Gilroy
– When Gilroyan Aggie Ternasky makes her speech as Chamber of
Commerce Woman of the Year, she won’t be nervous – after all, her
last appearance was in New York, on
”
The Today Show.
”
By Jen Penkethman Special to the dispatch
Gilroy – When Gilroyan Aggie Ternasky makes her speech as Chamber of Commerce Woman of the Year, she won’t be nervous – after all, her last appearance was in New York, on “The Today Show.” This national recognition, on a program about amazing mothers that aired last May, has made Ternasky more aware of her own accomplishments, which she says she normally doesn’t preen herself on.
“It’s accumulated, all of a sudden I look back and say ‘gee, I’ve done a lot,’ but I’ve always just lived one day at a time,” said Ternasky.
Ternasky, who recently retired after working 46 years as a nurse, has made a yearly tradition of volunteering with the Red Cross on some of the worst disasters – including the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and Hurricane Katrina, both of which she was on hand for. This year, for the first time in 25 years, there hasn’t been a disaster large enough to need volunteers from across the country, giving Ternasky and her husband Mike a chance to drive to Florida, where they visited one of their two sons and his new child.
But don’t assume Ternasky will be taking it easy because she’s retired. Besides enjoying reading, gardening and traveling, Ternasky is planning on starting a bereavement support group this month, continues to volunteer at St. Joseph’s Family Service Center and is looking for a part-time job.
“Hopefully, something to do with kids,” she said. “I have a strong spiritual side, so I just pray for the right job to come, the one I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve done it in the last three or four jobs I’ve had, and I’ve been much happier.”
She specializes in hospice care, having started her career at the old Wheeler Hospital in Gilroy. Ternasky said that after the 2001 attacks, when she flew to New York City and aided rescue workers and Marines aboard the hospital ship USNS Comfort, she “needed a break from death and dying.” To her, this meant taking on another field of nursing: working with high-risk babies whose mothers were drug users, at the San Martin branch of the Santa Clara County Public Health Department.
“I’ve had eight or so positions,” said Ternasky. “In nursing you can’t do one thing forever. I get bored after three or four years.”
It was this restlessness that motivated her to help flood victims in the Alviso district of San Jose in 1982 when she was a young single mother with three children. Watching reports on television, she asked herself what was stopping her from doing something. She’s been with the Red Cross ever since.
“Aggie is one of those people that has worked quietly for years, in Gilroy and around the country,” said Susan Valenta, executive director of the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce, who has known Ternasky for the past 20 years. “I hadn’t recognized the scope of what Aggie was doing.”
In a town like Gilroy, where Ternasky and her husband have lived since 1984, interactions become tightly linked over the years, and Ternasky’s friends said she is extremely well-connected with others, as a caregiver and friend. J. Chris Mickartz, who nominated Ternasky for the Woman of the Year award, said she was motivated partly by the help Ternasky had given her personally.
“I’ve been watching her through the years, and she’s just a wonderful person,” said Mickartz, who needed Ternasky’s support when her husband was battling cancer. “When we flew to Seattle for a bone marrow transplant, Aggie drove the car up there with our things in it. She’s one of those people who, if you need her, she’s there.”
But it was when Mickartz recognized how many people Aggie had done similar things for that she decided to nominate her friend, she said.
“I’m just one person Aggie has helped,” said Mickartz. “If you talk to people in the community, there are a lot of us. She’s helped people across the country, and seen things some of us can’t even deal with.”
As for her unflagging spirit of volunteerism, Ternasky credits that to nothing more than a desire to help people.
“I didn’t do things thinking, ‘here I am doing something nice,’ ” Ternasky said. “If you live your life helping people, you will have more joy.”
It was a change in her own life that led her to create a “Moms in Grief” group, after she lost a 28-year-old son 13 years, Ternasky said. Like so many of her volunteer activities, the group led to strong friendships and an offspring group led by one of the members – for mothers who had lost young children.
“I have friends all over from volunteer work,” Ternasky said. “We visited friends in West Virginia recently that we met while working in New Orleans, after Katrina. I would never have met them otherwise.”
When told she would receive the Woman of the Year award, Ternasky was touched and surprised.
“It was such a great honor, but I wondered, where was it all coming from?” said Ternasky. “With these things, I hope people will see something and maybe it’ll nudge them into thinking, ‘I can do that.’ ”
Ternasky, who continues to be active as a volunteer and member of the South Valley Community Church, emphasized that volunteering is something anyone can, and should, do.
“There are so many things to do,” she said. “Ask yourself, what touches your heart? Kids, seniors, they all need care and attention. If someone says there’s nowhere to get involved, they’re not looking.”
