As the annual MS Walk got underway at Douglas Park in Langley City on Sunday (May 26), Brookswood residents Don and Pat Dangelmaier were working behind the scenes, making sure the volunteers who directed the 150 participants could communicate with each other.
Members of the Langley Amateur Radio Association, the couple have made volunteering a habit, providing their communications expertise to the MS Walk, Cruise-In and Coldest Night of the Year events.
On Monday, June 3, Langley Senior Resources Society (LSRS) honoured the Dangelmaiers as Langley Seniors of the Year for 2019 in a special presentation to be held at the Langley Seniors Rec Centre.
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“I’m very humbled,” Pat said.
“I really am. We never do it for this sort of thing, we do it because we want to do it. And to find out we had this award, I was stunned.”
Don nodded agreement.
We’re certainly not looking for recognition and we were totally blown away when I got the call that we’d been nominated,” he said.
“Then, we were totally blown away when they phoned back the next day and informed us that we had been selected.”
Beyond providing radio communications, the Dangelmaiers have worked for a wide range of worthy causes over the years, everything from teaching water-phobic adults how to swim, to making sure proper procedures are followed on the Langley Rod and Gun Club firing range — where Don is a range safety officer.
They have been volunteers in Langley for over 30 years.
“You wake up one day and you’re retired,” said Don, who worked until he was 67 in a high-profile job with Numatics, a robotics manufacturer.
“Well, you’ve got to do things.”
And so they did.
Don said when they moved down to Langley from Sherwood Park in Edmonton in 1980, “by then, we were already volunteering.”
“It’s just a fun thing to do,” Don said.
“We like to help people, and it keeps you active yourself. We’re in reasonably good health and part of is because we kept active.”
“I volunteer because I want to help people,” said Pat.
She was a bookkeeper before she retired, but still volunteers to do the books for several local charities.
They have been very involved with the Langley emergency program, on call with a pager to help people in crisis.
“We’d get a call in the middle of the night (for) people who’d been burned out or flooded out and we would go out and on behalf of the provincial government, we would issue tickets for up to 72 hours of food and [accommodation],” Don said.
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Both are also certified swimmers and instructors.
Pat has taught newborns how to swim at a local pool.
“It was beautiful to watch them,” she said, smiling.
“They knew how to swim already because they were in the womb for nine months.”
But the greatest fun that she and her husband had, Pat said, was the “fraidy cats” course that taught swimming (or just getting used to the water) to hydro-phobic adults.
“It was really neat,” Don recalled.
“Because it was all adults, mostly middle-aged, and they wouldn’t even put their foot in the water. And by the time they left, they were jumping off the diving board.”
They also helped people with hip and knee replacements undergo physical therapy in the pool.
“That was a lot of fun, really,” Pat said.
In what might be a perfect, positive karmic payback, Pat, who has just had a hip replacement, is about to begin a program of exercise in the water.
“It is karma and its beautiful karma,” Pat commented.
“This is the biggest thing [about volunteering]. You give back what you have received yourself. And for me, I received more by giving than I do by receiving.”
Don is 82 and Pat is 80.
They have four children, three daughters and a son, three grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
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Email: dan.ferguson@langleyadvancetimes.com
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