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Perhaps the most senior and most experienced helper in Winchester is Jenks volunteer Marge Labedz.
She’s been helping out since 1978 when the Jenks Center opened, and has stayed through 10 directors’ terms.
The Olive Street resident is almost 99, sharp as a tack and very active.
“I walk all the time,” she says.
Labedz has great respect for the Jenks.
“It’s a great place,” she says. “It gets seniors out of the house and involved with people.”
Labedz has been volunteering all her life. One of three kids, she explains her father trained them all well.
“We packaged up gifts for soldiers during World War II, things like shaving materials,” she says. “And when I was in high school, I was involved in shows sponsored by the Red Cross. We’d visit hospitals and other places where the military needed cheering.”
A Winchester hospital volunteer (she was a medical transcriptionist before she retired), Labedz also does many things with the local VFW.
“I was president for a while,” she says. “I’d organize programs, and I still march in the parade on Veterans Day.”
And when veterans are asked to be in an honor guard for a funeral, “when they can’t get enough men,” she says, “they call Margie.”
At the Jenks, Labedz has done a lot of things.
“At first I was the baby because I joined before I was technically old enough,” she says, adding she used to help prepare lunches before they hired a professional company.
She also organized fashions shows and lectures, and she helps train new volunteers. Now her main job is getting the newsletter mailed out to 1,600 households.
“The staff does a great job,” she says.
As for the secret of her good health, Labedz says she used to be a runner and she did the Walk for Hunger for 10 years. She also walks with kids in the Special Olympics.
But mostly, this grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of 10 says, “I’ve been blessed.”
