Steve Frey is not the type of person who can easily sit still in retirement and watch television.
"A year or so after I retired, I got bored," Frey, 70, told the Mount Vernon News. "I can't stand sitting around."
The retired manufacturing engineer at Dana Corporation in Fredericktown went back to work for a while and then began volunteering.
First, he worked at a men's emergency homeless shelter at St. Paul's Parish House in Mount Vernon, now at 401 West Vine St.
"I was on the board for several years," said Frey. "I'm still on committees, writing policies and stuff like that."
He later expanded his work to help build The Escape Zone, a teen center on North Main Street.
"I did a lot of tearing apart and fixing that up," he said.
Then it was on Hope Now Furniture Bank, where he has worked in the woodshop repairing furniture and building furniture that is then donated to those in need.
"No money changes hands," Frey said. "It's just an awesome group of people."
For his volunteer work, Frey was named 2021 Knox County Outstanding Senior Citizen by the Ohio District 5 Area Agency on Aging.
"I just love helping people," Frey said. "My life changed when I started volunteering. I started really thinking less about physical things. It's so rewarding to get a simple 'thank you' from people that are desolate, either at the shelter or the kids that go to the Escape Zone."
When he started volunteering, Frey said, one of his fears was that he would encounter people who abuse the system.
"There are people that do that," he said. "That turns me off their using resources that could be used by someone who really needs them."
But he found that most of the people who receive help really do need it.
"Like at the shelter, most of them have issues, either mental issues or addiction," he said. "They are from broken families or their families have given up on them. I just don't understand the hate and the negativity around the world right now."
In addition to helping people, volunteering gives Frey a sense of purpose. And on top of all that, it's fun, he said.
"We come in here and we don't just work, we have fun. We enjoy each other," he said of his fellow volunteers. "We laugh; we tell jokes. We just have fun."
Full cutline for print: Pictured left to right: Knox County Commissioners, Thom Collier and Bill Pursel; Joe Springer, The Winter Sanctuary Homeless Shelter Advocate/Operations Manager; Steve Frye, Knox County 2021 Outstanding Senior Citizen Awardee, Nicole Williams, VP of Outreach and Development at the Area Agency on Aging; Todd Hill, Administrative Assistant to Knox County Mayor Matt Starr; David Perry, board president of The Winter Sanctuary Homeless Shelter.
