Community Service

Community service remains at the heart of my work with others. In my early days of teaching junior high Band in the Sumner School District, I had the opportunity to design and teach a Service Leadership class, which was based on work I completed for a masters degree in Educational Leadership.  Needless to say, the concept of valuing acts of kindness and service for others was embraced by the many students I taught and performed with.   Community outreach, performance, and volunteerism were at the core of all of the band programs I led in the various school districts in which I taught. As a retired educator, it brings me great pleasure when I hear about my past students not only going on to perform and teach professionally, but also going on to work and lead in various service positions around the world and the United States. From serving with the Peace Corp in Africa, teaching in Japan, working for non-profits overseas, working as environmental activists, serving in the armed services, joining the ranks of the Washington State Patrol, to teaching in the inner cities of New York, etc. – not only did these many students get the “call to serve,” but more importantly, they are putting their values of service and leadership into action! I couldn’t be more proud of the lives these students have gone on to lead.

Today, as I integrate my various career paths together into a cohesive whole, it is community service that always seems to bridge my seemingly disparate jobs in unity. I have been a lifelong volunteer for senior services from Seattle to Olympia, donating free home maintenance, yard work, house painting, and friendship services for seniors. I routinely participate in free meal delivery services for home-bound individuals during the holidays, and have enjoyed my recent work as the facilitator of a free senior depression support group at the Lacey Senior Center.

In my work as a family therapist, I have had the pleasure of offering pro bono services to cancer therapy patients and their family members participating in The New Face of Cancer support group offered through Capital Medical Center of Olympia. Additionally, I am a volunteer with the Soldiers Project, and provide free mental health services to service members and their families.

While serving adults at a mental health agency in Pierce County, I witnessed firsthand the shameful lack of adequate low-income housing opportunities for a growing segment of our population. Realizing that homelessness is no longer an “invisible” problem of the inner city, I made a silent promise to myself to become part of “the housing solution” in my future social justice activism. Committed to making financial donations as well as donations of service to various housing causes in our state, I also became active in the work of Habitat for Humanity, and had the pleasure of helping to build a home on a Habitat job site in West Seattle.

Since retiring from the public schools in 2004 at age 43, I routinely volunteered in the classroom in the Auburn, Sumner, and Federal Way School Districts while I was attending graduate school to become a family therapist. Since opening my private practice in Olympia, I have greatly enjoyed volunteering one day a week in the classroom at Washington Middle School in the Olympia School District. Bringing music back into my life, I have begun to perform professionally again, but importantly, I have donated my skills to a church in Seattle (University Unitarian Church) performing in my favorite genre – baroque trumpet and organ literature!