Lebanon
A rough childhood, a bad car accident, a debilitating injury after being hit by a motorist in downtown Lebanon, health issues. None of those stopped her from returning to her true passion: volunteering.
“She got dealt a very tough hand many, many times,” her son Peter Cornelius, of Hartland, said recently. “But she would find a crutch of some sort and she would just keep on going.”
After all, people needed her.
Cornelius, who died at age 74 on July 8, 2016, after a period of declining health, spent decades of her life helping others through a number of volunteering opportunities in the Upper Valley.
Not only was she a bingo-calling aficionado at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, she helped run blood drives at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, acted as a meeter-and-greeter for the Lebanon Chamber of Commerce and stumped for just about every program the Upper Valley Senior Center had to offer. The list goes on and on.
“She never, ever gave up and she never complained,” said Jill Vahey, the senior center’s director. “She just wanted what was best for the agency and for the people who came through our doors.”
Seeing others happy made Cornelius happy. But life wasn’t always bright.
She was adopted into a small family on May 10,1942, in Framingham, Mass. Her mother, Phyllis Brooks Vining, died when Cornelius was young, and her father, Orland F. Stevens, married soonafter. Her stepmother “was a little rough on her,” Cornelius’ sister-in-law, Nancy Collins, of Littleton, N.H., said recently.
“I don’t think Donna ever felt that she was worthy of anything,” Collins said.
Cornelius also suffered from mental health issues, including depression, beginning at a young age, and spent time in Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s inpatient psychiatry unit at different times in her life, her family said.
She attended schools in Massachusetts and graduated from Plymouth State University with a teaching degree in the 1960s. She taught for a short while in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire before moving to Enfield with her husband, Alan Cornelius, who was a minister at churches in both Enfield and Canaan.
Together they adopted Peter in 1970. Not long after, the couple split. She never remarried.
“Her interests were in Peter and volunteering,” Collins said. “She could volunteer and help others and it made her feel worthwhile.”
In the 1970s, Cornelius and her son were involved in a bad car accident in Enfield, in which she suffered a shattered jaw. Though it took her some time to bounce back, she did.
In 2003, however, she got knocked down again. Cornelius suffered yet another vehicle-related incident, when she was hit by a motorist as she crossed South Park Street in Lebanon in a designated crosswalk. She sustained a fractured tibia, which impacted the way she walked for the remainder of her life. After surgery and hospitalization, she was homebound for several months in an upstairs Lebanon apartment with no elevator.
By the following spring, she had regained her strength and pressed the City Council to rally for improved signage and markings on crosswalks.
“Courtesy needs to be there,” she said of careless, often-distracted motorists near Lebanon’s Colburn Park. “We’ve got to be more aware that we have a lot of seniors citizens and disabled people in this downtown area.”
The cane in her hand was a constant reminder of that 2003 day, but she didn’t let it get in her way of making Lebanon a safer and better place.
Cornelius really established herself in the volunteering world in the 1990s, so when she returned to her feet, she resumed her responsibilities at area agencies.
Cornelius took great pride in heading the Upper Valley Senior Center’s telephone reassurance, or RSVP, program. Seven days a week, she would call people on a homebound list, most of whom were ill or frail, to make sure they were OK. She had such a rapport with people on the list, that when she was in declining health, they called and asked how she was.
“She genuinely enjoyed (making the calls),” her son said. “It made her feel good and it was part of her therapy for depression.”
“She was always ready to pitch in,” said Roberta Berner, the executive director of the Grafton County Senior Citizens Council, which runs 10 organizations, one being the Upper Valley Senior Center. “She was never one to give up.”
Cornelius in 2013 was awarded an Outstanding Community Ambassador award for her years of volunteer work at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. At DHMC, she did everything from A to Z, including overseeing the volunteer office when paid staff couldn’t be there, said Erle Blanchard, a fellow volunteer.
Another one of her duties included rotating magazines in waiting room lobbies.
“She’d always make sure I had a current magazine to read during my lunch break,” Blanchard said. “She was just a terrific person.”
Cornelius also volunteered in the small welcome building on the Lebanon Green, served on the senior center’s advisory council, drove those in need of a ride to wherever they needed to go and worked fundraising events, including a walkathon through the senior center called March for Meals, now re-named Step Up/Stop Hunger, which raises money for meals that are delivered to those in need.
According to a letter Cornelius sent to potential financial sponsors in 2015, she participated in the 2014 walkathon, which took place just a couple of months before she suffered an intestinal blockage and a mild stroke, a health event from which she never fully rebounded.
She said she utilized the meals program while she was down and out.
“They have been a very important part of my recovery,” she wrote in the letter. “Each step I take will be in gratitude for how those meals have helped me recover.”
Walker in hand, Cornelius took to the streets for the walk in Bristol, N.H., in May 2015.
And walker in hand, she continued to volunteer later that year.
“But she eventually grew tired,” Collins said.
Cornelius’ two grandchildren, Sarah and Brandon, of Hartland, were the “apple of her eye,” Collins said. She attended every sporting or concert-type event of theirs that she could, said her friend, Anita Garland, of Orange.
“Her grandkids were everything to her,” Garland said.
Garland regarded Cornelius as a “professional shopper” who could always spot a bargain.
“If you wanted to know where the sales were you’d ask Donna,” Garland said. “But you had to be careful when saying what you liked, because she’d get it and give it to you.”
She was big on giving, said Peter Cornelius.
And if anyone questioned that, what Donna Cornelius chose to do with her body —16 years before she died — would confirm that.
She donated her body to the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College for medical science and education research.
“She just wanted to give back,” he said.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.