Volunteer workers pay moving tribute to Lubec resident

As in past summers, Neighbors Helping Neighbors' volunteer work camp groups of more than 400 trained teens and adult supervisors have come, despite fuel costs, from across the country to Lubec and other towns Downeast. They tackle much needed house repairs for elderly and financially restricted homeowners.

A true life experience met one group at Cliff Ryerson's Lubec house in the downtown residential section of Brownsville. As longtime friend Suzie Case tells it, "Cliff had had a hip replacement three years ago and always walked with a cane. His front porch was old and rickety, so he asked the volunteer crew to build a new one." On July 8, while the work was under way, Ryerson was injured in a truck accident and died enroute to the hospital. The news shattered Case and the family, as well as the visiting crew. They had enjoyed photographing him as he smiled at their work.

The volunteers brought flowers to Ryerson's daughter Paula, and they planned a solemn memorial service in their lodgings at the University of Maine at Machias. Case reports, "Hundreds of work campers attended along with Cliff's family and many friends. The hall overflowed with tears." She said it became a great tribute to a man much respected and liked in the Downeast community.

At Mary Stuart's house in Brownsville, another group of six volunteers were helped by residents Chris Trott, age 7, who boasts, "I helped out on the roof years ago." He critiques the volunteers' efforts as "really good."

Like all the volunteer groups, this one is also really busy. They're not only repairing cracks and gaps in ceilings and doing in-house carpentry chores, they're also painting the outside house foundation and cheerfully weed-whacking the yard. In spare time, they've made new curtains for the windows. Volunteer Joanne McNalley sums up, "We do it all with a humble heart."