A Vista Volunteer at age 75
Mrs. Verda Heckler of Waterville at close to 75 years of age, decided that sitting around knitting and sitting in her rocking chair was not what she want to do. Her husband had died a few years earlier. She lived in the upstairs apartment in the house we call the Coffin House at 127 ½ River road. They had bought the house in 1942 while she was working at the Rossford Ordinance Depot. Without telling her family she decided to look into the VISTA program. Where she found out about the program no one knows. Vista was the Federal Government program “Volunteers in Service to America.” She was a mother of seven, grandmother of 24 and great grandmother of eleven. She had to have six letters of recommendation from important people. The Waterville mayor and police chief sent letters and she also had to pass a physical exam.
On January 18, 1968 she received word that she was accepted in to the program and would be leaving. On February 5th she was to fly Denver, Colorado to begin her six-week training in the Vista program at the north-central regional training center of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity for her new life as a volunteer in in the war on poverty. Verda graduated from that program late March 1969. She was hoping she would be assigned to Alaska but instead she was assigned to Poplar Bluff, Mo., Job Corps. She made it to the Poplar Bluff but found that the terrain was more than she could handle. You see she had Spinal Meningitis earlier when working at the ordinance depot and her balance was bad. She was one of the first persons to get Penicillin (this was first made available to the public in 1945) and when she came home after her rehab she enlarged two of the upstairs rooms so she could practice walking by pushing her kitchen chairs for support. Verda was always helping out, previously had passed her LPN and worked as a nurse, read to the school children and had grandchildren living downstairs that kept her busy. She never wanted to be a burden on her family. She was able to walk on sidewalks with no problems but when she got to Popular Bluff the ground was very uneven making it difficult for her to get around and had to come back home. What a wonderful thing this woman was trying to do to help others and not be a burden on family and friends.
Note the diorama of the Coffin House was made by granddaughter Elaine, as a school project circa 1970.