{"id":30869,"date":"2022-02-24T19:39:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T00:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30869"},"modified":"2022-02-24T19:43:06","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T00:43:06","slug":"durkin-95-wears-heart-on-her-sleeve-as-she-continues-work-to-help-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/durkin-95-wears-heart-on-her-sleeve-as-she-continues-work-to-help-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Durkin, 95, wears \u201cheart\u201d on her sleeve as she continues work to help community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If she sees an area that needs a helping hand, and she\u2019s able to do so, Alma Durkin isn\u2019t afraid of getting her hands dirty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in the United Kingdom during the Second World War, she signed up to be a \u201cLand Girl\u201d to keep the country \u2013 and the Commonwealth \u2013 fed during the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a long-time resident of Aurora, she drew upon these experiences of getting \u201cstuck in\u201d at the start of the global pandemic to mobilize her Ardrill Crescent community, armed with little more than an iPad, to help stock shelves at the Aurora Food Pantry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now living in seniors\u2019 community on Aurora\u2019s east side, she didn\u2019t let being a newcomer in a bustling new complex get in the way of continuing her community-building efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month \u2013 and this time armed with just a bit of yarn and some nimble fingers \u2013 she had almost her entire community wearing their hearts on their sleeves to raise much-needed funds for the Heart & Stroke Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo tell you the truth, I was kind of down in the dumps and my son-in-law said, \u2018Alma needs a project,\u2019\u201d says Ms. Durkin with characteristic modesty. \u201cI did something for the Food Bank and different things like that previously and he knew that. He thought with Valentine\u2019s Day coming up, it would be a good idea to do something and I just got a ball of red yarn and started knitting hearts. I didn\u2019t have a pattern or anything, but it was pretty easy and I started with 10 hearts and they just went, so I just kept doing it. I couldn\u2019t tell you how many I made as I didn\u2019t keep count of it, but we ended up with quite a lot of money.\u201d
The initiative, which was carried out solely within The Meadows of Aurora, raised nearly $600 for the Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Durkin, who was a resident of Ardill Crescent for nearly 40 years, moved into The Meadows last year when it was clear her husband of 72 years, himself a veteran of the Second World War, needed more help than she was able to provide as a sole caregiver at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a tough adjustment for the gregarious senior, but after a few stops and starts, she found her community within her new community and loves the place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a wonderful place,\u201d she says. \u201cThe people are just beautiful, kind \u2013 and the food is amazing, but that is besides the point!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the people were more than willing to help with her initiative, she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody loved the hearts and they just kept asking each other, \u2018Where did you get that?\u2019 The girl at the front desk kept telling me, \u2018They\u2019re just going like crazy. It went really, really well. I was amazed and so happy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alma\u2019s \u201cproject\u201d helped her adjust and she says she is now \u201cteasing\u201d her fellow residents and staff on future projects that might catch her eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEaster is coming, Christmas is coming, this is coming, that is coming, I am making jokes about the whole thing, but I don\u2019t know what the next one will be, but I am sure I am going to be up to something because this is a huge complex with a lot of people,\u201d she says. \u201cI could see a project could get to be really quite big. I don\u2019t know if I would be able to keep up with that or not, but I might have to ask for help. The hearts were all done with just my fingers, and I am 95, you know!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If she sees an area that needs a helping hand, and she\u2019s able to do so, Alma Durkin isn\u2019t afraid of getting her hands dirty. Growing up in the United Kingdom during the Second World War, she signed up to be a \u201cLand Girl\u201d to keep the country \u2013 and the Commonwealth \u2013 fed during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/2022-02-24-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-81T","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-30 04:08:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}