After Hard Times, Volunteering Fulfills Woman’s Life

CEDAR RAPIDS - If you'd like to feel rich this time of year, take a page from Irene Detert's book of life.

Irene, 92, lives on about $800 a month. That's $675 in Social Security benefits and $120 from her Kmart pension. Yet she thrives on volunteering.

For three decades the Cedar Rapids woman has given her time at least once a week, mostly at St. Luke's Hospital, but also to drive senior citizens to appointments, for shopping and to visit friends.

Irene proudly wears her volunteer award pins, one from the Iowa governor's office, another from the White House.

"I've got about five or six of ‘em," she says. "I do the job. I'm there."

A no-nonsense woman who stands five-foot tall, Irene grew up unwanted and timid. Born northwest of Charles City, her parents rejected her.

"I was a disgrace to the family because I was a skinny thing," Irene says.

Her intolerance for milk so irked her father that he hit her hard against the neck, an injury she still feels today.

Despite doing regular farm chores, her parents kicked her out of the house after she finished eighth grade.

"I never had high school," she says. "I wanted to go, but my dad wouldn't let me."

By pleading, Irene was allowed to live in the unheated attic until she was 18. That was 1937, in Cedar Rapids by now, when she had no education, no experience and jobs were impossible to find.

She managed to get hired at the YMCA cafeteria, although she hated it.

"I was very timid. Scared to be in public.

"The college kids would come in and tease me," she continues. "I said, I don't like this. I've got to get over this."

With a new reserve, she applied to drive a city bus. Finally, on her third try, the manager stopped laughing. (Women didn't drive buses in those days.) He had her drive a bus for him and hired her. She'd be on-call.

"I told him, ‘shove it.' I had to have a job."

Fortunately she talked her way into Quaker Oats putting premium dishes into cereal boxes. Career-wise, she moved on to office work and, in 1945, retail sales at S.S. Kresge which became Kmart before her 1984 retirement.

Irene married twice, the first for less than two years; the second for 19. She had three children, but her son died at age 33.

Irene began volunteering before she retired. For years she spent one day a week watering the plants at St. Luke's.

"It took me seven, eight hours a day pushing an 18-gallon tank of water," she says. "It didn't go easy. I saved a lot of plants for them."

A mastectomy after breast cancer three years ago and colon cancer surgery in June forced Irene to quit volunteering, especially driving others around. She cared for her own plants, more than 100 including her late grandmother's Amarillas and Christmas cactus. But she soon grew restless and returned to St. Luke's.

"I fold towels," she says. "I got a sittin' down job.

And, when she's not there, you may see her tooling around in her little red Ford Focus or walking through the mall or just out and about.

"I can't sit here and do nothin'," Irene says. "I love volunteering. I've got to be around people."

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