Arnold Lepisto
Arnie Lepisto volunteers in Natick delivering for Meals on Wheels and recruiting for the Veterans Oral History Project, among other things. His first volunteering was less community-oriented.
“I was born in time for World War II,” Lepisto said. He tried to enlist in the navy, marine corps, air force— he was rejected everywhere because of poor vision in his left eye. He finally went to enlist in the infantry, but at the army base an officer from his home town of Cokato, Minn., suggested the Signal Corps. Initially told he would never go overseas, after 18 months stateside Lepisto served as a radio operator in New Guinea and the Philippines until the end of the war, about another 18 months.
“After the service,” Lepisto said, “we had the GI bill; so it gave me a break to go to college.” He married in 1948; he and his wife remain together. He earned a master’s degree in 1953. After working at the county welfare department in Duluth, Minn., he was recruited to Omaha, Neb., to be a social services director. Then he was recruited to the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, working first in Chicago. In 1968 he moved to Natick when a promotion took him to Boston. He retired in 1985.
“I finished work on a Friday and the next Monday I was delivering Meals on Wheels,” Lepisto said. Meals on Wheels provides nutritious meals to limited mobility seniors. Lepisto drove a regular route once a week and was also called to substitute most weeks. “It’s the same situation now,” he said: “they need more volunteers.”
“I get to meet— used to be older people, now it’s people my age. Although,” Lepisto said, “I remember I did have a fellow who was over a hundred.” And this summer he delivered to a lady who is ninenty-nine. “You meet people who have a lot of courage,” he said; “they hang in there.”
Lepisto learned about the Veterans Oral History Project in 1999. “I’ve watched 84 videos that have been made by veterans of World War II, of the Korean War, the Vietnam War,” as well as peacetime and stateside service, he said. He made a video himself and became a self-appointed recruiter for the project. He’s met local veterans through Meals on Wheels, Christ Lutheran Church— and the people his wife plays bridge with. She knew the wife of one veteran who had so many experiences that – after Lepisto talked to him – he recorded five hours of video.
He doesn’t regularly count money, greet, or cut grass at his church anymore. “As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten away from some of that,” Lepisto said. Though he did drive three refugee Sudanese siblings to and from school for a week this summer.
On delivering Meals on Wheels, Lepisto said: “It’s getting harder and harder to do as I get older, so this past summer I’ve just been on a substitute basis.” It still averaged out to once a week. And a few weeks ago he and a teenage helper heard calls for help and called 911 for a man who had fallen down a flight of stairs; the man is recovering.
Lepisto also does “assignments” for the Senior Center, for example transporting two visually handicapped ladies for an educational meeting about their disability.
“All these people, they’re really appreciative, so it makes you feel good, that you can do something,” he said. “While I can still do something.”