5 Questions and a Secret: Waldport tax volunteer celebrates 30th year just as deadline arrives

By KATHLEEN O’CONNOR/Lincoln Chronicle

Volunteering, learning something new, making time to do something fun are some proven ways to have a successful post-retirement life and Barbara Kuehlwein has embraced them all.

Kuehlwein just celebrated her 30^th year of volunteering as an AARP tax aide, and early this month her colleagues honored her with a party before they began their afternoon session of helping people with their taxes. Kuehlwein also has a long history of volunteering at Waldport Food Share and many of her friends from there joined in to celebrate her accomplishment.

Kuehlwein and her husband, Tom, moved to Waldport in 1955 when Tom got a job as an industrial arts teacher at Waldport High School after graduating from Oregon State University. Back then, there were an abundance of young teachers and the large high schools in the Willamette Valley all required two years of experience. After two years in Waldport a job opened in Albany, but Tom didn’t get it. After another year, the job opened again and he was recruited, but this time he turned it down and proceeded to teach in Waldport for the next 32 years.

While her husband was teaching, Kuehlwein was busy taking care of their four children and a few others as well. Until her youngest child started junior high she always had two or three children of other teachers under her care. Then she started working in the school system herself, mostly as the records clerk at the high school, retiring one year after Tom.

Question: How did volunteering become such a focus in your life?

Answer: My husband’s background included volunteer work. His family was very involved in their church … he started as an usher when he was just 14 years old. Then, since he was a teacher we quickly learned that the high school needed volunteers in a myriad of ways. It seemed that we were simply needed on many fronts.

We belonged to the Waldport Lions Club and spent years taking care of Governor Patterson Park. The Lions Club was the first organization in Oregon to participate in the “Adopt-a-Park” program. At first we helped extensively with landscape maintenance, but over time the role changed to being mostly litter control. Tom and I were once recognized by the Parks Department as “volunteers of the year” for our work.

Tom and I both started as tax aides in 1993. I like numbers, so I am still here. He lasted just one year but made up for that in many ways — he was a scout master, a volunteer ambulance driver, and was part of the Waldport Citizens Patrol.

I started volunteering at Food Share in 2012 simply because my neighbor, Donna Weneneroch, worked there, and she needed help. She has since passed away, but I am still there. I also make baby quilts – usually four or five each year — for the Washington Federal Bank Christmas basket program.

Q: What do you enjoy the most about your volunteer work?

A: Interacting with the other volunteers and with the people we serve is continuously enjoyable; they are so diverse and interesting. I am constantly learning from them. I also must continuously learn new things in each position, especially as a tax aide. We are each assigned a laptop for use during the tax season, so I have had to keep up on my computer skills. Each year we are required to pass three tests, including completing one practice tax return. This year I missed one point on my practice return, but if it had been a real return our quality control person would have caught the error.

Q: How do you spend your time when you are not volunteering?

A: I live out of town a bit so I have enough space to have a big garden. I have already planted one zucchini plant and one acorn squash plant. Gardening is one of my favorite things to do, even if it is a lot of work. I have several fruit trees, and canning keeps me busy in the summer and fall.

For the past few years, I have been working hard to “declutter.” My husband and I would both qualify as packrats. We moved into our home in 1958 and over the years we simply didn’t discard much, thinking almost everything could have a use in the future. Our attic and barn became impossibly stuffed. The attic at one time just had a pathway to the window in case someone needed to escape a fire. I’m happy to say I’ve gotten it cleared out, and now I’m working on the barn. Only occasionally have I felt like I got rid of something I should have kept.

My four children have all moved from Waldport so I travel a bit to see them.

Q: Did you file your family’s taxes throughout the years?

A: Yes, every year. In fact, I just recently discarded our returns from 1955 through 1990. I know I could discard even more; I’ll do that soon! I kept the return from the first year we were married. Tom made $3,275 that year. Now most people make much more than that in a month. Our rent was $50 per month.

Q: Life was quite different when you were a child. How would you describe it?

A: Everything was so very different. My father immigrated from Denmark. My mother was the first white child born in Cook County, N.D. in 1900. I was born in Minnesota, then moved to Washington state when I was nine because my father got a job helping to build the Hanford power facility. I was 11 when that work ended and we moved to Silverton, following my mom’s sister there. My dad was a carpenter and jobs were very scarce. Virtually all the food on our table was food we canned ourselves or hunted ourselves.

Tell us a secret

My mother had a dime from 1853. It was a treasure for her. She once told me that there were multiple times when money was so tight that she seriously considered spending it to feed the family. Back then 10 cents would have purchased 50 pounds of potatoes. She didn’t spend it, though and now it’s in my safety deposit box. It is such a testament to her resolve to “make do.”

• Kathleen O’Connor is a Waldport freelance writer who can be reached via email at kmoc8916@gmail.com