Reprinted with permission from the Winona Daily News. Photo by Melissa Carlo.

By Kevin Behr, Winona Daily News

A product of 1960’s revolt, Marianne Zerbe is a 59-year-old organic cattle farmer from rural Houston, Minn., who has dedicated most of her life to helping others.

She is a member of Volunteers in Service to America, or VISTA, and is a regional outreach volunteer for the Minnesota Senior Federation. She is also vice president of Houston County Women’s Resources in Hokah, Minn., and has worked there as an advocate for more than 15 years. She has even been an advisory board member for Winona’s Grace Place.

Raised on a dairy farm and fed the facts of life from church and the government, she felt betrayed when she entered the “real world” and realized those facts didn’t exactly explain how life really was.

She demonstrated in the 1960s for equal human and civil rights for all people. She even went door to zdoor with a petition calling for the removal of U.S. troops from Cambodia during the Vietnam War. She said it was uncomfortable and scary at times, but she has since lived her life based on those experiences, carrying enthusiasm and compassion into her life of volunteering.

She recalled hitchhiking around the country and later picking up hitchhikers. Through that experience she learned the importance of a “pass it on” mentality.

“When someone does something good for you,” she said, “do something good for someone else.”

Mostly, she volunteers to answer other people’s needs.

She knows some people just don’t have what they need to live a quality life, and she wants to help right that wrong by sharing her knowledge and the programs provided by the Minnesota Senior Federation. She gives presentations and information seminars in an eight-county area in southeastern Minnesota on retirement, Medicare and where to find the best deals on prescription drugs.

Zerbe said she got involved with VISTA by simply answering an ad as something new to try and experiment with in order to do something meaningful. As a member, she then signed up to work at the Senior Federation full time for a year, earning a stipend that’s “just enough to get by.”

“I’m proud of the work I do,” she said.