Passion for people

Marianne Dyon’s life is organized around people.

There’s her family, who are her passion. There’s the friends she’s made over the years as a volunteer, and there’s the friends she still has yet to meet and enjoy.

“I’ve just always loved people,” she said. “I’m a people person. I’m pretty sensitive to people’s needs.”

Dyon spent the last 10 years working at the Whitefish Community Center, first as a kitchen volunteer before taking a job as site manager eight years ago. She recently celebrated her retirement with about 60 people, ranging from old friends to fellow volunteers and everyone in between, and on Sept. 30 she worked her final day at the community center.

“I hated giving my job up because I love it — I love what I do,” she said. “I love the volunteers. But I love my family more, and I want to spend time with them.”

Originally from Chicago, Dyon moved to Whitefish when she was 42 and working through a divorce. She had taken her three kids, Jim, Mike and Margaret, to visit her brother in Eureka, and each time she left Montana she couldn’t help but wonder why.

“Every time I got back to Chicago,” she recalled. “I’d look at that dirty, mucky water and think of the water here where I can see the fish.”

She found a place in Whitefish and a job with the phone company, and life was good. Since she’d spent time in Chicago volunteering at a hospital and her church, Dyon looked for nearby volunteer opportunities in her new home to help her make some new friends.

After 17 years at what is now CenturyLink in Kalispell, she started dedicating her time to other opportunities, volunteering at the Flathead County Animal Shelter, Kalispell Regional Health Center, Glacier Symphony and Chorale and the community center, where she helped make food for seniors.

“It just makes you feel good when you send a hot meal out to somebody who can’t cook it for themselves,” she said. “I think this has been the most rewarding volunteer job I’ve had.”

Dyon said she’s excited to have time to spend to enjoy trips to Glacier National Park, playing cards with her friends and spending time with loved ones. For her, having a good time doesn’t have to mean leaving town.

“I don’t have one of these lists where I want to go to Hawaii or I want to travel a lot. I’m not a traveler. There’s so many things close by that we can just go see and I wanted to have time to do that,” she said.

While she loved her job at the community center, Dyon received a wake-up call when she heard her ex-husband had passed away. On his first day of retirement at age 78, he suffered a stroke and died weeks later.

“He never enjoyed one day of retirement, not one day,” she said. “And I thought, ‘I don’t want that to happen to me.’ I’m 75 and years go fast. So I just want to enjoy my family while I still have the energy and just do fun things together.”