FARMINGTON – Allan Smith hasn’t found a good time to retire from volunteering.

One day each week he swims with special needs students. Another day, he reads to an elementary class and on yet another, he escorts patients around the new Medical Arts Building at Franklin Memorial Hospital.

Come January, he’ll spend eight Saturday mornings teaching youngsters to ski, just as he has for the past 40 years.

“They are fun . . . just kids. They make your day,” he said of the many children who have received the benefits of his time and caring.

When Smith, 77, retired after 42 years of working as an engineer for the Maine Department of Transportation, he didn’t have hobbies. His wife, Joanne, told him he needed something to do.

It wasn’t long before school and hospital volunteer coordinators started calling.

He has read stories to students in Karla Miller’s first-grade class at Mallett School for years, SAD 9 volunteer coordinator Pauline Rodrigue said.

“The students and teachers love and respect him. If we could clone him, we would,” Rodrigue said. “It comes from a genuine place in his heart. That’s what makes him special.”

When Jane Wallace needed help taking her special-needs class swimming each week at the University of Maine at Farmington Fitness Center, Smith began swimming with the students.

Now, he swims with special needs students from the middle and high schools and attended last spring’s Special Olympics with some swimmers. He also served as a chaperone for the winter Special Olympics at Sugarloaf “for the smiles and hugs, but sometimes you realize that maybe you made a difference, somehow.”

He doesn’t work with students for his own accolades, Rodrigue said.

“Once, while being honored for his work, his response was, ‘Ponce de Leon searched his whole life for the fountain of youth, but I found my fountain of youth at Mallett and Cascade Brook (elementary) schools.'”

Smith began volunteering at the hospital in 1995 when the emergency room was undergoing renovation. He was asked to help people find their way through the construction.

When it was finished, “nobody told me I wasn’t suppose to go, so I just kept going,” he said. He found a niche helping to clear rooms between patients, taking patients for X-rays or taking blood samples to the lab.

“I really felt like I was making a difference. The nurses didn’t have to clean,” he said. Now he greets and escorts patients, and parks their cars for them.

He has volunteered nearly 5,000 hours at the hospital, said Jan Hannaford, FMH volunteer coordinator. “He’s a people person and whether it’s patients, staff or patient families, he’s always there for them.”

Editor’s note: In the spirit of the holidays, we will offer occasional stories between now and Christmas Day on the power of people helping people.

Do you know someone who deserves to be recognized for the many good things they do for others in our communities? Contact Mark Mogensen at 689-2805 or at [email protected]