Volunteerism was nurse's love
4/27/2002BOWLING GREEN - Beatrice E. June, 87, a registered nurse and volunteer for church and community who was admired for her private acts of kindness, died of congestive heart failure Thursday in her home here.
She was a delivery volunteer for Meals on Wheels in the Bowling Green area in the 1970s and '80s, daughter Jacqueline Jones said.
Mrs. June was a founder of the Wood County Hospital Lifeline program - which allows people at home to press a button and alert the hospital that they need help.
A longtime member of First United Methodist Church, she was active in many of its organizations and volunteered for church dinners and other functions.
Mrs. June didn't brag about her good works. She was named the congregation's Woman of the Year in 1976. But her children, busy with their own families or out of town, “hardly knew it,” her daughter said. “That's how quiet she was about her accomplishments.”
Mary Ann Bellard, a longtime friend and neighbor, said: “She was always doing something for you [that] you didn't expect. She was one of the kindest and nicest people I've known.”
Only in recent days have family members heard from others about Mrs. June's many private acts of kindness: her visits and care to a couple whose baby had died; a drive out of her way, and some cash to a homeless woman trying to get to another town.
“We children were saying the other day, `We'll never know everything she did or was involved in,'” her daughter said.
Mrs. June was born in New Rochester, Ohio, and grew up in the Wood County hamlet of Dunbridge. Her parents ran Snick's Place, on what is now State Rt. 25 and State Rt. 582. It was the only gas station and restaurant between Bowling Green and Perrysburg before interstate highways, her daughter said, and it was a frequent stop for people emigrating north to work in auto plants.
She was a graduate of the Toledo Hospital school of nursing. An early job was as a public health nurse in Toledo.
She returned to Bowling Green to marry Max June in June, 1938. She worked a night or two as a private-duty nurse on occasion to help supplement the family income, her daughter said. Later, she was a nurse for Webster School, now part of the Eastwood Local system. Mr. June died in September, 1979.
To help the family table in the early days, she kept a vegetable garden in the backyard of the family home on Sand Ridge Road.
Surviving are her son, Ronald; daughters, Jacqueline Jones and Sally Doren; nine grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren.
The body will be in the Dunn Mortuary, Bowling Green, after 1 p.m. tomorrow. Services will be at 11 a.m. Monday in First United Methodist Church, Bowling Green. The family requests tributes to the church or to Bridge Home Health and Hospice.