SVDP celebrates Yunek’s 99th birthday and her 20 years as an SVDP volunteer

BY TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SVDP) held a birthday party for Agnes Yunek at the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store on her 99th birthday – April 23, 2024. “We celebrated with her since she volunteered for our program since we opened in 2003,” said SVDP Director of Outreach Sue Norenberg. “She is such a special lady.”
“Agnes is great!” said Lisa Breaman, “Agnes is truly loved and inspired by those who know her and have volunteered to join her.”
“She’s amazing! If you know her, you know a saint!” said Sue Schiher, another SVDP volunteer who became a close friend of Agnes. Over the years, they shared rides to SVDP and built a friendship based on their mutual faith and similar interests and hobbies.
Like anyone who has lived nearly a century, Agnes has faced challenges over the years – the kind of challenges that have a profound effect on a person’s mind and can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation – but Agnes fought with faith back against those feelings. and a desire to “help other people” by becoming a volunteer. Volunteering helped Agnes get out of the house, interact with other people regularly and do something for others, keeping her active and involved in her community.
She is not the type of woman to let life’s challenges get her down.
In their retirement years, after Agnes retired from manufacturing, Agnes and her husband, Ben, moved to Merrill. The parents of one son, Jim, Agnes had longed for more children, but it was not to be. She has grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but not all of them live here in town. So when Ben passed away unexpectedly in 2010, Agnes felt isolated and alone. Her Catholic faith and volunteer work helped keep her going.
Agnes, a cancer survivor, suffered significant hearing loss due to the chemotherapy she underwent to battle her cancer. She overcomes this challenge with the help of technology – a Teletype phone and a speech-to-text app – that allows her to read what people say or ask rather than hearing the words themselves.
Agnes has a strong work ethic and is not one to sit still for long. Perhaps that – and her strong faith – are two of the secrets of her long life. She attends daily Mass when it is available and “prays the rosary daily while riding five miles on her exercise bike,” Breaman said.
She also “irons all her sheets and most of her laundry after letting them line dry outside once a week,” in addition to baking homemade apple pies and pumpkin bars for events and to share with other volunteer friends and even EMTs who sometimes help her visits in response to her occasional LifeLine calls, Breaman said.
Agnes has also always enjoyed reading. “I buy a bunch of books at SVDP, read them all and then bring them back to sell,” Agnes said.
And she likes to write lots of cards and letters, to family and friends and just other people “who need congratulations and prayers,” Breaman said. Breaman said Agnes has also embroidered many tea towels over the years that she has given away as gifts; made “clown dolls” for newborns; and “washed and ironed baby clothes and put away dolls that she then sent to the Indian missions for their little ones until the shipping costs made it too expensive to continue this act of kindness (now she sends a monetary donation instead).”
As a volunteer at the SVDP Thrift Store, Agnes worked in the store 2-3 days a week pricing clothing, repairing items of clothing that needed repairs and were still “too good to throw away,” and washing other items that still needed repairs. were good enough. to use as rags, and to prepare them as “rag bundles” for sale. “I don’t throw much away,” Agnes said. Her long life also prepared her to be frugal, waste as little as possible, and be a good steward of all that was entrusted to her. Her faith has influenced every aspect of her life and is evident in this mindset.
“SVDP is so grateful for Agnes’ twenty years of volunteer work at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store!” Breaman said. “She is a living, senior example of the cognitive and physical health benefits of volunteering, beating isolation by nurturing and building relationships.”
“God bless you, Agnes!” she said. “You are a blessing to all of us! CONGRATULATIONS!”
Currently, Agnes has had to take a break from her volunteer work at the SVDP Thrift Store “due to health concerns,” Norenberg said. But that doesn’t mean she’s sitting still. “Every day I’m busy because I have all my prayers to say,” Agnes said. “As you get older and closer to death… you say more prayers!”