THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602020145
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Ida Kay's Portsmouth
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
Who's going to do the work?
At a memorial service last week for Shirley Jiral, person after person talked about Shirley's talent for giving 100 percent of herself to a particular organization. By the time they finished, they had accounted for at least 600 percent of Shirley.
Her untimely death at age 69 left a lot of work for somebody else to do.
She worked hard for the arts and most particularly for activities for young people - Girl Scouts, Young Audiences, PTA, student exchanges. She loved the arts and, realizing the importance of music and beauty in her own life, she wanted to make them available for everyone - especially children - to enjoy. Her love of flowers and gardening translated into a longtime involvement with garden clubs.
Casa del Sol, as Shirley called the Jiral home on Redfern Lane, is in Chesapeake - but just barely. So she lived in both cities and also expanded her efforts to many regional and statewide projects.
My first encounter with her came when she started her crusade for an arts council in Chesapeake back around 1979 or '80. It took her awhile but she ultimately won over a reluctant Chesapeake City Council.
Shirley was a warm, optimistic person who made everybody feel better about the world. That ability to put a positive spin on life was her rare gift to all who knew her.
Hundreds of people will miss her personally.
But, like others who have died and left big spaces in our city recently, her work must be picked up by someone else. We don't seem to have a whole lot of young people stepping up to work for the community.
Part of the problem, of course, stems from the fact that many women now work fulltime for a paycheck. Most of them feel they don't have time for volunteer work, especially when they have children at home.
Along the way, they somehow lose sight of the old ethic that we must give to the community, must put back into the world as much as we take from it.
We just don't have enough Shirley Jirals, Jerlene Hardings and Loretta Larcombes. And this old world is beginning to show it.
It's very easy to think we've taken care of our share by writing a check. And some of us don't even do that to support the community.
However, most good things, while they need our money, cannot make it without personal involvement on a volunteer basis by folks like Shirley.
Government can't do the job. When left to bureaucrats, charity and the arts become dry and meaningless, another job. They take their enthusiasm from warm, generous volunteers.
I know about full-time work, having done it all my life, and I know how smug I feel when I write a check, thinking I've paid my dues.
But I also know there really is no excuse for doing nothing else.
Listening to the litany of Shirley's activities, I wondered what to say to motivate people to step up and take the place of those who are no longer here.
Sometimes we fail to give any time because we can't give a lot of time. In fact, most groups would like to have whatever you can give.
You don't have to spend every waking minute working on a project. Give an hour a week or three hours a month. Most of us waste a lot more time than that.
The most important motivation probably is a sense of obligation.
Take the activities Shirley Jiral was involved in.
Some of us send our kids to Scouts or to some other organization, but we never participate ourselves. We like the idea of them having Young Audiences performances at school, but we don't get out there and help keep the organization going.
Some of us enjoy the arts, managing to get to openings in time to eat the food prepared by volunteers but never in time to do any of the work.
Most of us truly enjoy flowers. We like to see blooming things planted in public spaces. We enjoy arrangements of colorful flowers at public events. But do we plant them or do we arrange them for others?
Most of us should feel very obligated to do something in return for the benefits.
But most of us don't.
People, who like Shirley Jiral give 600 percent, are rare in this last decade of the 20th century, a sort of holdover from the first half of the century when service to community was a very important part of many lives.
We probably won't see the likes of them any time in the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, somebody needs to take their places.
Who will do it? by CNB