Congregational Profile

Ann Crossman and the Art of Lifelong Volunteering

By Pauline Finch

(Justice through Service Committee)

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When Ann Crossman recently spent part of a grey winter afternoon sharing what volunteering means in her life, she didn’t need to begin with a tidy and compact definition of what it actually means.

Unlike many of us, who became volunteers by being drawn into it from outside our homes or immediate experiences, Ann was literally born into the idea that helping others, people you might never get to know, is a natural part of everyday life.

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Early Years

Born and raised in Canton, Ohio, where her family had deep roots in both the Lutheran and Methodist faiths, some of her earliest memories are as a pre-schooler tagging along with her mother as she went door-to-door, canvassing for Red Cross donations; it was just one of many church and community tasks she enjoyed in between housework and child-rearing.

“My mother had worked as a secretary, but in her time, women had to quit when they became pregnant and were expected to stay at home with their children. Volunteering was their way of getting back into the community. Far fewer men volunteered, although my father (a high school math teacher) would lead Vacation Bible School in the summers.”

With her only sibling a brother six years older, Ann recalls that “I often played by myself and made up interesting things to do.” And one of those things was learning from her mom’s example how to confidently approach people.  

“One day at home my mother heard noises and someone talking upstairs. I was the only other one in the house. She came up and found me knocking on all the bedroom doors pretending to ask for donations to the Red Cross.”

What started as a childhood game became a lifelong skill that Ann has applied over and over again to real people in myriad situations.

Influenced by her mother’s giving nature, Ann dreamed of being a public school teacher. “I always wanted to teach . . . In fact, children became my ‘profession’ very early, not only in my work, but in quite a few of the later volunteer activities I took on.” She prepared by attending Wittenberg University, a Lutheran college in nearby Springfield, Ohio, where she met Richard Crossman, the musical friend who would become her life-partner.

“Dick and I both played clarinet in the university band and we felt a special connection right away. So whenever the band went on the road to play at football games, we made sure to sit together . . .  and we’re still sitting together!”       

Ann and Richard were married in 1961, a year after she graduated. While he continued on, studying to become a Lutheran pastor and earning a doctorate from the Chicago School of Theology, she spent the rest of that decade teaching primary grades, mainly in overcrowded and underfunded inner-city schools where the majority of her students’ families lived below the poverty line.

Ann welcomed the extra pay for teaching in those difficult conditions, as they were saving to start a family of their own, but she also welcomed doing extra work beyond the paycheque to make a real difference in deprived children’s lives.

Cold War, Moon Landing and the Pill 

By contrast, she also taught in Chicago’s upscale Hyde Park neighbourhood, where many Black professionals lived, including celebrities such as former US President Barack Obama and his family.  

She remembers the 1960s as an interesting but challenging time for women’s roles and opportunities. The Cold War was constantly heating up, the civil rights movement was growing, race riots erupted in many American cities, school integration conflicts were constant news headlines, volunteerism frequently became social activism and public protest, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, the Vietnam War polarized an entire generation, and humans left their first footprints on the Moon.

And for the first time in history, Ann’s cohort of young married career women was able to postpone starting families, thanks to the availability of birth control.

While The Pill “certainly made a big difference for us,” Ann feels that she and many of her peer group “straddle generations.” Some of her colleagues went back to work as soon as possible after having children, while others stayed home much longer, sometimes until their children were nearly through high school, or even later.

“I was one of the ones who chose to stay home, mainly because Dick was so busy,” she explained, “but also because I saw changes that I didn’t like in some families where both parents were working when the children were still very young . . . I did eventually go back to work for a few years, but not until our kids (daughter Kim and son Bob) were much older.”

During that time, Ann continued to hone her volunteering skills in many and varied ways, just as her own mother had done. “It became a way to life to do whatever was needed.”

The Move to Canada

In 1970, when Kim was 3 and Bob only 5 weeks old, the Crossmans moved to Canada, where Richard had been hired to teach at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary (now Martin Luther University College).

“I felt quite at home here right from the start,” she said. “Back then, Waterloo was about the same size as Canton, and I’d see Old Order Mennonites coming down the street with their horse-drawn buggies, which reminded me of the Amish who lived near us when I was growing up.”

Although she had always kept the helping habits learned in childhood, Ann considers the move to Waterloo as “the real start” of her volunteering life.

