THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 2, 1995 TAG: 9502280071
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VICKI LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
SHE CAME IN DURING the last five minutes of the third day of volunteer orientation, but Mary Sewell got the job anyway.
With a name like Sewell, she was a shoo-in for a volunteer position at the Sewells Point Clinic.
Now, after 17 years of volunteer work there, Sewell has decided to retire from the Red Cross position at the clinic, which coincidentally shares her name, and see what else the world has to offer her.
The clinic, at the corner of Taussig and Hampton Boulevard, serves military personnel and their families. The American Red Cross has a tradition of providing volunteers there. While at Sewells Point, she worked in all facets of the clinic operations from the pharmacy to OB-GYN. What she enjoyed the most about the job, she says, were the people she met and got to know, both staff members and patients.
Shirley Bisciglia, service center coordinator for the Naval Base Red Cross, says that Sewell has a way with people.
``She would tell the young people that if they worked very hard that one day they would have a clinic named after them, too,'' Bisciglia said.
Sewell decided to become a volunteer in 1977. Her husband, Terrell C. Sewell, had died recently and her son, Terrell Jr., was becoming an independent teen.
Now this 73-year-old mother and grandmother said she will devote more time to her other hobbies, such as gardening.
She is a member of the Master Gardener Program, part of the Virginia Extension Agency. She also is a member of the Hampton Roads Obedience Training Club and was involved with the Tidewater Kennel Club. For a while, she trained and showed Boston terriers. When her last dog died, however, she decided to give that up.
One of the projects of the Master Gardeners is the Weyenoak Wildflower Preserve at the end of Gates Avenue in West Ghent. Sewell helps keep the preserve free of weeds.
``My thing is vegetables,'' she said, ``So I just pull weeds. I don't get too deep into flowers.''
Each year, Sewell maintains a 40-by-75-foot vegetable garden at her home off of Chesapeake Boulevard.
``If I can't eat it,'' she said, ``I don't grow it.''
Sewell says that during the gardening season she spends about four days a week in her garden. She doesn't can or put up the plethora of vegetables she grows. What she can't eat, she gives away.
``I look out for my neighbors,'' she said. ``I don't sell anything.''
Last year, however, Sewell wasn't able to grow her garden. In April, she broke both of her kneecaps when she tripped on a curb while walking her son's dog. The accident left her in full leg casts for two months. She puts a positive spin on her forced convalescence, however:
``I enjoyed my laziness.''
Sewell, who is from Connecticut originally, met her husband in Norfolk while they were both in the Navy during World War II. She had enlisted in 1942 and ``stayed for the duration of the war.''
She joined the Navy, with her father's encouragement and over her mother's objections, because ``someone waved a flag in front of my face. When we were kids we were patriotic.''
Her brother Jim fought in D-Day and her brother Joe served in the South Pacific during the war. She also had a sister.
She and Terrell C. Sewell, who was a lieutenant commander, were married in September 1945. The ceremony was held in North Carolina, she said, because ``it was easier,'' and they decided to stay in Norfolk after Terrell got out of the Navy in June 1946 because ``I like fishing and you can't see the Chesapeake Bay from Connecticut.''
Their son was born shortly before they marked 17 years of marriage. In fact, the Sewells brought him home from the hospital on the day of their 17th wedding anniversary in 1962.
Terrell Jr. is now deputy chief of probation and parole in Manassas. He has a 3-year-old daughter and another child on the way. She sees her son and his family frequently.
Now that she has retired from the clinic, Sewell said her deepest impressions of the place were ``the way the patients were treated and their concern for enlisted people ... and the way they treated me.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by GARY C. KNAPP
In her 17 years as a volunteer at the Sewells Point Clinic, Mary
Sewell worked in all facets of the operation.
by CNB