After the Probus meeting on Tuesday, Marilyn and I took a friend to lunch. Lois is a widow whose husband died about 14 months ago. They were both doctors who had made lots of money working in Public Health, securing contracts with various governments around the world, and had retired to Golden Valley in the hills near Deloraine. They joined the Rotary Club but Peter was a prickly person and alienated many of the members. Lois was full of energy, wanting to get things done and found the local club too ponderous for her. She eventually resigned and joined an on-line club based in Melbourne.
Now that Peter has gone, Lois has thrown herself wholeheartedly into philanthropy. When a workman said that she must have a lot of money to do what’s she’s doing, she told him that she was spending her husband’s inheritance. She has a particular interest in Nepal and runs various programs there but her latest venture is setting up accommodation for people, mainly students from Asia, who have come to Tasmania and are having trouble finding a place to live.
She has bought some houses in Deloraine and is renovating them, putting up the collateral for loans, navigating the local regulations and soothing the resistance of the petty bureaucracy you find in country councils. She has a million stories to tell about how she struggles to get things done and we had a very lively lunch at the Raspberry Farm.
Lois is a woman in a hurry. She has significant health problems of her own but is not content to sit back and let the world go by. While politicians strut the stage, people like Lois work, unrecognised, behind the scenes. Will she receive the accolades she deserves for her work? Unlikely, but civilisation only progresses through the work of people like her.
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