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Mrs. Lorie Bechtel, was nominated by Mrs. Candy Hoover for the Volunteer of the Year Award. Mrs. Bechtel is a parent volunteer at Martinsburg Elementary School, where she has consistently worked to assist tutoring students and helping in the classrooms several days a week for the last 1 ½ years. Mrs. Hoover states, “Mrs. Bechtel is always pleasant and most helpful. She has a sense for noting which students need extra assistance and will work with those immediately until the teacher can give her an assignment. She always comes prepared with her own caddy full of letters, numbers, tools, and more. Her gift of time and service to our school district is extremely commendable. She goes way above and beyond what is asked of her and works well with all staff and students. Her dedication to the students and our school district makes her an invaluable resource. We are blessed to have such a dedicated volunteer parent assisting in our school.”
Mrs. Bechtel resides in Curryville with her husband, Todd, and her two children, daughter, Kelsey, age 11, and son, Nicholas, age 7. She has held several jobs over the years, including stints as a credit manager and a medical secretary; however, when her daughter was born, she took on her most important job, that of a stay at home mom. Mrs. Bechtel began her volunteer work in the Spring Cove School District after her son, Nicholas, entered Kindergarten. For several hours each week, she can be found tutoring and assisting in the three kindergarten classrooms, or you might see her smiling face monitoring the cafeteria during breakfast. She loves the time she spends in the school as a volunteer and enjoys working with the children and teachers. When notified that she was chosen as the Volunteer of the Year, she was quite surprised, but very honored.
When asked why she chooses to spend so much of her time volunteering, Mrs. Bechtel replied, “Volunteering is something that is very important to me. I enjoy working with the children and the teachers. All children are very precious and important. Not all children are good in every subject, leaving some who need a little extra help and encouragement. It is not possible for the teachers to give all children individual time when it is needed – that is why volunteering is important. All children should be given the best possible chance to succeed in school, and I feel so privileged to be able to help. It makes my day to have one of the students that I tutor tell me they did well on a test or get that look on their face that says, ‘I understand it!’ I feel that God has a purpose for each one of us. At this time in my life, I feel that God’s purpose for me is to invest my time in helping the children in our community to succeed and be their very best.”
In addition to her volunteer work at Martinsburg Elementary School, Mrs. Bechtel is also a substitute teacher’s aide for the school district, and serves as the Children’s Director at the Curryville Church of the Brethren and bookkeeper for her husband’s business, Curry Dynamics. She is a graduate of Hollidaysburg Area High School and is the daughter of Bill and Sharon Metz of Hollidaysburg.
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