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How It Feels to Be a Volunteer
This Tax-Aide volunteer shares how important the work is, and how good it can feel to help others.
Marylou Murry, 75, has been volunteering with AARP Foundation Tax-Aide — the largest free, volunteer-run tax preparation assistance program in the country — for 12 years, since her husband, Don, passed away and she found herself “looking for opportunities to give meaning to my life.”
In rural Culpeper, Virginia, where Marylou has lived for 29 years, Tax-Aide runs from the town’s senior center. The program is available to everyone but concentrates on helping older adults with low to moderate income. Marylou is one of a small, dedicated team of volunteers, and she specializes in preparing returns; others serve as greeters, doing quality control checks on completed returns, and making sure all the technology is working properly.
Marylou spent her career in IT (“known back then as data processing,” she notes), and also traveled around the country with Don. “We always knew we wanted to see all 50 states,” she remembers, and after retirement they managed it, bagging all the state capitals as well. “My marriage was a second one for both of us,” Marylou says, and she relishes a large family of three stepchildren, nine grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Marylou found out about volunteering with Tax-Aide through an ad in the local paper. She applied, and local Tax-Aide coordinator Carolyn Davis “snapped me up, and the rest is history!”
Over the years her clients have included 99- and 101-year-olds, young couples filing their first returns, and even a married couple who had died. “I was able to help their daughter and son-in-law figure out what documents they needed to file their parents’ final returns,” she says.
Marylou, who also volunteers with her church and at the polls during elections, finds that “the people who use our service are thoughtful, respectful and so appreciative of the work we do for them.”
“Thank you” basket of goodies on their table,from an anonymous client.
Learn more about AARP Foundation Tax-Aide and how to become a Tax-Aide Volunteer.
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