Some retired people like to play bridge or golf. Mary Majeski of Wells enjoys volunteering and helping people and doesn’t have time for those other kinds of activities.

Her efforts in helping others were recognized when she was chosen to be the Kernel Days Parade Grand Marshal this past weekend.

Majeski has been the volunteer coordinator for Faribault County Interfaith Caregivers — Wells Care Team since it began 10 years ago.

It was Majeski who helped start the Wells branch. The Interfaith Caregivers staff recognized her and the other Wells volunteers last week with a luncheon in their honor.

Majeski has lived in Wells since 1982 when she moved there from Easton.

“I had been working at the Wells Hospital anyway, so I was familiar with the town,” she says.

In all, she worked for 27 years at the hospital and another eight years at the nursing home before retiring. She says she loved her work, and enjoyed helping people when they needed it.

She has three passions in life – volunteering, gardening and family.

She has some large gardens in her back yard, which actually encompasses several lots behind her home on the east side of Wells, across from the golf course.

And as far as family goes, she has a lot to keep track of.

“I have eight kids, 21 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren,” she says. She keeps updated photos of all of them on the walls in her house, as well as keeping track of birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, etc.

Her grandchildren range in age from 34 down to 4. Some of her great-grandchildren are older than her youngest grandchildren.

Majeski’s children, all grown and on their own, include four sons and four daughters.

“My son Mark was always upset that the boys were never ‘ahead,’ she says. “It was tied at three boys and three girls and he hoped the next one would be a boy so there would finally be more boys than girls, but it didn’t happen.“

Four of her kids are nearby, but the other four are scattered across the country. Sue is in Wells, Neal is in Amboy, Jim in Waldorf, Bea in Winona, Sara in Georgia, Mark in Kentucky, Amy in Arizona and Joel in Idaho – along with their families, of course.

Majeski came from a large family herself, with eight brothers and sisters.

When she graduated from nursing school, her best friend talked her into moving to San Diego, Calif., in 1949.

“We both met sailors there and got married,” she says. Her husband was from Washington state.

After a number of years they moved back to Minnesota and farmed near Easton. They were divorced in 1988, after the move to Wells.

“I have lived alone since then,” she says.

Well, not quite. There is Dirk. He is a large piranha living in a fish tank in her living room.

“I inherited him from my grandson, Alex, when he had to move away to Georgia and couldn’t take him with,” she says.

She feeds the meat-eating fish a type of frozen shrimp made just for piranhas. When her grandson had him, the piranha meals sometimes included goldfish.

“Dirk gobbled them up too,” she says. “Except for one, which he let live for some unknown reason.”

To read more of this story, see this week’s Register.