When I was a kid, I spent a week each summer at a Campfire camp in Boone, Iowa. Sunday was check-in day, and we’d run around taking swim tests, signing up for crafts, and making friends with the kids in our cabin, followed by supper in the big lodge and what seemed to be a never-ending hike up to the top of Magic Hill for a welcome ceremony by the camp staff. Every year, we’d hear the story of the Bluebird of Happiness, a sweet tale about two kids who search all over for the mysterious bird, but when they return home, they find the bluebird singing in their own backyard.
That story popped into my head when one of our casita residents sent me an email about finding her long-lost friend Percy. Mary Anne started volunteering in Phoenix in 1969 at an organization called Mobile Angels’ Meal Service (MAMS), where they would deliver meals to folks who were getting out of local hospitals and needed some extra help with meals at home.
“I enjoyed meeting interesting people and helping them get out of hospitals faster and delay them needing to go into nursing homes,” Mary Anne said. “Many times, when we would deliver the food, we were the only person they would see that day to make sure they were doing well.” Her friend Percy was the president of the organization, which had been started by a group of doctors’ wives and then expanded with volunteers from some of the area Episcopalian churches.
Unfortunately, by the mid-1990s, the group ran short of volunteers and Mary Anne lost touch with Percy after MAMS closed down. “Our younger son and his wife moved to Prescott in 2006,” she said. “I had heard she was in this area, but I didn’t have any luck finding her.”
Percy’s whereabouts stayed in the back of her mind. When Mary Anne and her husband moved into their casita last fall, she mentioned her quest to a neighbor who pulled out an old Prescott phone book and started going down the list of people with Percy’s last name. One name sounded familiar, possibly Percy’s husband. She searched online and found his obituary and learned her friend’s real name was Priscilla. Another search turned up a photo of her in the Daily Courier receiving a donation on behalf of the Community Food Bank.
Mary Anne put her research skills to work. With the help of a local church and a kind volunteer, who after multiple calls, believed that Mary Anne had only good intentions, she discovered Percy still lived in Prescott. But she was truly shocked when the volunteer agreed to share her mailing address and it was the same as hers. After so many years of looking for her and wondering how she was doing, she discovered she was living just a short walk from her casita.
I called Percy’s daughter Susan to get permission to use her name in this column. She told me she’s delighted her mom has reconnected with her friend in the latter days of her life. “She drops off little gifts for her. I recently had the chance to talk with Mary Anne and thank her. Mom loves having visitors. She may not remember all the stories and details from that time, but Mary Anne does.”
Mary Anne visits Percy often at the long-term care center she now calls home. “Unfortunately she may not always remember me, but she has smiled a lot and has said things like, ‘Your red hat made my day.’” Sometimes she brings her a jam jar with fresh roses from her garden. “I noticed she has a fondness for quail,” she said. “I left a stained glass quail from my collection for her when she was not up to having visitors. I hope it made her day.”
The comfort and care these two women provided to so many people during their years of volunteering to help others has landed in their own backyard. Somewhere, a bluebird is singing.