by Helen Brinkman
Jan Summers loves helping to connect the people of her Hope Valley retirement community in South Australia.
Whether it’s daily letterbox drops, coffee shop gatherings, community lunches, or livestreaming weekly church services to the village nursing home, the 88-year-old is all about bringing people together within her suburban community in Adelaide’s northeastern suburbs.
‘I just like organising things for residents to come to’, says Jan. ‘I like getting people out of their houses.’
And it certainly gets her out and about. As secretary of the Lutheran Homes Group Hope Valley residents’ group and the local church council, it’s a mission that keeps her daily timetable full.
Her passion for community is evident in everything she does, from coordinating rosters and directories to volunteering for the ‘Out to Lunch’ program, which supports people on home-care packages with a hot meal at the village community centre.
‘When I get to 90, I am going to retire’, she laughs, though it seems she has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. Early each morning she’s out on a mobility scooter for letterbox drops across 284 units in the village, ensuring that about 350 residents stay informed and connected. ‘Wonderful things, gophers’, she adds.
Born Jan Dickenson in Frances, a small railway town near Bordertown in SA’s South East in 1936, she moved to Adelaide as a young child and was brought up by her grandparents and 11 aunts and uncles. She boarded at Immanuel College in suburban Walkerville in 1949 for four years before joining the payroll department of the Commonwealth Weapons Research Establishment. It was there she met her husband-to-be, Colin Summers, a tall man with a lovely smile who worked in the office next to hers, she recalls.
While Colin’s role took him on regular trips to the red dust of Maralinga in SA’s Far West, her job was as a research comptometrist, using a huge, mechanical adding machine known as a comptometer. This was the era before computers, but the role helped Jan develop skills that ensured she has no fear of technology to this day – she still operates the church’s sound control board for Sunday services. Her only fear there is remembering to start the livestream of the service to the village nursing home.
Married in 1958, the pair honeymooned in Waikerie in the SA Riverland before moving into their home in the Adelaide suburb of Klemzig, which was at that time still surrounded by farmland. ‘Because there were no main roads out in Klemzig at that time, we got bogged on the dirt road before we could get back to our house after the honeymoon’, Jan says.
Jan had to leave her Commonwealth employment as government policy prohibited married women from being employed. After several years of working for the de Havilland Aircraft Company and Nestle chocolates, she and Colin started their family of two girls, Tracey and Trudy, and a boy, Philip.
Jan later worked as a school assistant at Ridley Grove Primary School in suburban Woodville for 21 years, a job she says she only got because she could play the piano. It was a skill she developed due to the insistence of her great aunt Ivy, who thought that all young ladies should play the piano.
Jan and Colin moved to the Hope Valley village 28 years ago, and two years later, she put her administration skills to good use as secretary of the residents’ group.
In 2003 she also added the role of congregational secretary for their local Trinity Lutheran congregation to her job jar.
As she wasn’t sure if she’d been baptised as a baby in Frances, Jan was duly baptised at Trinity that March, and after the service, everyone who came went across the road to a local hotel for a celebratory lunch.
‘I’ve always been one to put up my hand to help’, says Jan. ‘I volunteer for the “Out to Lunch” program supporting people on home-care packages with a hot meal in the village community centre, setting up and serving lunches four days a week.’
Her afternoons are for bookwork, and she lives through lists. ‘I just like doing things and … I like things done just so.’
On top of her volunteering, Jan is a grandmother to seven, and great-grandmother to five children – the latest born just before Christmas 2024.
As the village prepared for its 40th-anniversary celebration in March this year, Jan says she hadn’t yet stopped to reflect on her journey of service to the community. She was busy organising the community lunch for the celebrations!
But she does find comfort in her favourite Bible verse from Psalm 121, which reminds us all where our help comes from: ‘I lift up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth …’ This psalm was read at Colin’s funeral 11 years ago at a popular family holiday spot on SA’s west coast. ‘We buried my husband’s ashes over at Tumby Bay and the grave faces the hills above the coast – the whole family chose it’, she says.
And if Jan hasn’t enough on her plate already, she is already thinking about new opportunities to volunteer.
‘My son and his family are into football, and he is setting up an inclusive football team in the suburban league this year, so I’ll probably be in on that.’
As always, Jan is quick to put up her hand to help.
