94-year-old calls 25 years serving in Senior Companion Program ‘a blessing’
At a Senior Companion Program (SCP) volunteer gathering at the Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara Catholic Center in Indianapolis on Aug. 6, Joyce Beaven, senior services director for Catholic Charities Indianapolis, right, offers words of gratitude to Alice Whitney, left, 94, for her 25 years volunteering with SCP. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)
By Natalie Hoefer
Alice Whitney began volunteering with the Senior Companion Program (SCP) after she retired, and she enjoyed helping and visiting with her assigned seniors.
But after several years, she was still searching for a calling in her retired life.
“I wondered what I was supposed to do,” she says. “I kept looking and trying to figure it out.
“My kids kept telling me, ‘Mom, what you’re doing now [with SCP], that’s what you’re supposed to do. This is your call.’
“I prayed about it and thought about it. And then it came to me: I realized helping these people is what I really was supposed to do.”
Whitney, who will be 95 in November, was honored for 25 years of devotedly living out that call during a gathering for SCP volunteers at the Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara Catholic Center in Indianapolis on Aug. 6.
She was joined by 14 family members at the gathering. Among them were her three children, as well as grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other extended family members.
Their love and pride for Whitney showed as a breakdown of her service was shared during the celebration: 300 months, 1,304 weeks, 9,130 days and nearly 27,000 hours serving 11 seniors (12 by Whitney’s count).
Those figures represent a quarter century of volunteering. But, as she shared with The Criterion in an interview, Whitney enjoyed helping others long before her time with SCP.
‘I have learned so much’
“When I think back over my life, yes, I have always been helping people,” says Whitney. “Even as a youngster, I was always trying to help somebody, doing something for somebody.”
After retiring as a supervisor in the transportation department of the former Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, “I didn’t have anything to do, and I was just bored,” she says.
A friend told Whitney of another friend who volunteered with the Senior Companion Program.
SCP, offered through the AmeriCorps Seniors branch of the AmeriCorps federal agency, is a peer-to-peer program for older adults. It links volunteers 55 and older with seniors who would benefit from a friendly visitor in order to remain in their homes. In Marion County, the program is sponsored by Catholic Charities Indianapolis.
“We just kind of help them, remind them to take their medicine, take them to the grocery,” says Whitney. “We talk to them, read to them, and we just be a companion for them, really.
“Some of my clients, we’d talk about the problems they had. Some of them, we sang and prayed and read the Bible.”
At the twice-monthly meetings, volunteers learn about issues and medical conditions seniors can encounter and how to address them.
“I have learned so much. They have offered us all the information that we really need to help our clients,” says Whitney, noting the information has been useful in her own life as she’s aged.
“And then we have fellowship together, and laugh and talk and eat, and just enjoy each other’s company.”
‘We were both on the floor laughing!’
Of all the SCP visits she’s had in the last 25 years, one stands out vividly in her memory.
The client was “a little old lady” who was wheelchair-bound, paralyzed from the waist down. Usually, her son cleaned and dressed her in the morning. But this day, he saved the light bathing for the nurse or doctor who were scheduled for separate visits by early afternoon.
Neither came.
“We’re not supposed to lift people,” says Whitney. “But she was all wet, just an awful mess. I felt so sorry for her and wanted to help her.”
The two decided Whitney would lift the woman to the edge of her bed, settle her in, and then clean her and change her into dry clothes.
It almost worked, she says—“if only I had just put her about two inches further on the bed.”
The paralyzed woman began to slide down. Whitney had no choice but to go with her, slowly guiding their descent until both women were on the floor.
“Then she started laughing,” Whitney says, becoming more animated. “Then I started laughing! And we were both on the floor laughing!”
After a call was made to alert one of the woman’s children of the need for someone to put the woman in her bed, “I washed her up right there on the floor,” says Whitney. “She was so happy to be clean and comfortable.
“And then we had a picnic lunch on the floor,” she adds, laughing at the memory.
‘They helped me as much as I helped them’
She becomes more serious as she reflects on her experience with SCP.
Whitney notes that the assistance she gave kept her physically active, and the interactions fed her own social needs.
“I don’t know what I would have done without them,” says Whitney. “They inspired me. They helped me as much as I helped them, only in a different way—spiritually, mentally and physically.”
Still, there’s no question that Whitney had an impact on those she served, as well as on her fellow volunteers.
“She’s really good at forming close personal relationships,” says former local SCP program director Courtney Schmidt. “She has touched so many people’s lives, even fellow senior companions. They know they can go to her for advice or just if things are kind of getting hard.
“Miss Alice is really great at supporting others and listening, and she is full of empathy.”
Part of that empathy might come from Whitney’s own experience of aging.
“I’m becoming in need of having a companion myself,” the widow says with a chuckle. “Things that I needed to help my clients with, I’m beginning to need now.
“So, I really see how much it helps them, to do these little things for them. It really does.”
Her time as a senior companion might be drawing to a close. But in what seems to be typical Whitney fashion, she still wants to help others.
“I don’t want to just sit at home,” she says. “I’d like to still do something.”
In the meantime, Whitney is thankful for her experience with the Senior Companion Program.
“I really have enjoyed doing this, I’ve really had fun,” she says. “What a blessing it’s been to be a part of this.”
(For more information on becoming a Senior Companion Program volunteer or to receive help through the program, go to helpcreatehope.org/senior-companion-program or contact Joyce Beaven, Senior Services Director, at 317-236-1552 or jbeaven@archindy.org.) †
