Volunteering renews soul and spirit - Military Traffic Management Command officer volunteers for Special Olympics Winter Games - Brief Article

Translog: Journal of Military Transportation Management, May-June, 2001 by John Randt

There is an intangible spirit and benefit of being a volunteer.

I was reminded of this feeling the other day when interviewing Laive Poska, National Director of Special Olympics Estonia. Several of her athletes had just finished a 3-kilometer cross-country skiing event. At the end of the race Urmas Simus and Airet Lohu had collapsed in momentary exhaustion in the snow beyond the finish line.

Volunteers rushed over with blankets.

With the agility of their youthful bodies, the two were soon up and drinking fluids in a warm-up tent.

They had given the 2001 Special Olympics Winter World Games - Anchorage contest everything they had.

Fellow athletes, coaches, parents and volunteers had cheered them on. Snow was falling. Gray clouds hung low over the low hills of Kincaid Park, on the southwestern edge of Anchorage.

Poska took it all in.

"The Special Olympics program tries to help people," said Poska. "It helps everyone involved to be a better person."

I did not think so much emotion, effort and humanity could be summed up in so few words--but that pretty much said it all.

Taking personal leave and working as a volunteer at the Special Olympics was a watershed event for me. The entire experience certainly showed that the human body and spirit craves more compensation from work than just pay and benefits.

One takes so much out of life--it is a compensating factor to put the business world's frantic e-mail, cell phones and pagers away for a moment and give back.

The opportunity for me came from Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Privratsky, Commander, Military Traffic Management Command.

A permanent resident of Anchorage, Privratsky was proud of the opportunity to display the wonderful Alaskan city to the world.

"You might consider being a volunteer," Privratsky challenged me. "You've got some skills they might be able to use."

Life for me is on the fast track. We send out MTMC stories, photographs and press releases to the World; media calls come back. Each requires instant judgments. I often compare it to the lumberjacks poised oil rolling logs. They are the center of attention, but in a split second they can be thrown ignominiously into cold water ...

I accepted the challenge--one of the best decisions I have made.

The next day, an e-mail arrived from Kathy Day, media center coordinator for the Special Olympics. "We would love to have you," said the message.

So, I worked as a volunteer in Anchorage from March 3-8. I remember those days now as a giant pageantry of people, emotion and human spirit ... a kind of great, rolling Mississippi River that caught up everything in its path.

Not an event or a day went by when you were not caught up in the events and action. Everywhere, the Special Olympians played with their prowess and their hearts.

At every venue site, I found stories about the best facets of the human spirit at work. Your eyes feel moist as the pageant unfolds:

* At the snowshoe event, I meet Dr. Ashraf Marei, head of the Egyptian delegation. A wheelchair user since a tragic school-age accident, Marei is as close to the competition as he can get. His wheelchair has been pushed out on to the snow toward the track as far as his companions can manage. Two of his athletes win their division 1st and 2nd. "I'm proud of all my players," says Marei. For the Egyptian Special Olympians, it was the first time they saw snow. They had trained for the event in their snowshoes on giant sand dunes adjacent to the Pyramids.

* Watching the floor hockey competition, it is hard not to notice Michael Allen. The Special Olympian captain of the Trinidad & Tobago team, he is a one-man player--and cheerleader. Allen plays to abandon. He is finally helped off the court and lies collapsed on the floor surrounded by his coaches. Soon, he is up and cheering his team on. "Michael is one of the most motivated players on the team," says Sean Dewsberry, a team coach. The opposing team from Russia wins, 2 to 0. The team from Trinidad & Tobago goes on. There are other games to play.

* At figure skating, the team from Kazakhstan attracts media attention. The team traveled in three different airplanes to get to the competition--in all, spending an incredible 23 hours in the air. All four members of Maria Varava's figure skating team and three members of the alpine skiing team are orphans from a school where she is a physical fitness instructor. This is Varava's first trip outside Kazakhstan.

"We love these children so much, we sometimes think we're neglecting our own children." she said.

I filed my stories at the Anchorage Hilton Hotel where we had our media center. One day I took a phone call from a local television station, and a reporter asked me if I knew of any particularly good stories.

"You just have to come out there," I told him. "The stories are everywhere."

If there was a postscript for me, it took place March 9 as I prepared to go back home. The delegation from El Salvador had asked me to come over on that last day, when their entire floor hockey team would be together, to get a photograph. I took the photograph, and then watched the competition for a moment. In some hectic play between El Salvador and Germany, a German player knocked over a Salvadoran player. As the latter got up, the German player reached out his hand and shook hands in friendship, care and compassion, even as the play continued around them. I have never seen that in competitive sports.