With life expectancies continuing to increase, retirees are starting to actively reimagine the aging process, rejecting the idea that retirement is a time of leisure, withdrawal and decline.
Two Arbor Acres Retirement Community residents, Mona and Wallace Wu, are challenging these stereotypes by sharing their gifts and passion for service through volunteerism.
Mona is a highly accomplished printmaker, using woodcuts and linocuts as her medium. She teaches Printmaking and Collage classes at Sawtooth School of Visual Art in Winston-Salem, and is a member of Artworks Gallery, an artist-run cooperative gallery. She is also one of a group of artists who founded The Art SHAC, a local non-profit, built on green principles that makes affordable, gently used art materials available to artists in the community. She now serves as a volunteer on SHAC’s board.
Mona shares her talent freely. She connected with Senior Services and the Intergenerational Center for Arts & Wellness, a local non-profit that focuses on supporting older adults, when a friend invited her to volunteer with Meals-on-Wheels more than 10 years ago. While she didn’t have time to deliver meals, she immediately recognized the opportunity to share her artistic talent to help other seniors: by contributing her artwork to an annual art show that raises money for Meals-on-Wheels. As a result of her generosity, she now has a classroom named in her honor in the Senior Services Intergenerational Center.
In addition to her volunteer work with the local art community, Mona still spends 15-20 hours a week on her own work and preparing for the classes she teaches from her home at Arbor Acres.
“Living at Arbor Acres doesn’t alter my lifestyle,” Mona says. “I continue to go out into the community and return to my home on campus, a very convenient location for all that I do.”
Mona’s husband, Wallace, Professor Emeritus of Gastroenterology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, is equally passionate about volunteerism in retirement. Now in his ninth year serving on the Senior Services board, he said the generous spirit of the Winston-Salem community inspired his desire to serve.
“During the late ‘80s to mid ‘90s I saw that while Winston-Salem was very well off, the community took care of the less privileged. United Way raised more money in those days than any community in the country.”
Wallace’s hero was Dr. Thomas Hearn who served as president of Wake Forest from 1983 – 2005 while Wallace was working at the medical school.
“Tom was community oriented and committed to taking care of the less fortunate. He inspired me to understand that people should always give back, and Senior Services was there.”
Through their commitment to serving Senior Services and the community, Mona and Wallace Wu have found their perfect prescription for purpose, combining their medical and artistic talents in service to seniors in need.