Young at heart: Elderly librarian says kids keep her alive [Video]

Here is a library worker who is older than many of the books on the shelves but she says her elementary students keep her young at heart.

Arlene Greene turns 82 this summer and she credits the kids at Wengert Elementary for her new lease on life. “When I first came here to Nevada I was sitting around, doing reading, watching T.V. and I was slowly dying and my daughter said, mom, ‘you are going to die like this. You’ve got to volunteer.’”

Greene now volunteers five days a week. Wengert’s principal, Suhaila Mustafa, says, ”She is very sweet, very kind to them.’ Mustafa says Greene resembles grandma and provides a family atmosphere.   

Greene is no push over, though, and the kids know it. A book overdue is a book overdue. And she is a stickler when it comes to saying “please and thank you.”

Greene says, “I would encourage everybody who doesn’t know what to do with themselves, who have nothing, their children have married or gone away, jump into a school. Volunteer and work with the kids. It’s like living all over again.”

Read more and watch this story: Cool at School: Young at Heart

Photo: Flickr user apdk

A life of giving: Guardsman saves lives during Katrina and in Iraq [Video]

U.S Navy Captain Robert Lansden recently dropped in on a kindergarten class in Basra, Iraq.

“I want to thank them for being such beautiful children,” he told a translator.

The children may not realize it, but Lansden played a vital role in the rebuilding of their classrooms.

For Lansden, a naval reservist, it’s been an unlikely journey that began on August 29th, 2005. The day Katrina hit his hometown of New Orleans, Lansden was captain of the U.S.N.S. Pollux, a merchant marine ship docked on the riverfront for repairs.

“I knew the city,” he recalled. “I was from there. I knew the high ground from the low ground.”

The Pollux happened to be marooned in New Orleans as Katrina roared ashore, undergoing repairs. Its engines were out, but it was loaded with several hundred thousand gallons of diesel fuel and fresh water. In a city that could not function, the Pollux was an island of modern convenience.

“I saw my own city destroyed,” Lansden remembers, “and I worked really hard to help bring that city back up.”

Only miles from the Pollux, the situation at West Jefferson Medical Center was in sharp contrast. For days, the hospital staff and patients suffered with no electricity and no running water.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Robert Lansden showed up at the hospital, offering help.

“I was blessed to have that ability and to have ridden through the storm, to already be there,” he says.

Lansden got permission from his navy bosses to share his supplies: diesel, water, even the ship itself. Dialysis machines and close to a dozen dialysis patients were actually loaded up from West Jeff and driven to the Pollux.

After the Katrina experience, Lansden volunteered for duty in another country in need of rebuilding. Today, he is director of CMOC, the U.S. Army’s Civil Military Operations Center, which rebuilds roads, schools and public buildings in some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq.

Read more and watch this great story about a great man — a true hero: La. National Guardsman saves lives during Katrina and in Iraq