POCAHONTAS — Donning a pink Randolph County Medical Center smock and perched beside her husband of 60 years, Margaret Carroll continues to feed the paper shredder, occasionally stopping to pull out a blank sheet onto the growing stack by her side.
“I save all the clean paper so I can take it to the Head Start preschoolers,” Carroll said as she continues to shred one of 273 boxes of outdated hospital records.
It is a volunteer job she and her husband Neal have been doing in recent months.
“Neal and I have been members of the RCMC Auxiliary for many years and most of our time here is spent shredding paper for the hospital,” Carroll said. “We love this job and feel that it is very necessary. We were spending one day a week but after a few seven-hour days decided to come out a couple of days a week for a few less hours each trip.”
Refusing to accept that growing older means no longer participating in things she enjoys, Carroll has learned instead to make minor modifications.
“Neal is 89 and I am 80 and both of us have slowed down a little,” she said. “I still do a lot of needlework, so I make bibs for the Senior Care Unit at the hospital, bingo prizes and bibs for Outlook Pointe (assisted living facility) as well as baby blankets and quilts for Arkansas Children’s Hospital. I can’t be still.”
Believing that people were “put here to help each other,” Carroll lives out the call to service.
As members of the Friends of the Library, the couple delivers library books monthly to homes and Outlook Pointe as well as the nursing homes.
She is a PACE (People with Arthritis Can Exercise) instructor. The group, sponsored by the Arthritis Foundation, meets each morning at the Pocahontas Community Center. Each Wednesday an additional class is held at Outlook Pointe and Carroll said she tries to lead at least three classes each week.
Carroll helps the county’s Relay for Life, benefiting the American Cancer Society, and has been a member of GFWC Pocahontas Woman’s Club since 1984. As a member she has chaired numerous committees, one of the most rewarding being Operation Smile, a worldwide organization of volunteers who help thousands of children and young adults suffering from facial deformities.
“The offering of time and talent by the women was always wonderful,” Carroll said of the days she and fellow club members came together to make hospital gowns for the children that would be undergoing surgery.
Carroll was an active member during the decision to implement the Meals on Wheels program in Pocahontas and was asked to coordinate a group of volunteers for the project.
“It was very successful and many of these same people are still delivering meals,” Carroll said. “Neal and I delivered meals for 14 or more years. I did the monthly scheduling of volunteers for several years until this job was taken over by BRAD (Black River Area Development).”
Through her work with Meals on Wheels, Carroll saw first hand what the late Mother Teresa witnessed through her work in that “the greatest poverty in the world is not for want of food but the want of love.”
“For some of the people we delivered meals to, we were the only person they saw during the entire week,” Carroll said. “They would cry when you started to leave and want you to stay and visit. Of course, you couldn’t and it just broke your heart.”
While serving as social justice minister for St. Paul Church, Carroll was given an opportunity to transform the brief lunch stops into regular visits to the homebound when she was asked to coordinate a group of parish volunteers.
“This was part of a program for the elderly started by St. Bernard’s Hospital and brought to our parish,” Carroll said. “This was so important to me because I had seen the need while delivering meals and it was good to see the Catholic Church take a lead with this program that was so greatly needed.”
Carroll said she gave up the position of social justice minister after 10 years because it required her to drive at night to deliver her reports to the parish council. She recently was asked to head up a committee that would allow her to participate in some of the same services, but she only had to attend the parish council meetings twice a year.
Carroll also continues to serve on the Bereavement Committee, a group responsible for providing meal for members of the parish after the death of a loved one.
“I believe you need to keep moving,” Carroll said of her active lifestyle. “Besides I can’t stay still even though my body keeps telling me to settle down and take a nap. I just can’t do it.”
