Volunteer of the Month: Joe Hipius

by Mel Rubenstein

LiteracyCNY served Central New York since 1961, and its mission was to provide adults with the literacy tools and skills they need to be contributing, productive, and engaged members of the community. The organization closed in November due to cash flow constraints caused primarily by Governor Cuomo’s Executive Order in August suspending contract payments to nonprofit organizations. Prior to this, Betsy Lang, their 0perations manager, had recommended that Joe Hipius be featured as the Volunteer of the Month because of what he brought to LiteracyCNY.

“Joe volunteered as a tutor and has produced and led training for other volunteers. Joe also supported the LiteracyCNY mission financially, which was greatly appreciated,” Lang said.

Hipius was born in New York City and lived there and in Yonkers until he graduated from Manhattan College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, majoring in electric power engineering. He then took a job with Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. (which later became National Grid) and retired in 2013 with 40 years of service. He’s lived in DeWitt nearly the entire time since moving to the Syracuse area after college.

When his two sons were young, Hipius served as a Cubmaster and committee chairman for their Cub Scout pack. For over 35 years, he was an adult advisor for the Junior Achievement program, teaching high school students about business and economics and guiding them in running their own scaled-down businesses. Unfortunately, that program was eliminated locally due to declining economic conditions. He also served for seven years on the board of directors of the Consortium for Children’s Services, including a term as the president of the board.

While always a strong believer in the importance of volunteering, Hipius points to his participation in the Leadership Greater Syracuse program in 1999 as “an energizing experience, which underscored the value of contributing my efforts to strengthen the local community.”

After retiring, Hipius was thinking about how to utilize some of his abundant spare time when he saw an item in the newspaper describing the work of LiteracyCNY.

Although his career had been in engineering, his Junior Achievement experience had demonstrated that he had some teaching ability.

Coupled with his strong English language skills, he saw how volunteering as a tutor for LiteracyCNY could be a good fit for his abilities and interests. Their programs included one-on-one tutoring (his initial role), classroom instruction, and English-speaking practice sessions for people who are learning English as a new language.

Hipius learned that the majority of the people served by LiteracyCNY had moved here as immigrants or refugees, and whose ability to succeed here hinged on developing functional English language skills. He also learned that you didn’t need to be an English teacher to help, and that you didn’t even need to know any foreign languages at all–in fact, many of LiteracyCNY’s volunteers spoke only English. Since LiteracyCNY had been able to utilize the talents of adult volunteers of any age, it was a good fit for a retired person like Hipius.

He started by working with a man from South Sudan, and enjoyed the experience tremendously. This wasn’t a one-way interaction; while his student was developing stronger English skills, Hipius was learning a lot of fascinating things about the culture and customs of his student’s homeland. Hipius found that his student loved soccer, a sport Hipius knew little about. So, they used soccer as a platform for learning, reading together articles and books on soccer to help build the student’s reading skills, while Hipius learned something about the sport.

“It was fun, and we learned quite a bit from each other,” he said.

Subsequently, Hipius worked with students from Vietnam, Somalia and many other places. He was impressed by how hard they work to learn English and deal with raising families, working, and the many other challenges of everyday life.

“It’s great to see when a student succeeds. I was successful in helping my student from Somalia improve her writing skills sufficiently to pass the U. S. citizenship test,” Hipius said.

While many of the students were from foreign lands, Americans who needed to sharpen their skills to prepare for high school equivalency exams also benefited from LiteracyCNY’s programs, and Hipius was tutoring one of these students when the organization suspended operations in November.

Eventually, his role grew to include facilitating English-speaking practice sessions, assisting in the training of new tutors, and assisting in LiteracyCNY’s annual SCRABBLEMania fundraiser.

“I’m glad I found LiteracyCNY, as I learned so much from my interaction with their highly diverse students, and I enjoyed it a lot,” he said. “The need for adult literacy programs in our area is acute, and the closure of LiteracyCNY left a huge hole in the fabric of our community. While I was very saddened when the organization closed, I’m hopeful that other organizations may step in and utilize the volunteers and staff who had been working with LiteracyCNY to further the cause of literacy.”

There is some interest among LiteracyCNY’s board members to restructure the organization as an all-volunteer literacy program in the future. The adult literacy movement had its roots in Syracuse as a volunteer program in the 1960s under the leadership of Ruth Colvin. Colvin, who is now 104 year old, still lives in the Syracuse area, is an internationally known expert and is still active in the literacy world. Anyone interested in assisting with this effort should contact Colvinat [email protected].

Hipius’ wife, Donna, has always been very supportive of his various volunteer roles, and she also was a volunteer with LiteracyCNY. In addition, she and Hipius recently have become transportation specialists for the local American Red Cross chapter, driving blood collected at blood drives to the processing facility, and delivering blood and blood products to hospitals.

They like to travel internationally and to national parks, but the pandemic has put that on hold. They enjoy attending theater productions at Syracuse Stage and CNY Playhouse, but this, too, has been on the shelf during the pandemic. This has enabled them to take on new hobbies and pursue new volunteering activities.

Although they aren’t wealthy, the Hipiuses contribute financially to numerous local community organizations, including the United Way of Central New York and the Central New York Community Foundation.

“While giving money is critically important, nothing compares with the impact and satisfaction of giving your personal time and effort to the community, in whatever role fits you best,” Hipius said. “I think almost everyone can find a fulfilling way to help their community.”

To recommend someone with a stellar record of volunteering to be featured in this column contact Mel Rubenstein: [email protected] or call 315-682-7162.

Submitted photo

Joe Hipius has been a long time volunteer with LiteracyCNY.