Forty-one. That’s the total number of years that Fran and Ron Johnson, and Fran’s mother, Vera Grant, have volunteered at North Vancouver’s Red Cross Health Equipment Loan Program (HELP).
Vera is 95 years old now, still volunteering with HELP, remembering how this family affair began.
“I went up to the Red Cross at Delbrook to get a temporary wheelchair for a family member. I got to the counter and I said, ‘You seem busy. Can I help?””
Vera knew about the service through her work with the North Shore Home Care program, introduced in the community by the Victorian Order of Nurses. She joined the VON as a homemaker at the age of 51, when the youngest of her eight children started school, and she retired as a supervisor at 65.
Five years later, Vera collected that wheelchair and began volunteering at the Red Cross. That was 25 years ago, in 1993 when she was 70 years of age.
Vera’s daughter Fran joined the team 14 years ago when she retired from Telus, and Fran in turn, brought in her husband, Ron, another Telus veteran. Ron can claim two years as an official volunteer with HELP, though he has been helping at the Red Cross depot in Delbrook for many more years.
We will return to the Red Cross after a detour to learn how the phone company brought the Grant and Johnson families together.
Nine. That’s the number of Fran and Ron Johnson’s relatives whose entire working careers were with Telus. Let us begin with the Grant side of the family.
Vera Chipperfield met Leonard Grant, her husband to be, during the war while he was in England with the Royal Canadian Air Force and she was volunteering at the service canteen in Bournemouth. Vera worked for the civil service back then, reviewing weekly post office reports for accuracy.
“There were a great many mistakes,” Vera remembers. Her skills and experience are still an asset all these years later with the Red Cross.
“Vera’s work is precise and accurate, and her handwriting is beautiful,” says Miki Nash, who manages HELP for Capilano Community Services.
Back home in North Vancouver, Len’s grandmother owned a grocery store on East 4th Street. His mother worked for Sprott Shaw business college and his father built houses. Len joined the British Columbia Telephone Company.
Len and Vera raised their children in three different houses they owned over the years on East 21st Street, addresses 225, 231 and 258. Five of those eight children, including Fran and her sister Kath, went on to work for BC Tel.
On the Johnson side, Ron’s father, Eddie, worked for Canada Telephone and Supplies, CT&S, a subsidiary of the phone company. He met his wife, Ellen Key, in Duncan where she worked as a telephone operator.
Their three children were born in Vancouver, but work took the family all over Western Canada and it was not until 1965, when Ron was 12, when the family settled in North Vancouver. Ron and his brother, Robbie, followed their father into CT&S.
When Fran Grant started with her career with BC Tel in 1971, she joined Robbie Johnson’s carpool. Sometimes, brother Ron would do the driving. Proximity and persistence on Ron’s part paid off. Ron and Fran will celebrate 44 years of marriage in November.
Back to the Red Cross and HELP where Vera and Fran, along with their fellow volunteers, do the paperwork and record keeping that keeps the equipment loan program running smoothly. And Ron?
“I’m good at fixing things,” he says, a skill honed during his years working internationally in telecommunications for CT&S. The saying in our family is, “If it’s broken, give it to Dad.”
“Ron is our troubleshooter,” says Miki Nash. “We rely on our volunteers to keep the system running smoothly. When it doesn’t, Ron fixes it.”
In North Vancouver, record keeping for HELP is different from the other sites across Canada. Due to a lack of office space, equipment loans are recorded by hand, on paper cards with a pen, as they always have been. Ron enters the information from the cards into HELP’s national database. This paper component of the record keeping system will continue until the equipment loan program transfers to the new Lions Gate community centre.
Will the move make a difference to the family’s volunteer activities?
Ron and Fran have no plans to stop their commitment to the Red Cross. It’s part of their lives, like tending their garden, and carving 15 pumpkins with the family for Halloween.
Vera intends to carry on too. Even so, her story is a little different. “Where I live, cooking and cleaning is done for me. I have very little laundry. I don’t iron if I can avoid it. I play bridge and I walk. I’ve been busy all my life, and I would like to do more.”
Note to community: Looking for an efficient, experienced paper-pusher who works from home? Reach Vera Grant through the Red Cross at Delbrook, 604-988-7115.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. Contact her at 778-279-2275 or email her at [email protected].
