By Christine de Kock
MAIDSTONE’S Linda McNeil was one of last year’s winners of the John H Kerr Community Service Awards, which honoured her volunteer work in the West.
The community is urged to nominate residents for this year’s awards, which are open to volunteers or those employed in the West who help the community.
The Rotary Club of Footscray acknowledged Ms McNeil’s involvement in the Altona Ladies Probus Club with the award.
Ms McNeil, 81, dismisses her work as “nothing” but on a monthly basis she rounds up the Probus ladies for a day of fun, going out of her way to find exciting events to keep them entertained.
This includes playing the card game 500 at Kooringal Golf Club, booking a different local restaurant once a month to dine out as a group, organising a day at the Sun Theatre and special excursions such as a visit to French Island.
Ms McNeil began her volunteer work after retiring in 1987 from Tottenham’s Red Book Carpets, where she was a saleswoman.
Ms McNeil said she’d been part of the City of Maribyrnong all her life and enjoyed it.
“At the moment I live in the house that I was born in,” she said. “It is falling down around my ears and I have white ants but still I stay here.”
She has many fond memories of the area. “I used to have to go and bring the cow home before I went to school in the mornings … the cow was over where the new aquatic centre is now, that was all open space back then,” she said.
Ms McNeil has volunteered in various capacities for more than 15 years.
She was Cub mistress of 1st Footscray Scout Group in the late 1980s.
Her most poignant memory relates to when she broke her leg while swimming at a Perth beach with the Scouts and needed to be put on the plane back to Melbourne with a forklift.
“When I was going up into the fork lift a Scout leader put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘it’s all right’.
“I remember that kindness,” she said.
