Asked the secret of a good life, 96-year-old Miles Memorial Hospital volunteer Nat Weston said, “Trust in God,” and then added, “You have to trust people, too.”
A volunteer at the information desk, Weston greets visitors and patients with a smile and sincere desire to help.
Connie Bright, director of volunteer services at Miles, said she counts on Weston to be a warm and welcoming presence.
“She doesn’t miss a trick,” Bright said. “She has so much energy and such genuine kindness for everybody who walks in the doors.”
Weston began volunteering at Miles about two years ago. After first working in another part of the hospital, she began filling in on the front desk and quickly realized she had found her place.
“I like people and enjoy them, and it was never a dull moment,” Weston said.
Born in Renville, Minn., a small town Weston describes as a lot like Garrison Keillor’s “Lake Wobegon,” she met her husband when she was a teacher and volunteering to direct or assist three separate church choirs, sometimes ducking out of one church at the end of the last hymn just in time to take up her duties in another nearby.
It was at a choir practice that she met her future husband. After the rehearsal, the woman who normally gave her a ride home wasn’t available. Instead, the woman asked William Weston to drop her off. William had been transferred to a nearby paper mill from his home in Maine and was new in town.
“I said ‘Gee, that is a lot of nerve,’ but I had to have a ride home,” said Weston.
That ride was the beginning of a courtship that ended in a long marriage.
When William was transferred back to Maine, Weston followed, after she finished out the school year. She lived with her husband in Dixfield for more than 30 years.
For 23 of those years, Weston taught a variety of courses in Maine schools, although her first love was music.
In 1963, she and William bought the home in Pemaquid where she still lives despite the relative isolation and the long drive to town on snowy rural roads in the winter.
“We had some snow where I came from and my father taught me how to drive. I can still hear him saying, ‘keep your foot off the brake,'” she said.
She looks back on the years warmly. “I have had a good life and people have been good to me. I have wonderful friends,” she said.
She mentioned only one regret, the loss of her husband over 30 years ago. He was a true gentleman, she said.
Asked for a last bit of advice, Weston responded, “Be willing to help people, and you can’t always get paid. I think people are learning that now. It all comes back,” she said.
