VOLUNTEER DEDICATED TO HELPING

Ninety-year-old Leonora Luckmann cuts her lawn with an extra large-size push mower, and drives her Ford Escort most everywhere except the five-hour drive to visit her son in Champaign, Ill. When her front door sticks, she opens it with a smart kick and a yank.

This is a can-do woman who ever since her husband died in 1966 has been doing for others.

Luckmann is the newest volunteer at the Heartland Cares Distribution Center, the Cape Girardeau clearinghouse for supplying goods to flood victims. She spent about six hours there Friday separating large bags of coffee and tea into family-size portions.

"I'd been wanting to fill sandbags but my doctor gave me orders to stay out of the heat," she explained.

Three or four days a week, Luckmann reads, does mending and helps teach a Bible class at the Lutheran Home. She also is involved with three guilds at Trinity Lutheran Church, and has volunteered with the Girl Scouts and Southeast Missouri Hospital.

Much of Luckmann's life has been about service. Shortly after they married, her husband, William, became ill and required her care for most of the rest of his life, spending his last 10 years in a wheelchair.

That kind of adversity made a volunteer out of her.

"When you go through things yourself, you have a certain empathy for what people are going through," she says.

Volunteering gives her "a certain peace," Luckmann says. "I think that's what the Lord made me for."

She was born into the Theodore Ochs family, longtime operators of nursery and orchard businesses in Cape Girardeau. At times, she worked in the family businesses. During World War II she separated the good bullets from the bad at an ordnance factory in St. Louis.

She and her husband also operated a glass company for a time.

"After my husband died I made up my mind I wasn't going to sit around and mope," she said.

"...I just felt I wanted to do things for other people."

When she isn't volunteering, Luckmann reads historical books and tackles the Faulkner novels her son sends her. "William B. Faulkner writes the longest sentences of anybody I know," she says.

At the Lutheran Home, the fare is more like "Little House on the Prairie." "They know what it means to do without air conditioning, coal oil stoves, to wash with a washboard and to can. That's what I read about. I just love them."

A perfectionist, she also does her duty in her garden. "I can't stand weeds," she said. "There's not a night I don't go out and weed plants."

She pauses to think a second and says, "Life's fun if you enjoy it."

In the evenings, Luckmann turns out the lights and listens to classical music on KRCU. Long ago, she played the violin in the university orchestra.

Luckmann doesn't think her longevity and lifestyle are any big deal, but says, "I feel very thankful and close to God. He's been very good to me."

She acknowledges that not many 90-year-olds are keeping up with her. "I don't have a close friend who's still living," she said.

Luckmann's always had a religious bent. "That's the power that motors the whole business your faith," she says.

She lives by three rules: "Be a good Christian, love your fellow (church) members, and keep busy."