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City: Boone, Iowa
Club: Boone Day-Breakers
Age: 63
Number of children: 2 sons
Occupation: Retired custodial staff supervisor, Iowa State University, Ames
Year joined Kiwanis: 2004
Current Kiwanis position: President, and Aktion Club advisor
Previous Kiwanis positions: Vice President
Other community activities/accomplishments: President of Boone AARP chapter; member of Salvation Army board, Keep Iowa and Boone Beautiful, Modern Woodmen of America, Boone Women’s Club, Red Hats, and Boone Nazarene Church board; past officer of district and state Older Iowans Legislature; and volunteer for Senior Medicare Patrol for Boone County.
Your motivation? “It is important to serve, not to be served.”
Why join Kiwanis? To be involved in the club and community and to use leadership skills.
Favorite inspirational quote: “Leadership begins with me.”
Chances are, if you’ve been around Boone, Iowa, your life has been touched by Boone Day-Breakers, Iowa, Kiwanian Margie Mitchell.
One might say she has a heart for serving the elderly. In addition to serving as president of the Boone AARP chapter, she has been a caregiver for a 76-year-old man who has heart problems and cancer. She also helped an 89-year-old lady recuperate from a broken hip and attended another women in her final days fighting cancer.
But she also is devoted to college-age adults, joining an effort to open a Circle K club at Des Moines Area Community College.
And she enjoys sharing the joys of service with adults who have disabilities. She joins Boone Aktion Club members during their street-cleaning project. And when they package personal care kits for people who are homeless, Margie is by their side, bagging soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, and such.
She also dedicates time to young children, helping the Day-Breakers Kiwanis club initiate a project that supplies toy bears to police, hospital, and other emergency responders so they can comfort traumatized children.
“It is important,” she says, “to help people in need—from the very young to the elderly.”
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