ARLINGTON – Jerry Vanney sipped from a sample cup of roasted corn chowder.
The kitchen staff looked on anxiously.
“Is it good, Jerry?” asked Terra Kelly, Cascade Valley Hospital’s food service coordinator.
He took another taste, then flashed a thumbs up. His mouth curled into a huge smile.
He knows the routine.
He’s been doing it for 22 years.
As Cascade Valley’s longest-running volunteer, Vanney has donated thousands of hours to the Arlington hospital. In addition to critiquing the Cascade Cafe’s soup, he also helps cook, scrubs tables, cleans the fryer, puts away supplies and delivers meals to patients.
“I think Jerry is the heart and soul of the hospital and especially our department,” Kelly said. “He’s always ready to put a smile on our face or smack us into line.”
For Vanney, volunteering is more than a way to pass time. It’s a career.
Vanney, 41, is developmentally disabled. He can’t read or write and he usually speaks just a few words at a time. His mom, Norine Vanney, attributes his disabilities partly to genetics and partly to neglect he endured as an infant with his biological mother.
Vanney said her son was skin and bones, weighing just 4 pounds, when she adopted him at 31/2 months old. He had weighed more than 8 pounds at birth.
He couldn’t cry.
Norine Vanney said a doctor warned her not to adopt the baby because he didn’t have a shot at life.
Jerry Vanney made one.
In between surgeries for various medical conditions, he went to school and trained for the Special Olympics. In 1980, he swam in the International Special Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., with his mouth wired shut from facial surgery.
Five years later, he graduated from Marysville-Pilchuck High School and ventured out into the world of work.
He got a late-night janitorial job in Everett, but his parents didn’t like driving him there at 11 p.m. from their Arlington home. So he moved on to a restaurant in Arlington.
That job ended quickly one night when his dad, the late Don Vanney Sr., went to pick him up and overheard two young co-workers pressuring him to drink. They had written curse words on his treasured International Special Olympics jacket.
After that, Vanney’s parents arranged for him to volunteer at the hospital.
He started off in maintenance, then moved to housekeeping before settling into the dietary office.
Initially, he began work at 7 a.m. But he liked his job so much that he rose at 5 a.m. Norine Vanney now drops him off at the hospital at 6 a.m. Tuesday through Thursday. He leaves Mondays and Fridays open to train for the Special Olympics. When he’s through with his daily duties, usually around 3 p.m., a co-worker drives him home.
They also throw him a birthday party each December that is attended by everyone from the hospital’s chief executive to doctors and nurses.
“I love working with Jerry,” cashier Onia Courtney said as Vanney hustled by. “He’s great. He’s always very positive – never negative. You ask him to do something and he just does it. He doesn’t complain. He knows when you’re feeling up or down, and sometimes he’ll just come over and give you a hug because he thinks you need it.”
When Norine Vanney looks back on her son’s life – his transformation from a mute, malnourished baby to one of Cascade Valley Hospital’s most valued volunteers – she smiles.
“He may not be president of the United States,” she said. “But he certainly has a place in this world.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
