Volunteer of the Month
Volunteer of the Month
January 2001
Richard Hensley
by Ralph Cherry

Alamo PC Organization: HOME > About Us > Awards > Volunteers Of The Month
 
I have another volunteer to tell you about this month - another one of those quiet ones who simply do the job they volunteered to do, without the need of fanfare or accolades.  Dick Hensley was therefore surprised that we wanted to feature him for this month’s Volunteer of the Month.   Dick helps staff the office at the Resource Center on Thursday mornings – answering the phone, helping people who walk in the door, and helping with the record keeping in the office.  His office mates say he is very helpful with people, always leaving them satisfied that he did his best to answer all their questions.

Dick was a little reticent to talk about himself, so I asked some provocative questions and got him to describing himself and reminiscing about the past.  He came up with three interesting stories about his time with the Social Security Administration, but I’ll only be able to tell you one of those - partly because of censorship. I’ll let you wonder about the other stories!

Dick has a high level of interest in music (he was a band director for a short time) and in performance.  One of the ways he indulges that is by volunteering as an usher at local performances at the Majestic, the Empire, Laurel Auditorium, and Cockrell Theater.  Here in December for example, he’s going to usher at performances of Cabaret and of the Messiah.  He also enjoys festivals, and regularly attends the Folk Life Festival, the Dickens Festival in Galveston and others.

While working with the Social Security Administration, Dick came into contact with computers for the first time.  He used mainframe computers there in a very focused utilization.  He says that computers have drastically changed the flow of information in the SS Administration in the past few years, making it much easier to process a claim. Before long a person will be able to actually apply for SS benefits over a secure Internet website.

Which brings us to our story. On one of the Indian reservations, some of the people couldn’t read and write English, so they used a thumbprint to sign documents.  One of the SS staffers noticed that the thumbprint for one person receiving Social Security Benefits seemed to be shrinking as the months went by.  They investigated face to face, and discovered that a relative had cut off the thumb of the man after he had died, and was still using it for the official thumbprint in order to receive a check from the SS office!

Dick has been a member of AlamoPC since 1993, and has volunteered at the desk for much of that time. One of the benefits of membership, he says, is asking questions and sharing information about computers with fellow members. His interests include WordPerfect, e-mail, the Internet, and photo editing. He uses Outlook Express with the ISP stic.net. He has a high interest in photography, preferring pictures of scenery, flowers, and other “beautiful things”.  He now uses a 750MHz Gateway with 128 Mg of Ram and a 13 Gig hard drive.