Meet Delores
Delores is a charismatic, people person. Growing up in a large family of eight kids, she learned to enjoy the company of others. Her dad was a carpenter and her mom had all kinds of jobs. She certainly had great role models and got her stellar work ethic from her wonderful parents.
She grew up in the small town of Taunton, Minnesota with a population of only 200. Her first and second grades were spent in a two room school house with only 3 classmates. She spent the rest of her school years in Minneota only four miles away. She was very active in high school, playing volleyball for six years, was the homecoming princess and the class president. She attended college for a few years, but wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do.
Delores was working in a hardware store in Stillwater when she met the man who would become her husband. Lee came into the store with his grandpa and grandma; Delores was instantly attracted to this nice man who would be so helpful to his grandparents. They got married on New Year’s Eve 1987 and had kids right away. Their daughter, Ericka lives in Minneapolis and has three children with one on the way. Delores and Lee love spending time with the grandkids and look forward to keeping them overnight once a month. Their son, Josh is a self-funded traveler, working to travel around the globe. His next trip will take 20 months when he travels from North Alaska and the Arctic Ocean to the tip of South America.
For the past eight years Delores has been a housekeeper at Shepherd of Grace Senior Community in Becker. She is unique in that she loves to clean; most people don’t enjoy that at all! She was applying at different cleaning jobs when she saw the posting for Shepherd of Grace, which is only a short distance away from her house. As much as she loves cleaning, she loves people more, so this job feeds her soul in both ways.
Growing up in a large family she learned to be crafty at an early age and she truly loves doing all sorts of craft projects. Almost right after she started working, she began volunteering in her off hours doing craft projects with the tenants. She finds great joy in showing people who don’t think they are “crafty” that they can make beautiful projects just like everyone else. She said, “it’s fun to share what I love most with the people who live here.” When asked what she likes most about working and volunteering at Shepherd of Grace she said, “It’s about the living. Living each day, finding what you love to do. I love how people learn to adapt and adjust to their changing condition, finding a way to keep doing the things they love to do. It’s really true where there’s a will, there’s a way!” One of her favorite projects was taking colored magazine pages, folding them and making beautiful butterflies. “We come up with ideas from all sorts of places and we use all sorts of recycled materials. When I’m cleaning we’ll talk about items and how we could make craft things with them. Recently the craft group made May Day baskets for all of the tenants.”
We are proud to have Delores on our Shepherd of Grace team.