Cinda Bush has seen a lot of changes in her life and with Bluffton Self Help. She is one of Bluffton Self Help’s regulars and we mean “regular.” Bush has been volunteering for Bluffton Self Help for over 20 years!
“I first met Mrs. Ida Martin when I needed help, years ago,” said Bush. “She was always there to help me,” Bush remembers. Mrs. Ida would call me when she received a bag of children’s clothing and say ‘you get over her and see if there is anything for your children.”
That’s how she started volunteering. Cinda volunteered two days a week all those years and is currently a regular on the Friday afternoon shift.
Cinda, a life-long local resident spent her early years living on the Belfair Plantation with her great-grandfather. “He raised me and two sisters,” she said. He was a farmer. Belfair, at the time Cinda lived there was owned by William Mosely Swain. Cinda remembers attending the one-room school house located on the plantation. In 1949, Cinda moved off the Belfair Plantation and attended Michael C. Riley School.
Since 1985, when she wasn’t working or volunteering, she cared for her brother Jonathon who suffered from Hydrocephalus. When his mother passed, she promised to care for her brother. Cinda, with her husband’s whole-hearted approval, took him in. Jonathan died in May.
Cinda, a cook by profession for thirty years, still works, earning needed income by caring for a woman three days a week who is homebound. When asked what keeps her going, she said it’s her faith. “I pray daily for the Lord to keep me strong and focused,” she said.
Cinda continues to volunteer at Bluffton Self Help because of how it makes her feel. “I get a great feeling when I help someone pick out a piece of clothing they need or hand out a loaf of bread to someone who is hungry.”
When Cinda has time, she relaxes in her wide open country setting, visited often by her five children and 13 great grandchildren. Cinda and her husband were married 41 years prior to his passing five years ago.
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