SENIORS : Life of Serving : A Ventura grandmother will achieve a longtime goal when the Peace Corps sends her to Europe on a teaching assignment.
Bette Goldenring, a 62-year-old grandmother from Ventura, is leaving in June to spend two years in Europe. And it won’t cost her a dime.
Goldenring didn’t rob a bank. She joined the U.S. Peace Corps.
And while this will be her first experience teaching English in Hungary, Goldenring is no stranger to volunteer work. “I’ve been a professional volunteer for years,” she said with a laugh.
Goldenring’s strong sense of social activism may stem from her childhood experiences in Cleveland, where she and her brother grew up in an “orphan house” during the Depression. She pointed to a sepia photograph of her mother and co-workers near their sewing machines. “My mother worked in a sweatshop and couldn’t take care of us,” she said.
Goldenring, who earned a bachelor’s degree in social welfare in 1977, has been enriching the community with her volunteer efforts for more than 30 years. She is a member of the Ventura Klezmer Band and has taught guitar and Jewish community education workshops. She has worked with mentally disabled children and those with other learning disabilities. She now teaches two adults through the Laubach Literacy Program, and helps in an English-as-a-second-language class at Buenaventura High School.
An adventurous type, she also served as an archeological worker in Jerusalem during the summers of 1982-84. If her bid for the Peace Corps had been unsuccessful, she would have joined Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that builds low-cost housing for the needy. Goldenring observed: “Boy, I’m good at slinging a hammer.”
Goldenring, whose husband died 4 1/2 years ago, explained her reasons for joining the Peace Corps. “My husband, Ira, and I always wanted our children to understand there’s a time for taking and a time for giving. The Peace Corps was a dream that my husband and I talked about for a long time,” she said. “Then he became ill, and the dream faded.” But when Goldenring saw the director of the Peace Corps on television 18 months ago, she said, “it clicked.”
Goldenring conceded that leaving her three grown children and her grandchildren was difficult. But talking with her children made the decision easier.
“My daughter, Jodene, helped me when she said, ‘Mother, that’s not a reason to put your life on hold.’ ”
Her son, Peter, said his mother was the one who taught him that “you’re only as old as you think you are.”
Because of her Romanian ancestry, Goldenring requested a position in Eastern Europe, where 10,000 new teachers are needed to keep up with the demand for English classes.
“I can’t imagine a more rewarding experience,” Goldenring said, “than to help open doors for people who can use new knowledge to achieve their own personal and national goals.”
To prepare for her service, she will participate in an intensive 11-week language and cross-cultural training period in Hungary. A three-week teaching practicum that stresses a practical application of English to the students’ interests and needs, especially American culture and civics.
The Peace Corps will provide money for room and board, cover Goldenring’s medical and dental needs, and give her a monthly living allowance equal to her Hungarian counterparts, who, she said, often hold two jobs to keep up with inflation. Volunteers who complete 27 months of training and service also receive a taxable $5,400 readjustment allowance.
At any one time, about 6,100 volunteers over the age of 18 are serving overseas. According to Joanne Townsend of the Peace Corps recruiting office in Los Angeles, “18% of the people we place from Southern California are over the ages of 50 and 55.” She said that is higher than the 12% to 15% national senior volunteer rate.
Townsend emphasized, “Seniors are a real strong part of our program and they have certain advantages. They command respect because age is more revered in other cultures. Their life experience is very valuable and they fit into the host society very easily because they are more relaxed about goals and settling in.”
Seated in her sun-filled kitchen, Goldenring displayed a scrap of paper. “Here is something by which I live.” She paraphrased the scribbled quotation from Abraham Joshua Herschel, a 20th-Century Jewish philosopher.
“Living is not a private affair of the individual. Living is what people do with God’s time. Living is what people do with God’s world.”
* FYI
This year the Peace Corps celebrates its 30th anniversary and April 21-27 is designated as National Volunteer Month. The Peace Corps Recruiting Office is at 11000 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 8104, Los Angeles, 90024, (213) 575-7444.
