Prowers County, Colo. sits in the rural southeast corner of the state on the Kansas border, more than four hours away from Denver. Its remote locale makes it difficult for the elderly and disabled veterans who live there to get to their far-flung medical appointments.
Luckily, these American heroes can count on champion volunteer driver Cliff Boxley, who doesn’t hesitate to set out at 4 a.m. — sometimes up to four days a week — to bring them to their doctors’ appointments in Denver, Pueblo, La Junta and Colorado Springs.
Boxley himself served in the Army from 1972 to 1980 and has kept close to his fellow vets, in part through his serving of four terms on the Board of Governors for the First Cavalry Division Association.
In 2007, he started driving veterans in Prowers County to their medical appointments and has since racked up more than 6,000 volunteer hours — driving a total 165,000 miles in that time.
“I started driving because I got a call from Carol Grauberger one day. She was the person who started this service in Prowers County for the veterans. That was seven years and over 150,000 miles ago,” he tells Russ Baldwin of The Prowers Journal.
For all those hours on the road, Boxley was honored with the 2014 AARP Andrus Award for Colorado, which is given to outstanding volunteers making a difference in the lives of seniors from each state.
“Rural veterans tend to be short-changed when it comes to VA healthcare, with few advocates for them in this region. In the military, we always took care of each other, so this is my way of doing that,” Boxley tells Baldwin.
MORE: This Special Volunteer Has Spent More Than 150,000 Miles Behind The Wheel Helping Vets
Tag: helping elderly
These Autistic Students Struck a Beautiful Friendship With Local Seniors
One group is often ignored, the other group is often underestimated. But what happens when you put them together?
A beautiful partnership.
As 11Alive reports, every Tuesday the seniors at the Dogwood Forest Retirement Community get a visit from autistic students at the Lionheart School in Alpharetta, Georgia. Together they’ve formed a friendship that’s mutually beneficial and also tremendously meaningful.
MORE: Watch How This Boy With Autism Renders His Class Speechless
It’s already difficult to land a job in this recovering economy, but for young adults on the autism spectrum, it’s even harder. According to a study published in HealthDay, only 55 percent of young adults with autism have a job in the first six years after high school.
The students at Lionheart, however, are learning real-life skills that will help them get ready for the workplace. You’ll see at 1:57 in the clip below that these students help deliver mail, set the tables, and entertain the residents with games and music.
Meanwhile, the retirees get to interact with these students and make new connections. As one elderly man named Sparky told the TV station, “It means a lot to have people come to see us.”
ALSO: This Unique Education Initiative Connects Lonely Seniors to Chatty Teens
Victoria McBride, head of therapeutic services at Lionheart, told Huffington Post that “social interactions and language processing can be difficult for both students in the school and seniors at the retirement center. Because of this, the pace of conversation and social interaction between the students and the residents can be slower, which allows both parties to engage and interact with more confidence.”
Sounds like a win for everyone involved.
Besides working with the seniors at the retirement center, the younger students at Lionheart also participate in the school’s adorable “LionPaws” program. NorthFulton.com reports that students get to interact with puppies who will become service dogs. This mutually beneficial program helps autistic children relax and reduce their anxiety while their new fuzzy friends get to interact with people.
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Why Don’t Old People Like Talking to Robots?
The 2012 movie Robot and Frank imagined a not-too-distant America in which companion robots are used to assist the elderly in daily living. It’s not so far-fetched — many researchers are working to make this sci-fi scenario a reality in the U.S. (Robots already assist with elder care in Japan.) But a new study suggests that older Americans might not feel comfortable with an automated assistant. Researchers at the universities of Notre Dame and Missouri studied 65 seniors in an elder-care setting, and noted how they gave a robot directions, such as to fetch their glasses in a different room. Then the researchers compared how the seniors communicated the same request to a fellow human, and found that the seniors spoke conversationally with people, while using terser, more direction-oriented requests with the robots. Both ways get the job done, but the seniors reported preferring to speak with the human. Studying the exact words seniors use to talk to robots is important so scientists can program robots accurately, and better understand how to make machines serve man more effectively.