RUMFORD – As a child, Jolene Lovejoy watched her parents as they gave of themselves in a variety of volunteer activities.
“It was the natural thing to do,” the Rumford selectman said last week as she sat in her bright, warm living room on Porter Avenue.
She learned well.
During her life, she has volunteered for dozens of causes and helped hundreds of people. The desire to volunteer was there from when she was a military wife and mother of two small children, to today, retired but raring to go almost seven days a week for some of the many good causes in the River Valley area.
“No one has a wonderful life. There are a lot of hardships as well as wonderful things. I’ve had my share of both,” she said.
Her daughter, Kristin, was diagnosed with cancer at age 7 when the family was living in California. Lovejoy spent thousands of hours caring for her and taking her to doctors and hospitals. Kristin is now a 36-year-old kindergarten teacher in Florida who has beaten the disease.
“I noticed the number of people who volunteered in so many ways – they would play games with the children, give money, make quilts. People you had never met were out there. There were performers who had everything who would come, or people who had nothing who would read to the children. I learned a huge appreciation for the different aspects of volunteering,” she said.
Lovejoy brought her admiration for cancer survivors, caregivers and volunteers with her when she moved back to Maine in 1984. She has been a firebrand for getting out volunteers for the annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life.
When she lived in Minnesota as a military wife, she and a group of women got together to do a different kind of volunteering. They baked cookies, then took them to rundown hotels that housed alcoholics and others down on their luck. Often these were people that no one ever thought about, she said.
Back in Maine, she’s been involved in everything from the Moontide Water Festival and the Rotary Club, to helping out at ARC beano on Sundays, volunteering at Black Mountain, with Androscoggin Health Care and Hospice, and dozens of other organizations.
“I have to feel that the cause is a good one. And there are good causes galore,” she said.
Most volunteering is just fun, she finds.
“I love working blood drives, working at elections. I love seeing people and interacting,” she said.
She’s in her 11th year as a town selectman, another avenue that gives her a chance to meet and talk with people.
She said that her parents, Cecil and Geraldine Burns, “have always been there for me, through good times and bad. I’ve always known I can come home, and they have always been just a phone call away, no matter what I needed, they were always there for me, my children and my brother.”
Both are in their 80s and have been suffering ill health. She and her brother take turns traveling to Florida to make sure they are OK.
“I am so lucky to still have them, I know I am,” she said.
Her father was a former high school teacher and coach at Mexico High School who picked up the family and moved to California when Lovejoy was small.
She also has a supportive husband, Richard Lovejoy, who encourages her many volunteer efforts.
“I am very fortunate,” she said. “I secretly have a great life. When you know that, you are compelled to do things for other people.”
Comments are no longer available on this story