Volunteer of the Month - Mary Lynne H.

Mary Lynne H. is our newest Volunteer of the Month. She has been a dedicated delivery driver for Boulder Carry-Out Caravan for five years and in 2020, started contributing to the Cultivate newsletter by writing “Flourish with Food” articles!

Mary Lynne was born and raised on the northwest side of Chicago. She grew up in a Catholic family of eight. Being the oldest of 6 children, she learned to be responsible at a young age by helping her mother around the house and with her younger siblings. She says that being a child in Chicago was much different then. She has fond memories from her childhood, especially playing outside until dinner when her mom would ring a cowbell to come home. She is grateful that they had much more freedom and outdoor time than kids do these days. While the family had an early B&W TV, the kids were limited to the Mickey Mouse Club. Family time was spent camping, skiing, ice skating, sledding, and watching planes take off at O’Hare airport. Nancy Drew books were childhood favorites. Her first job at age 15 was in the family’s business running an addressograph machine on Saturdays. 

Mary Lynne graduated from an all-girls Catholic high school and got her Bachelor of Science degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from Purdue University. It was there that she met her husband, Doug. After he completed his Purdue studies, they moved to Houston for his doctorate in biomedical sciences. During this time, Mary Lynne completed a Dietetic Internship at the Houston VA Hospital, and two children entered their lives. Upon completing his PhD, the family moved to Austin where she returned for a Master’s Degree in Nutrition from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1985, they moved to Rhode Island, where she worked on several public health studies that focused on adopting healthy lifestyle choices for chronic disease prevention. She’s very proud to have worked on the Women’s Health Initiative, a forty-clinical center study of postmenopausal women. Working with the study’s participants inspired her to complete a Graduate Certificate in Gerontology at the University of Rhode Island. She was recently recognized for 50 years of membership in the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics!

After retiring, Mary Lynne and Doug moved to Colorado because their daughter’s family lives here. For the last twelve years, Mary Lynne has been actively volunteering. She served on the early board and was the Board Chair for Harvest for Hope Pantry, where she still volunteers two times a week (in addition to being a regular weekly delivery driver for Cultivate’s Carry-Out Caravan!). Mary Lynne stays socially and physically active with volunteer shifts, Mah Jongg, a monthly book g roup, Kaiut yoga, a strength and balance class, walking, and being a grandma to Boulder Steelie (10) and Chicago Cole (7).

Mary Lynne says she volunteers to give back. She realizes she has been blessed in life to have had good schooling and upbringing and wants to pay it forward. She also enjoys socializing and working alongside like-minded people. She gets so much gratitude out of lending a hand and finds inspiration from the clients she meets while volunteering. Whether she is delivering groceries or helping feed the unhoused, she makes the extra effort to get to know the people she’s helping and connect with them. Mary Lynne has been serving the same Cultivate clients since before Covid and has fostered amazing friendships with them. She has learned a lot from each of them and they have given her a new perspective and appreciation for the little things we take for granted.  

Cultivate is so grateful for the devotion, compassion, and contributions Mary Lynne has for our clients and organization. We’re sure our clients and many other people in the community feel the same way about all the hard work and heart she puts into whatever she does! Thank you, Mary Lynne, for making such a difference in so many people’s lives. We adore and appreciate you!