can provide,” Lizotte said Monday. In addition, people entering the hospital enjoy seeing people they know, which helps put many at ease, he said.

That same connection draws volunteers to the hospital. “I love people and I look forward to that day thinking I’m doing something useful,” Race said. She and Kemp work as cashiers in the cafeteria and answer telephone calls for assistance within the hospital.

Working with people is therapeutic, according to Kemp. “I always enjoy seeing everybody,” she said.

The work also can be interesting and unexpected, as Doore has discovered. Pushing a wheelchair with a heavy patient takes a little extra work for the small woman. Until she can get the wheelchair moving, often the only thing moving is her feet.

With a giggle, Doore recalled pushing “one old duffer” around in the old hospital when he tried to tell her something. “I had to lean forward to hear what he had to say and he grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go.”

And the occasional compliments make her day, she said. “A man downstairs thought I was 60 and I thought that was stretching it.”

At her age, Doore said, she would try anything, including playing the part of a pregnant woman in the annual Hospice Variety Show. “It’s for a good cause and so is volunteering,” she said.