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Knowing they’re helping others is the reason Warkworth locals Maureen Phillips, 91, and Christine Sanderson, 83, have volunteered for Harbour Hospice Warkworth/Wellsford for more than three decades.
Both will be thanked this National Volunteer Week and recognised at the charity’s Long Service Awards next month, and they are excited to be sharing this milestone.
“We’ve known each other 65 years,” Christine says.
Maureen started volunteering for hospice in 1990 as a community visitor. She later moved into retail, serving customers and sorting donations at its Warkworth hospice shops. She didn’t know much about hospice at the start, but says, “I just felt that it was doing some good for people that needed help, and that I was being useful.”
She was among hospice’s early volunteers, completing three months’ training at the Anglican Church before supporting two community nurses by visiting patients in their homes, so that their carers could enjoy an hour or two’s respite.
“The first patient I visited was very resistant to receiving help,” she recalls. “He picked up his catheter bag and threw it against the wall, then looked at me and said, ‘Well, what are you going to do about that?’ I said I’d clean it up. I hadn’t come all this way for nothing.
“After that he gave me no more trouble. We’d sit and read our books together while his wife went shopping, and we ended up being quite good friends.”
Christine started volunteering for hospice in 1995 and quickly established herself as a passionate fundraiser. She held regular garage sales at her home, and can still be found three days a week sorting donations at the Garage Sale hospice shop. She has fond memories of the garage sales, saying, “They were held every three months to begin with. Then every two months, then every week. The first sale raised $600, and it just grew and grew from there.
“Everyone would turn up at 5am to help, and there were so many people who didn’t really know anything about hospice, they just wanted to get involved in the vibrancy of these weekly sales. We would start selling from 6am and people would come from all over the district and block up the roads. It was a bit like the Matakana markets on a Saturday morning.”
Christine also introduced rag bags to the hospice shop offering – bags of cotton rags cut from unsellable clothing donations. Over the years, the rag bags raised thousands of dollars for hospice, and it all started because her son, a mechanic, mentioned that they were always struggling for rags at the garage.
“I said ‘how about I make you up a bag’, then he mentioned it to someone from another firm, and the next thing we had about 20 customers who were buying $100 worth of bags at a time.”
Christine gathered a group of like-minded women to help her rag and bag every Tuesday.
“We became the Tuesday Therapy Group, and we’d cover every subject under the sun. We’d cry together and we’d laugh together, but the nice thing about it was that whatever was talked about stayed within the group.”
Christine has taken great satisfaction from being able to give back.
“And the fact that something that started out in such a small way has blossomed into something so darn worthwhile.”
The service became very personal to Christine in 2020, when hospice supported her to care for her husband, Morris, at home until he died in July.
“His last wish was to die at home, and it was because of those wonderful nurses that he was able to do that.”
Maureen says volunteering for hospice has given her a sense of belonging.
“It does feel like family, and there’s just no silliness. I’ll keep doing it as long as I can stand.”
