Dick Graen has served 4 years as a Chapter Community Service Team Director. Financial Representative Maxine Veatch refers to Dick as one of the “most dedicated and active Chapter Leaders” that she has known. As the Community Service Team Director for the past 4 years Dick has been the go to person for all the Care Abounds in Communities projects. Community Service Teams saw Dick as their friend and guide who would always be there when they needed him. He has often been referred to as the “glue” that held the Community Service Teams together and kept them on task. Whenever our Lutheran Community Service Team needed a model Community Service Team Director to hold up as an example to others in the Greater Iowa Region, Dick was the first person that would come to mind. Without a doubt, Dick Graen exemplified what Thrivent envisioned when the Community Service Team Director position was created. Obviously looking for more to do, Dick has also organized and administered Join Hands Day projects for the Black Hawk County Chapter and was the very first Chapter Leader to sign on as a volunteer for the Chapter’s 2006 Thrivent Builds home. Dick has been an avid supporter of Habitat for Humanity for the past 16 years and has used his skill as an electrician to help wire many, many Habitat homes. He saw the Thrivent Builds program as the perfect marriage of two of his volunteer loves. Dick and Linnea have also done a masterful job of matching their love of volunteering for various organizations with the outreach funding available through Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.
Dick and Linnea’s involvement as volunteers in their church and community started early in their married life which now spans over 50 years. Their 3 children spurred their early interest in volunteering with such organizations as Cub Scouts, Little League, and Girl Scouts. Their involvement at Nazareth Lutheran Church also began over 50 years ago when they moved to the area shortly after they were married. Their involvement has included service on church council and numerous boards and committees and teaching both Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. Linnea has been active in the women’s organization (currently WELCA) and Dick in the Mens Club. Dick has always been a driver of the church van and has used his training as an electrician to head up repair and installation projects too numerous to mention. Linnea has also been actively engaged in the quilting group that provides quilts to Lutheran World Relief and to support quilt auctions being conducted as fundraisers for various Lutheran Bible Camps. Dick and Linnea currently serve together on the U.S. and World Mission Committee, Altar Guild, and Shepherd’s Staff Visitation Committee.
Dick and Linnea’s interest in volunteering in other parts of the world started when they were on a teacher exchange in Australia in 1983. Linnea taught and Dick took a year’s leave of absence from his job as an electrician at Cedar Falls Utilities to accompany and assist her with various projects at the school where she was a teacher. In later years they have returned to Australia to help clean, paint, repair, and cook at several different Bible Camps.
Dick’s volunteer travels got more serious when he retired in 1991 and joined a group called Heartland Volunteers. Dick traveled with the group to Florida when Hurricane Andrew devastated that area and also went to California to provide assistance after an earthquake damaged the Northridge area. When Linnea retired in 1994, they really got serious about becoming volunteer travelers. Since that time they have followed their love of Bible Camps to volunteer their services at Holden Village in the State of Washington and have made more trips than they can remember to “help out” as they would say at Ingham/Okoboji Lutheran Camp, Riverside Bible Camp, and Camp EWALU, all ELCA Bible Camps in Iowa.
They have also made two trips to New Orleans to provide clean up assistance following Hurricane Katrina. Another project in response to Hurricane Katrina was Dick’s efforts to convert an RV into a shower/laundry mobile which he then helped drive to Peace Lutheran Church in Slidell, Louisiana so that volunteers in that area would have a better opportunity to take a shower or wash their clothes.
In 1998, their desire to also volunteer outside the U.S. resulted in a four month trek to Nepal where Linnea taught in a school for missionary children and Dick used his electrician skills to do needed wiring in a hospital and install a much needed generator. Following that effort, they signed on with Self Help International for a trip to Ghana. During that trip, Dick helped to wire a Self Help International office building and installed a transformer at the Good News Theological Seminary. While in Africa they took note of the great need for books that existed there. When they returned to Iowa they led an effort to gather books for use in Africa and then got in their van and drove the books to a distribution center in Minnesota. They have also since traveled to Bolivia where they worked with World Mission Prayer League missionaries to improve their Christian Radio/Television studio. They have helped to build a second story on a missionaries home in Ecuador and in building a grain storage building with Self Help International in Nicaragua.
Dick and Linnea have also traveled to Tecate, Mexico where they volunteered at a Third World Opportunities orphanage. Dick helped by repairing clothes dryers, roofing, and doing electrical wiring in a medical clinic while Linnea cooked, cleaned, and did other jobs as needed. When at home in Cedar Falls, Iowa and not volunteering at their church or some other non profit organization in the area, they somehow find time to usher at the University of Northern Iowa Performing Arts Center and serve on the Board of Directors for the Christian Crusaders Radio Ministry.
Dick Graen was the chief organizer and administrator of the Black Hawk County Chapter’s 2006 Join Hands Day event. Many young people participated along with many adults to make quilts and assemble layettes, school kits, and health kits which were then dispensed to needy young people in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area. Also in 2006 Dick applied for a Care in Regions grant through the East-Central Iowa Region. The grant was approved for $10,000. The project called “Feed My Starving Children” organized, purchased, assembled, and sent bags of food for needy children in Africa. Youth and adults of all ages came together (at Dick and Linnea’s urging) to put together bags of rice, dried vegetables, protein supplement, and seasonings. It was a two day event and Dick and Linnea were there for every minute.
As is usually the case with most stalwart volunteers, Dick and Linnea would tell you that recognition is the last thing they are looking for. When asked why they do it, their response is almost always, “We just want to ‘help out’”. Probably the most telling statement about this couple comes from their son Scott who says, “They do not make a big deal out of their efforts, they just do it.”