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| by Arline Chandler |
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Volunteering Workampers Provide Two Pairs of Helping Hands
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Ron and Anita Wilson thrive on lending a helping hand. Wherever they travel, from Washington and Oregon to Texas, into Canada and parts beyond, they put their skills to work on Habitat Builds, church building programs, or simply assembling a friend’s computer desk when they stop to visit.
The Wilsons belong to the Northwest Chapter of Campers on Mission (COM), a national fellowship of Christian Campers. At a particular week-long work project following the chapter’s annual Fall Rally, Ron helped put a new roof on one of several modular buildings on a church campus. The men also replaced the wiring and insulation and nailed Sheetrock™ on the walls. The women cleaned and re-organized the church kitchen, worked in another church office preparing a mailing, and tackled numerous clerical jobs. One lady in the group spent a day weeding the flowerbeds.
Once after completing a Habitat Build, sponsored by Habitat for Humanity at Olympia, Washington, Ron and Anita moved on to the Seattle area to work on a Blitz Build with the lofty goal of 20 houses to be completed in 12 days.
Anita spent their assigned two weeks in what she laughingly refers to as “fine dining”. “That means making coffee, filling the urns, keeping ‘breakfast’ snacks available, and serving sandwiches, salads, and drinks to all the volunteers at lunch time,” she explains. “Then there’s the never-ending job of clean-up.” Starbucks provided the coffee – espresso, of course! Anita overheard someone say, “Only in Seattle do they serve lattés at a Habitat Build.”
On this particular “Build,” the RV Care-A-Vanners for Habitat numbered 24. Ron and Anita had worked in Olympia with one of the couples. That couple had worked before with several of the new volunteers. In projects with a common goal, acquaintances quickly form fast friendships – an important side benefit from volunteerism.
Several of the group filled various roles in the support section. In addition to serving the donated lunches to workers in the dining tent, some Care-A-Vanners drove shuttle buses to and from the parking lots and handed out satchels, hard hats, and t-shirts to all the newcomers on the Build.
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Repairing, maintaining, building, and supporting others point to a lifetime of service for the Wilsons. Albeit, Ron’s career as a certified occupational health nurse and Anita’s role as clerical support to supervisors, both in the United States Postal System, took a different perspective from the sawing, hammering, and clean-up jobs they now perform.
While Ron worked as a distribution clerk with the US Postal Service in Wichita Falls, Texas, he earned an Associate Degree of Nursing from Midwestern University and passed his state boards in 1971. In June 1975, he transferred as a registered nurse to the Seattle Bulk Mail Center in Federal Way, Washington. Several years later, Ron certified as an occupational health nurse. He remained with the Bulk Mail Center until the unit closed. He retired from nursing in April 1998, but not from caring about the needs of others.
Anita worked for General Services Administration as a clerk steno for nine years before transferring to the US Postal Service. For seven years, she worked in the computer forwarding system, injury compensation, and in the medical unit. Ultimately, she transferred to the city desk and provided clerical support to the supervisors of personnel who processed the mail. Anita retired in August 1998.
Camping, as well as volunteerism, share a history in their lives. With their pre-school children, the Wilsons began “roughing it” in a rented tent trailer. From the children’s mid-elementary school years through high school, they camped in a self-contained 12-foot trailer. After their relocation from Texas to Washington, the family lived in the tiny trailer prior to moving into their new home. The togetherness packed into those eight weeks apparently prompted total burnout. From about 1980 until retirement, Ron and Anita abandoned camping.
Yet, in September 1998, they picked up their new custom-built 5th-wheel from the factory and “hit the road,” never regretting their choice of a nomadic retirement lifestyle. Even when Thanksgiving dinner far from family meant a bowl of elk stew, the couple counted their blessings, not the least of which included Ron watching marathon football games on television. “We had hamburgers at a bus terminal on our first Thanksgiving together, so the absence of turkey is not a shock to us,” Anita says. In the weeks preceeding Christmas, most folks feverishly prepare for family get-togethers. Ron admits their free and footloose lifestyle permits them to put a different slant on “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
While parked in Salem, Oregon, one holiday season, Ron ran errands in town and stopped by the church they had visited on Sunday. He discovered a congregation with sawdust up to their pew seats. Ron returned to his home on wheels, changed clothes, and spent that afternoon and the following 12 days helping out in a remodeling project.
With so many volunteer assignments, the Wilsons spend many nights on the property of friends or at churches and church camps. Once they parked near some friends in an area tagged as “the hill” at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary in Cochrane, Alberta. For the next nine days, Ron helped to dig a sidewalk area in front of 12 new apartments, line it with gravel, and overlay with plastic and wire in preparation for pouring concrete. Then the volunteers repeated the procedure for footings at the bottom of the building’s 12 sets of stairs. On a day that rain preempted concrete work, he nailed up molding inside the apartments.
During this same days, Anita worked at the office of the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists, completing a number of assignments, monotonous in nature, but vital to smooth operations of the Convention. She and other volunteers punched holes, collated pages into sections, and then sections into books. Next, the ladies used a machine to insert plastic binders onto the books, relieving a short-handed staff of hours of tedious tasks.
Another day, the volunteers marched single file around a board room table, assembling various brochures for a large mailing. Later, Anita managed a small mailing by herself.
On a different project, she used a folding machine to convert 2200 long sheets into standard letter sizes. She added a second sheet, and then placed the materials inside the Convention’s monthly newsletter. For another insert, she used a huge paper cutter to trim over 500 sheets to half size — 20 sheets at a time.
“I declined an offer to help in the kitchen for lunch and breaks, but I did wash lunch dishes several times,” Anita says. “One day I wandered to the sewing room where some ladies were making clothes for seminary students’ children and for people in West Virginia where a group planned to volunteer for another building project. I stitched up two maternity tops.” In the new apartments, Anita and other volunteers spent one day cleaning off counters, washing the inside of the windows, polishing bathroom mirrors, and scrubbing sinks and bathtubs.
Although the Wilsons spend plenty of their time sightseeing and visiting relatives and friends, volunteerism is in their blood. Even when stopping overnight in one of the RV sites built especially for volunteers on the grounds of their daughter’s workplace in Vancouver, Washington, Anita helps out with filing in the office and Ron weeds the flowerbeds around the building.
With the call to help others, mixed with the freedom of their lifestyle, adrenaline pumps through their veins. Neither of the Wilsons contemplates returning to a house with all its space, yard work, and roots to a community. Anita states: “If and when we have to stay put, we plan to settle somewhere in the western portion of Oregon. But we sincerely hope that time is in the far distant future.” Wherever the Wilsons go in the present or the future, they plan to offer two pairs of helping hands.
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