The Pennsylvania Association of School Retirees (PASR) and a group of teacher retirees in Blair County, consisting of around 100 members from all the school districts in the county held a survey for the volunteer efforts of retired teachers.
Mr. William Harshman, retired Ag department teacher at Tyrone Area High School, filled out that survey and low and behold, he was voted as the ‘Volunteer of the Year’ in both the PASR central regional survey and also the county survey, which involves six counties here in central Pennsylvania. The two awards were given October 16 and 17.
In the central region last year there were nearly 47,000 hours of volunteer service rendered to communities by retired teachers. Harshman said that he couldn’t recall how many hours he actually had, but noted that it wasn’t those types of numbers. Perhaps he just isn’t a boastful man.
Harshman never thought that he would win such an award when he turned in his survey to the groups, so he was quite humbled by being presented the volunteer award.
But, Harshman isn’t a man who enjoys sitting around in complete boredom – although well rounded and a family man, he found plenty of time to participate in some amazing accomplishments, or services as he would explain it.
Harshman went to Haiti this past summer with the Sinking Valley Presbyterian Church group and earlier this past year he had gone down to Lancaster County where he worked for several days on a construction project for the Wycliff Bible Translators group. In that case, Harshman traveled along with the Bellwood Olivet Baptist Church.
Granted, Harshman is a member of St. Matthew’s Catholic Church, but he was helping the Sinking Valley Presbyterian and Olivet Baptist Church and some of their mission work. But, whatever volunteering needs done at St. Matthew’s, Harshman is first in line.
Harshman serves on the Parrish Council at St. Matthew’s and is currently the president of the council. He has also worked with the Bosnian Refugee Family Program.
He also serves on some other committees in the area that deals with agricultural work. Harshman’s been working behind the scenes with a Huntingdon County Safety Coalition aimed towards Huntingdon County and bringing agricultural safety work to young people throughout the county.
Harshman has also been doing some of that work, although not on a volunteer basis, but through Penn State, where he has been working on some agricultural safety kind of work as well.
He may be humbled by winning such an award, but it is obviously well deserving. A man like Harshman always feels that there are others that deserve recognition also.
“I guess my volunteer work caught the committee’s attention, but I’m sure there were countless others that had lots of volunteer hours,” said Harshman. “Larry & Linda Strong were two people, but many others were deserving. I was very surprised about getting the phone call about winning the award.”
Harshman continued, “Anytime you’re recognized by people for things you’re doing you certainly feel honored, but I always feel more humbled than anything. The kind of things I’ve done all my life that I consider routine, others feel are significant and have made this kind of recognition available.”
“I always feel like there’s others that are more deserving truthfully, so it’s an honor but I’m always humbled at that as well,” said Harshman.
One thing that assisted in boosting Harshman’s volunteer efforts and what it means to him was when he traveled to Poland several years ago while employed at the Tyrone Area School District.
He said that communist countries did not have a volunteer program and the people of Poland were shocked that people in our country gave so freely of their time to help other people. Volunteering was something Harshman grew up with and when he saw the opposite end of the scale in former communist Poland, where they had to learn about volunteering and doing community service – it wasn’t something communists went out and did.
“I think it’s what being a good citizen is about, if you’re going to be a good American, why you try to help people,” said Harshman. “I learned at an early age from participating in 4-H and FFA that helping people in the community was important, and therefore it just became a way of life.”
That methodology is much like the community service component of confirmation that churches put into place where there’s an effort just to have community service work by young people, because when you get out of school, you have a community to belong to and you feel much stronger in that community.
Harshman said that the community here, where he use to live and where he grew up deserves his volunteer time. He said he feels a strong tie to the Tyrone community because during the 17 wonderful years at TAHS, the community offered wonderful support for everything he wanted to do.
“Yes, I do feel like I owe the community some of my time because the community has been good for me and my family,” said Harshman. “But at the same time, it’s one of those natural things that I’d probably be sharing my time with whoever I could because that’s the way I am.”
Harshman said that some things had to give with all this volunteer work. Over the years he’s tried to keep work and family on an even keel. The way he has found time to do volunteer work was by giving up some things of personal time. Whether that is good or bad, Harshman said he enjoys the volunteer activities and community service immensely – probably more than personal priorities.
Harshman is not a boastful man and was really shocked at receiving both awards. He wishes everyone who gives their time somewhere along the line could be recognized or patted on the back. Harshman, as the award winner, offered all volunteers a well deserved pat on the back for their efforts.
“I don’t think I did this myself, there’s a lot of other volunteers out there that need to know their efforts were worth while too,” said Harshman.
