RSVP Online Newsletter

January 1999

RSVP Volunteer Makes Life Easier for Others

Excerpted from The Courier by Eleanor Gardner

Take a man with a big heart and a woodworking skill and you have an extraordinary RSVP volunteer. Such a man is Carl Edmunds of Littleton, retired from the Littleton Water and Light Dept. after 30 years of service, and now filling his life with service to others.

He was born and brought up in Littleton and retired in 1978. His wife, Vera, to whom he has been married for 60 years, has Alzheimer's and is a resident at the Grafton County Nursing Home in Haverhill. Even in this most difficult time, he has found a way to make it also a positive time. He works through RSVP with the Alzheimer's Support group for family and friend of people with this devastating disease.

As so many Senior Citizens have found, the happiest and most productive retirement is spend using skills one has developed to help others. With Carl, it was his love of wood working. His workshop at home is filled with his handwork -- chairs, grandfather clocks, whirlygigs, baskets, repaired pieces of furniture, doll beds, planters, and the list goes on.

One day he received a call from Cathy Burke of RSVP, asking for his help with a problem at Grafton County House of Corrections. Desks were needed in the cells at the facility, but they could not be ordinary desks. They had to be specially made to fill the requirements of the cell. There could be no legs, no moveable parts and no exposed bolts and screws.

Volunteer Edmunds sat down, and using his ingenuity, skill and imagination, he came up with a desk that fitted the bill. The desks are made of hardwood and use heavy duty hinges, are attached to the bars and have a drop leaf that can be folded down when not in use. It is felt that this design may be used in other correctional facilities. He also built seven bookcases for the prison library in less than two weeks. To this RSVP volunteer, retirement does not mean doing nothing, it just means directing talents in other directi0ons to help those who need it the most.

"Twenty-four inmates will have access to writing desks because of Carl Edmunds' workmanship," said Sid Bird, Superintendent of the Correctional Institution, "and 80 prisoners, more or less, use the library weekly."