She and Richard joined Mount Zion early in 1971 and by fall of that year she was teaching Sunday School. She remembers sharing a Grade 6 class with Pastor Norm Lange’s wife, Helen, so that each could attend worship services on alternate Sundays. Ann and Helen also worked together for several summers at the former Camp Edgewood, teaching Confirmation Camp, so “what I learned about handling children was never wasted.” ​

Open Sesame, Treasurer and President

Ann also became involved early on with the Open Sesame head start school, serving in various capacities, including as a teacher’s assistant and for more than 20 years as Treasurer. There were more mundane tasks as well, like laundering craft clothes and towels with Carol Ziegler, and buying food for snacks.

Another of Ann’s skills is bookkeeping and financial record-keeping, an interest she developed when her math-teacher father connected her with a local bank that needed help with account posting. She became so good at it that she had a job there for all her high school summers.

That experience made her a natural to serve on Mount Zion’s Finance Committee and “ever since then I’ve always been very aware of church finances . . . we have excellent people doing that work here.”

Ann also served several terms on Church Council and was President during a critical period in the 1980s when criteria were being established for the new building. Important decisions had to be made about whether to invest in a professional kitchen, a custom-built pipe organ, or both. Some creative compromising resulted in both interests being served, but not without much prolonged discussion and a great deal of hard work

“During the time I was President, I remember when contractors working on the building needed to tear up part of the kitchen floor. On that day, I happened to be the only one available with the authority to make a decision. When I said yes, I had to trust that they knew what they were doing, because I certainly didn’t!” Fortunately, it was the right decision and the work proceeded without further problems.​

When her children had reached middle school, Ann briefly considered resuming her teaching career, but after researching Canadian teaching certification requirements, she decided against it; instead, she waited until both Kim and Bob were in university before taking a position with Manulife.

With the amount of volunteering she was doing, boredom had never been a problem. Throughout Kim and Bob’s school years, her past teaching career made her an ideal parent volunteer. “I think I must have gone on every field trip they had.”

So when asked to help out, whatever it is, Ann has always been more likely to say “yes,” rather than “maybe,” or even “no.”

“I really couldn’t see living life without volunteer connections. I’ve always felt morally obliged to get involved and I really enjoy the challenge and stimulation . . . I couldn’t sit at home all day cooking and cleaning.”

Apart from the many activities she has undertaken at Mount Zion, Ann was inspired by friends with a Down Syndrome child to become involved with K-W Habilitation, a charity that helps fund group homes for children and young adults with mental and physical disabilities.

She also canvassed for the Heart and Stroke Foundation until the Covid-19 pandemic put an end to in-person contact.​

Refugees...you just cant' stop --You have to be there for them​

Although Ann usually prefers church volunteering over community work, she recalls that the most difficult task was the years she spent on the Lutheran Refugee Committee.

“The families that we sponsored had a lot of big problems and you had to stay with them until they were able to make their own way in Canada.” Early on she was faced with a core truth of all refugee resettlement projects: “It always takes longer than you’re told, especially by the government people. But you can’t just stop — you have to be there for them.”

Ann’s longest single volunteer commitment has been the 50 years (and counting!) she has spent helping move mobility-challenged residents at Trinity Village to chapel services. It all began when the late Rhoda Ernst asked for help in finding volunteers to do it. When Ann couldn’t find anyone in time, she did the job herself and later took over co-ordinating and scheduling a team from all over Kitchener-Waterloo. The program functioned smoothly until early 2020 when Covid-19 happened and many helpers retired. Today the team is much smaller, but Ann still keeps the program going.

She currently serves on the Justice through Service Committee and is part of a rotating Health Council team that distributes monthly food cards at the church to needy individuals and families in the community. 

When asked if there’s anything she hasn’t yet done, or would consider if the opportunity arose, Ann prefers to keep an open mind and imagination.   

“Well, you never know what will come up, which is what makes volunteering so interesting . . . My philosophy is that if there’s a need, then why not? I feel so privileged to be able to do it, because once I had my family I didn’t have to work, which is not the case with so many young parents today. Not everyone has to be paid for everything, so if you have a skill and there’s a place where you can use it to help others, for me that’s simply a part of life.”

 

By Pauline Finch

(Justice through Service Committee)

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