Published: May 05, 2008 11:48 am            

Super Volunteer

Kate Dickens picked up on the importance of volunteerism at an early age.

“My mother was involved in a neighborhood group in Philadelphia, providing underwear and socks to needy families,” she recalled. “I was 7 years old, but I still got to lick stamps and send out postcards.”

Soon afterward, World War II began and young Dickens spent much of her preteen years putting together blankets for soldiers and writing letters to people in Great Britain.

Dickens, who — at 77 — spends more than 20 hours a week volunteering for various groups in the Effingham area, recently received the President’s Call to Service Lifetime Achievement Award from Teutopolis High School Volunteens. She also received a Gold Award from the same group.

“I’m led to think I can do something for someone else,” Dickens said. “I’ve been blessed in my life, and I’m glad to pass that on.”

The wife of a successful industrial engineer, Dickens was able to be a stay-at-home mother in her younger years, though she has worked for H&R Block during tax season and as a medical assistant.

“I was involved in Scouting and all the other things that went along with being a parent,” she said. After she and late husband, Tom, moved to the Lake Sara area in 1981, she spent 24 years as a buyer for the gift shop at St. Anthony’s Memorial Hospital in Effingham. Last year, she “cut down” to 192 hours of volunteer work with the hospital auxiliary.

Current activities include carrying a pager for the American Red Cross to help military families when needed, recruiting volunteers for local blood drives (and working at several of the drives herself), and mentoring a student at Central School in Effingham. But her main project is preparing quilted comforters with a group at Centenary United Methodist Church. Those comforters are given to the Effingham County Health Department, Effingham County FISH, the Red Cross and several out-of-town organizations, such as Cunningham Children’s Home in Urbana.

Dickens said her mother taught her to pick up a variety of skills that have come in handy during her many years of volunteer work.

“My mother said I needed to learn these things because I would never know who I would encounter,” she said.

Another local resident honored for volunteer work by THS Volunteens recently was Sybil Abercrombie, who volunteered more than 540 hours last year. Abercrombie sewed more than 200 chemotherapy turbans, knotted quilts for Project Linus, assisted with the First Christian Church newsletter, as well as other community service works.

Bill Grimes can be reached at 217-347-7151 ext. 131 or bill.grimes@effinghamdailynews.com.