By Laura Ingalls
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Lucille Michelson says she'll stop volunteering at UMC when her 1971 Mercedes quits running.
Michelson, 90 years old and 5 feet tall, sits on two pillows so she can see over the steering wheel.
She drives the car two miles from her home to the University Medical Center where she works three days a week. There, she greets people at the reception desk two of those days and spends the other in a volunteer sewing group.
Michelson celebrated her birthday two weeks ago with her friends and co-workers at the hospital. Michelson's tanned face and impish smile make her appear younger than her age.
She has logged more than 16,000 hours in her 24 years as a volunteer. Last year she won the Dorothy F. Novak UMC Distinguished Volunteer of the Year award for her work.
"If I have any special projects she's the first one to volunteer," says Barbara Beitz, manager of UMC's volunteer services.
"She's just touched so many lives here with all her years of service," Beitz says. "She's seen the hospital change from a provincial hospital to medical center."
Michelson, who volunteered at the hospital in its first year of operation, has seen thousands of patients come through its front doors. Administrators and fellow volunteers say Michelson puts extra effort into her job.
She led UMC's sewing group for 16 years, making baby bonnets, layettes and heart-shaped pillows for heart patients.
Virginia Horky, a UMC volunteer, says Michelson, who the staff refers to as "Mike", always makes sure the first baby of the year gets a layette, and until she suffered medical problems last year, insisted on delivering mail to patients.
"The only time any of the rest of us got to deliver the mail was when Mike was on one of her trips," Horky says.
Michelson is known at the hospital for her travel stories, especially those about her job as a service club director for the army during World War II. Her blue eyes sparkle as she recounts her 30 years organizing entertainment for soldiers abroad.
"It was the best job a woman could have. I had men working for me," she says.
Michelson earned a degree in dietetics and worked in that field until the stock market crash of 1929. During the Depression, she taught learning-disabled children in a Detroit school. Then a co-worker asked her if she wanted to run an army cafeteria.
"I said, 'When do I start?' She gave me the form and 10 days later I was hired."
This stateside job didn't last long. Michelson joined the Red Cross as a U.S. Army service club director in World War
II. For 30 years, she operated service clubs in Burma, Japan and India.
"World War II is the best thing that ever happened to me or I'd still be teaching those kids,"
Her first service club post in Burma wasn't glamorous. Her first meal off the plane consisted of K-rations. She had to bathe in a nearby river and sleep in a tent with only a dirt floor.
"I think that's what got me so nothing bothered me," she says. "I don't think any woman has as much to look back on as I do,"
After the war, she continued to work in Japan as a tour guide and service club director for servicemen and celebrities.
"My service club was open 24 hours a day. We worked around the clock."
In 1971, Michelson retired and moved to the United States. She came to Arizona with friends who wintered in Tucson and decided to stay.
Michelson has been all over the world and visited more than 70 countries Ä many by ocean liner because she doesn't like flying. She has taken several cruises around South America and has been to China, Yugoslavia and New Zealand.
"I always said it was one hell of a life. I never married. I never had time."