Featured Volunteer

Jean Gallagher of East Falls is the sort of steady volunteer who helps keep the Journey’s Way Center humming along. From the first day she came to our center eight years ago – as a newly retired corporate telephone analyst – Jean has been pitching in. She immediately joined the team that signs people in for lunches, a bustling task that she continues to perform. In time she became a member of our important Advisory Council, and rose to be its onetime president.

“When I retired, I thought I’ve got to do volunteer work,” Jean said in her unassuming way. “You do it because you want to do it, and because it’s satisfying.”

As she spoke, Jean’s fingers were busily stringing a beaded necklace in the center’s sunroom. She learned the handicraft here and has become a regular – and an informal teacher -- in our Tuesday morning beading class.

Hard work and reliability come naturally to Jean. Years before she moved East and raised a family with her late husband, Patrick, Jean was a farmgirl in rural Michigan.  She recalls the long hours and heavy chores in the barn and fields, fetching the cattle from the back forty and helping to milk the family’s 30 cows – by hand. One proud accomplishment was picking enough strawberries one year to earn her first bicycle. Alas, she said, in time the family sold the farmland. Today it is a golf course.