After His Wife Died, Volunteering Became Central To This 101-Year-Old’s Life

At the age of 85, Dan Donnell of York decided to try something new. His wife had recently died and he needed to get out of the house, so he started volunteering.

Sixteen years later, he has learned that not only does he like helping others, he also gets by with a little help from his friends.

This interview is part of our series of conversations with Maine centenarians.

If you go to York Hospital on a Monday morning, you’ll likely spot Donnell in the lobby. You’ll recognize him from his forest-green volunteer vest and his dapper attire. On this day, he sports a pink button down shirt, a matching pink bow tie and a special name tag.

“How do you like my badge?” he says.

The badge says, “Dan, circa 1918.” At age 101, Donnell is still spry enough to escort patients around the hospital. But he admits he has recently had to cut back a little.

“Short of breath. And I put a new pacemaker in April. And it didn’t do a thing. I’m still puffin’. And I don’t know what the problem is, other than old age. I think it’s really catching up with me,” he says with a laugh.

As Donnell sits back in a lobby chair to wait for the next patient, he reminisces about his life. He has always lived in York, always on the water. His home is above the marina he owns on the harbor, where he likes to look out a big picture window at the boats that come and go.

Just across the way he can see Stage Neck. Condos are there now, but he remembers a different view.

“Stage Neck was originally a place where they dried fish on these racks. And they’d split and salt cod, pollock, haddock. And they piled them skin up in big piles at night. And then the next day they’d take them all and spread them out so that the flesh was sun side up, so the sun and wind dried them. They had so many stages over there, that’s why they called it Stage Neck. And my dad, I used to take care of the fish that he did at home. At night he’d pile ‘em up skin up, then I’d go out in the morning and turn them all over and spread them out again. And then you do it every night, every day, every night,” he says.

Once, Donnell says he even met Charles Lindbergh and his wife, who were on their honeymoon and tied up their boat at his father’s dock.

As a young man, Donnell got a job as a rigger at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. It was there that he met his wife, Georgiana, who was tired of working in the potato fields up north.

“She came from Aroostook and she picked 200 barrels of potatoes one day. Two cents a barrel,” he says.

Donnell courted her by bringing her fresh McIntosh apples. They had three kids.

While Donnell worked at the shipyard, he also opened his marina. He has owned at least half a dozen boats, but his favorite was his sailboat.

“It handled so doggone well, at least it did for me. I could maneuver that thing, and I got a kick out of it. I really enjoyed it,” he says.

He says he misses that sailboat, and he also misses his wife. She died just a week shy of their 60th anniversary.

Though Donnell lives on his own now, a lot of people look after him. His 75-year-old daughter lives just one street away.

“My daughter does fantastic, I don’t know how she keeps up with all the things. She pays my bills. She goes shopping. ‘What do you want? What do you want? What do you need?’” he says.

Donnell’s neighbors play cribbage with him every Sunday. They also prepare meals that provide Donnell dinners for most of the week.

“That damn crockpot, it’s all I can do to lift it. She sends steaks down, spare ribs, mashed potatoes, broccoli, greens. Last night she came down, she had beef stew, she’d been making it all day,” he says.

The staff at York Hospital are also an important part of Donnell’s life. As his shift ends, he heads to the cafeteria to take advantage of one of the perks of being a volunteer: a free meal.

When Donnell turned 100, the hospital threw him a birthday party. He says his time spent volunteering has added years to his life.

“Volunteer if possible. It would probably be the best thing you ever do. You know, you get out, you meet people. And you’re going to be busy, get up and go to work,” he says. “But if you stay home, you don’t meet a soul.”