Volunteer stays active at 71 despite knee surgery

Athletes take a seat on the bench with a sprained ankle or a muscle tweak.

Donald Monk doesn't let knee replacement surgery slow him down.

A day after his twice-weekly rehabilitation workout at Coastal Orthopaedics and Spinal Surgery, he was back at his volunteer job - cooking collards for the Thanksgiving dinner at Religious Community Services.

Monk, who is 71, says the volunteer hours he puts in each month are good for him, as are his efforts to help the less fortunate.

"I couldn't sit around and look at the four walls," he says. "I have to keep going."

He does not want to take a seat in the  retirement rocking chair.

He's a retired Marine, who met his wife, Archabell, in New Bern during one of two tours at Cherry Point.

Like most veterans, he has a memory for dates and times.

"We've been married 50 years and three weeks," he says.

As for his Cherry Point duty, he recalls being a guard at the main gate, "before they had all those traffic lights."

He says he was prepared for duty as a Marine from early in life.

He was born in 1937 and grew up on the hard streets of Wilmington, Del., and learned about discipline at an early age - raised by a single mother, an aunt and uncle, along with his grandmother.

Catholic school and nuns were instrumental in his early life.

"I used to go to church twice on Sunday," he said. Catholic services were followed by attendance at the Free Will Baptist Church.

"In those days, if you didn't go to church, you didn't get to go to the Sunday afternoon movies," he says, laughing. He says those early movies cost 11 cents for admission.

By the time he was a teenager in the early 1950s, Monk decided he had enough of school and wanted to make some money. He got a job with Western Union.

"I do believe I was the first black Western Union man in Wilmington," he says.

He was not the office help, but rather the deliveryman, wheeling his bicycle through the streets of town, messages in hand.

"They don't do that anymore," he says.

He joined the Marine reserves "to get out of town" for weekends. A year later, he enlisted as a regular.

"I thought it was fun," he says with a laugh. "Until I got to boot camp."

The military fulfilled his dreams of travel, from Parris Island to various duty stations across the country, as well as Japan. He rose to staff sergeant and along the way had a variety of duties that ranged from managing an NCO club to infantry duty and shore patrol. His weapon was a machine gun.

Military travel also included duty in Vietnam in the 1960s. Twice he was wounded - shot in the leg and, later, a more serious and nearly fatal injury when shrapnel from a land mine hit him. Twice he received the Purple Heart.

The last injury closed his 15-year regular military career and he worked for 25 years at Cherry Point at what was then NADEP, the civilian depot, working on aircraft engines.

After he retired in 1998, a St. Paul Catholic Church nun, Sister Angela Mary, asked him to volunteer at the Religious Community Services.

"She knew I loved to cook and always wanted me to come down here, but I was still working at Cherry Point," he says. He calls himself a "Mr. Fixer," making dishes from scratch.

"That comes partly from military service and partly (my) grandmother," he says.

He's been a steady volunteer for the past seven years, served a term as a board member and taught home-school classes about cooking. A key to a good meal, he says, is the prep work.

"Once I volunteered, I never thought about leaving," he says. "I'm doing something for myself. I am doing something I like. And I love when people come by and say, "Donald, you must have fixed that.'"

Then, there is a smile.