Franklin Park resident using senior years to help others

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Helen Hawley, 85, of Franklin Park, helps Anita Edl apply for a reduction in her gas and electric bills. (Mark Lawton/Sun-Times Media)

Updated: March 24, 2012 8:30AM

Helen Hawley, 85, sits at a kitchen table at a house in Franklin Park, with a portable printer resting on a television table nearby.

“I need your Social Security number,” she said to Anita Edl, who sits opposite her.

Using two fingers, Hawley types the number on her laptop computer.

At an age when her contemporaries are long retired or depending on others for help, Hawley volunteers. Every week, Hawley drives to the homes of seniors who can no longer get out of the house and helps them apply for government aid.

On a recent Wednesday, Hawley helped Edl renew her application for LIHEAP, a program that subsidizes the gas and electric bills of low-income people.

Edl used to work putting together mailings, collating pages for a printer and assembling items such as vices and refrigerator wheels that were sold by Sears. She raised her two children in Franklin Park and now has five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

She hurt her shoulder in a fall a few years back. Now she uses a metal cane to move around. Hanging from the top is a portable phone.

“We sit and jabber a lot,” Edl said.

“I’ve been coming here for years,” Hawley said.

“Ever since I can’t get to the corner anymore,” Edl said.

Hawley started volunteering under the auspices of Leyden Family Services and the RSVP program at Triton College in 1996.

She grew up on the South Side of Chicago. Her father was a purchasing agent for an excavation company in the Loop. Her mother was primarily a housewife, though she worked in an office at Carson Pirie Scott & Co. for 10 years.

Hawley completed a one-year course at Fox Secretarial College on the South Side and attended night school at Northwestern University until she got married.

“I pretty much worked all my life until I was 66 (as a legal secretary),” Hawley said.

That was in 1992. A widow, she only quit working to care for her mother, who lived with her.

“She died in December 1994,” Hawley said. “I was looking for something to do.”

She found it at a program put on by the Department on Aging about benefits for seniors. She attended the meeting, where a supervisor from Leyden Family Services asked if she would be interested in volunteering.

She underwent three days of training on benefits for seniors and began volunteering. Since 1996, she drives out once a week to visit homebound seniors.

“Food stamps,” Hawley said. “For real low-income (people), they can get Medicare paid for, LIHEAP to get credit on gas and electric bills, Circuit Breaker to get a small grant on rent or property tax you paid the year before.”

Her clients have to be at least 60 years of age to qualify for benefits, unless they are disabled. Edl, for example, is 83 and has lived in Franklin Park for more than 50 years.

“I can remember when we didn’t have paved streets here,” Edl said.

“I’m older than you, kiddo,” Hawley said.

“You still get around,” Edl replied. “I don’t.”

Many of the people Hawley assists she now considers friends.

“These people I’ve been calling on for years,” Hawley said. “They call and say I have to apply for an exemption on real estate (taxes).  Can you help me do that?”

She adds, “I can’t just sit at home and do nothing.”