The Oldest Living Volunteer

Now it’s official, and I have the piece of paper to prove it.

I am The Oldest Living Volunteer.

My Small but Faithful Readership will remember that back in March I wrote a post one night where I wished for recognition of my years of volunteer work at KUT-FM.  I’ve been working their fundraisers and pledge drives continuously since 1975, and I wanted somebody to notice.

And by accident, someone did.  In May I got an email from KUT’s director of membership, asking me what year they’d given me an award for longest volunteer service, because she wanted to mention it in the station’s first published annual report.  (They’ve been in existence for forty-six years and at last they’re getting around to issuing an annual report.  It doesn’t do to rush these things, after all.)  She was shocked when I wrote back and said that as far as I remembered, they’d never given me an award.

And you know why they’d never given me an award?  Because Betsy was mixed up, and thought they’d already done it.  It wasn’t that the station didn’t recognize what I’ve done.

So the wheels began to grind, and emails went back and forth about how long I’d been working, and what was the award going to be called, and eventually it all came about.  They decided to present the award at the annual volunteer appreciation party, which happened about two weeks ago.  (It was also the day after my birthday, but I didn’t tell any of them—or anyone else, either—about that bit.  I’m very, very funny about my birthdays.  Be told.)  I didn’t tell L or T about the award, so they knew nothing until maybe five minutes beforehand.  And then just as they were gathering up to begin, M decided that nothing would do but she just had to go to the potty right now, and there’s no hurrying her out of a bathroom once she gets there; she has to wash her hands endlessly, and play with the mirror, and generally dawdle so L, who’d taken her, missed the presentation.  T, at least, got to see it.

The station manager got up and read a nice little speech about my length of service and explained that the title of the award was a reference to Preston Jones’s play The Oldest Living Graduate.  (If anyone has a copy of the video production, with Henry Fonda, George Grizzard, and Cloris Leachman, I would love to see it.  It was Fonda’s last stage role.)  The manager called me up and presented me with a framed certificate and a messenger bag loaded with swag (“premiums”) from previous drives:  two T-shirts, a travel mug in a gorgeous shade of royal blue, a runner’s squeeze water bottle, an Annoying Music Show CD signed (on the shrink-wrap, which you throw away at once, and from which the Sharpie ink rubs off in great dollops . . . watta doofus) by show host Jim Nayder, a copy of the Click and Clack MIT Commencement Address, and a free envelope of silica gel to keep the inside of the bag dry.  Betsy, whom I’ve known since she came to work at the station in 1982, gave me a hug.  It was a nice one.

Since then, I’ve worn both the shirts once, but everything else is still sitting in the messenger bag.  I haven’t decided whether I want to hang the certificate at home or in my cube at work.  My cube is short on wall space, but if I hang it at home, not much of anyone besides my family, who already know the score, will ever see it.  But even that is secondary.  The important part is that piece of paper, that I’ve waited such a long time to get.

Sam
The Oldest Living Volunteer

You will redesign the poison oak screwdriver with a Magic Marker giraffe.  Fnord.