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Former executives find second careers as volunteers |
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| Written by Kristin Babcock, Staff writer | |||
| Wednesday, 25 March 2009 00:00 | |||
 Lee Weigel, Lenexa, tried early retirement. He decided he would travel.“I did that, but couldn’t do that all of the time,” Weigel said. “I was going crazy sitting. I didn’t play golf and that’s what you are supposed to do when you retire. It wasn’t what I hoped it would be.” Weigel went back to work. And the second time he retired, he made better plans, he said. He took advice from a friend who had cancer. “He said, ‘I wish I had given more back to my community,’” Weigel said. “I thought, ‘I could be doing that.’” In 2007, Weigel left his career as an information technology consultant. He took up golf, but he also took up volunteering. Now, he spends almost every day helping to keep the shelves stocked at the Catholic Charities food pantry in Overland Park. He is one of three men, each a former business executive, who help run food pantries in the Kansas City area. “We have different backgrounds and the same thing has got us hooked, and that is the opportunity to help,” Weigel said. “Helping others makes us feel good about ourselves.” Jan Lewis, president of Catholic Charities in Northeast Kansas, said the decision these men made to move into volunteer work could be part of a growing trend. “One of the unique things about these gentlemen is they came from very profitable careers and served in positions of leadership,” Lewis said. “I think we’ll continue to see people – particularly from the Baby Boomer generation – that as we start to retire, are not just going to just fade away. We’re going to continue to want to use our gifts.” Jeffrey Bailey, Overland Park, works at the Catholic Charities food pantry in Wyandotte County. He retired after working 35 years with Philips Petroleum. Volunteering has given him all of the things he liked while working for a living, he said. “I was always in sales so at the end of a week, at the end of the month, you always had results,” Bailey said. “That’s the same thing here. At the end of the day, you know how many families you’ve fed.” Bob Lippold, who works in the Catholic Charities food pantry in Olathe, retired from a career in real estate. Need skyrocketed in the last eight years he has been at the pantry, he said. Last year the pantry provided $500,000 worth of food, 98 percent of which was donated, he said. In addition to organizing the pantry, Lippold contacts schools and organizations with requests for food pantry donations. “In real estate you organize your own time, and if you aren’t organized you won’t make enough money to stay in real estate,” Lippold said. “If it’s not organized in the pantry we have a hard time determining what we’ve got and what we need.” While there were times as a consultant some responsibilities involved high-dollar decisions, this position weighs a bit heavier on Weigel, he said. Each day he focuses on generating ideas for new food sources, he said. “This is much more personal,” Weigel said. “I have to look people in the eye and say ‘I’ve got nothing to give you.’ I don’t want to do that. But, if it was easy it wouldn’t be as rewarding.” The position has introduced Weigel to a side of Johnson County he had not been very familiar with, he said. “We live in the most affluent county in Kansas, and there is still a lot of need here,” Weigel said. “That was eye-opening. A lot of times we think that is the way things are on the coast and not so much in the Midwest. We have a lot of new clients who don’t know where to turn.” The three men often collaborate and assist each other. If one pantry has more green beans, it will share with the pantry that is lacking, Bailey said. That cooperation has allowed the pantries to rely more on donations and not purchasing food to stock the shelves, he said. The efforts of these volunteers, and other volunteers, have helped the organization concentrate funding on other resources, Lewis said. “Sometimes there are things volunteers can’t do, so wherever we can leverage talent to take on these other duties it just frees up our limited resources to be able to get at the root causes,” Lewis said. “Not having food is a symptom of something… Each food pantry has committed volunteers working with them to make this happen. It is vital and probably more so today than we have seen in many years.”
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