It was Memorial Day Weekend. Many of the soon-to-be high-school graduates in Thelma Coslow’s high school class in Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley spent the unofficial start of summer with friends and family, excited for graduation and planning for their upcoming prom.

Thelma's weekend, though, was different.

“We almost froze to death,” Thelma said of that Memorial Day during World War II, which she spent volunteering with the American Red Cross. She and the group she was with spent the weekend making swimming and safety films for the military, including a training piece for the Navy and an instructional video about how to ford a river while keeping ammunition clean and dry.

And, a free weekend was not the only thing Thelma sacrificed to make the film.

“I burned my eyebrows off and ended up missing my senior prom,” she remembered.

Since then, Thelma, who has been a Red Cross volunteer for more than 65 years, has been involved with Red Cross efforts across the country and the world. She spoke of volunteering in Boston, where she was a nurse and taught first aid courses during the war in Chicago, in Washington D.C., in Kansas and in Florida, where she has helped in relief efforts following several hurricanes.

When she lived in Chicago, Thelma volunteered running First Aid tables at major events.

“I got to go to Soldier Field for all the concerts and conventions,” she remembered. “The big one was the International Railroad Fair.”

Thelma, now 82, said Red Cross training was very different from what we know today.

“There was no CPR at the time — you didn’t put your mouth on a stranger,” she said. “We dislocated a lot of shoulders doing what we were doing instead.”

Thelma’s Red Cross connection in Chicago allowed her to work with the Boy Scouts of America, and with a Girl Scout Troop in which half the members were blind. That troop, Coslow said, helped her develop an interest in the blind that led to her current volunteer work in the American Red Cross of Northern New Jersey’s Braille Center, the largest remaining volunteer Braille production center in the world.

After years of work, both volunteer and, occasionally, paid, with the Red Cross in the United States, Thelma took her volunteer work abroad when her husband was stationed in the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean that was under the control of dictator António de Oliviera Salazar at the time.

“The Red Cross has been so much a part of my life no matter where I’ve gone,” she said. “There’s a Red Cross wherever you are.”

Today, Thelma volunteers at the American Red Cross of Northern New Jersey’s Ridgewood office, where she conducts health and safety training and has been a Braille volunteer for 16 years. Though Thelma is now partially blind herself, and sometimes uses a Red Cross volunteer for transportation, she continues to help. She even worked on transcribing two Braille textbooks while she shared stories of her Red Cross experiences.

“People don’t know everything the Red Cross has done,” she said of the programs she had worked on.

Today, in addition to her work in the Braille department, Thelma continues to develop unique programs for the Red Cross, including one for Japanese women that are new to the United States. And, even in more traditional settings, like health and safety classes, Thelma always adds her special touch.

Through an exciting life in which she lived in many cities, raised four children and, no doubt, had countless experiences, Thelma Coslow said the American Red Cross has been an important part of everything she’s done.

“The Red Cross is home to a lot of people, a recognizable symbol throughout the world,” she says. “I’ve never been alone, and I’ve been divorced for years. I’ve been a single mother and the Red Cross has always been there for me. It’s the only thing that’s been consistent - that hasn't changed since I was 14."

by Emily Baltz, Communications Intern