CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Mary Lou Lufkin, a volunteer at the Hawaii Nature Center for 13 years, helps a group of students from Mokapu Elementary learn about the cycle of rain in nature. In addition to working with children, Lufkin also devotes time to working with residents at a Kailua retirement home and is now in training for hospice care.
Helper’s work
spans generationsMary Lou Lufkin helps teach
children and cares for the elderly
Mary Lou Lufkin is a volunteer for the ages.
For more than a dozen years she has worked with children at the Hawaii Nature Center in Makiki.
For more than three years she has been helping residents at a Kailua retirement home.
And now she is in training for hospice care.
Lufkin started as a volunteer docent to elementary school children at the Hawaii Nature Center 13 years ago to "get (herself) back into the kid mode."
She was going to have grandchildren (now she has 10) from her three offspring and wanted to be in shape to explore the outdoors with them once they were old enough. Lufkin wanted to start with hiking, something she had once loved, so the Nature Center position appealed to her.
What she found was "a wonderful program" that was beneficial for teachers as well as students, who love it. She was amazed that children "don't know what's in their forests. For example, they thought there would be elephants and monkeys," she said.
Lufkin is also a lay chaplain for Pacific Health Ministry, a retirement home run by her church, St. Christopher's Episcopal in Kailua. She devotes four hours a week to the home's residents, giving spiritual and emotional support.
"I'm just there to talk; I'm not proselytizing. But if they want me to pray, I do, but I don't initiate it ... they are mostly just lonely and want someone to talk to," Lufkin said.
That kind of work has prepared her for entrance into another line of caregiving -- hospice care for the dying under Hospice Hawaii.
"I don't understand why, but I've always been comfortable around people dying," she said.
Her duties range from being a good listener -- "people who are dying want to talk about it" -- to washing their dishes and buying their groceries. A hospice worker is also there to give primary caregivers, usually family members, a bit of relief, she said.
When she went to hospice training, she was surprised that she was one of the oldest volunteers at 66. Unexpectedly, there were a lot of male volunteers and young people instead of a majority of women her age.
"I was really impressed; I thought, that's wonderful."
