LYNN — At the age of 100, Dorothy Macaione still volunteers with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America and she celebrated her birthday Thursday surrounded by women she inspired.
They hosted lunch in the St. Theresa House where Macaione lives and helped her open and sort through a box stuffed with greeting cards sent by Girls Scouts from around the country.
Macaione recounted how one of her daughters got her involved in the Girl Scouts.
“She came home from school crying and saying she wanted to be a Girl Scout but they didn’t have a leader,” Macaione said.
She volunteered for the position and poured her energetic personality into helping girls. Macaione helped combine the talents and efforts of Girl Scouts across Lynn and encouraged developmentally disabled girls to participate in the organization.
“Their disability just made them work harder,” she said.
One of nine children, Macaione graduated from St. Mary’s Girls High School in 1937 and worked for T.W. Rogers department store and at the River Works.
Macaione received the Girl Scouts “Thanks II” award in 2018 for decades-long service and continues to volunteer at the Girl Scouts Museum at Cedar Hill in Waltham.
“She’s an inspiration to me as an independent woman in a time when it was even harder to be one,” said Lynn Cutter, board of directors member and first vice president of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts.
Kal Ricker of Lynn drives Macaione to Waltham on volunteer days and said their conversations during the drive always come with pearls of wisdom dispensed by Macaione.
“She’s giving and caring and, most of all, a listener. She will offer an insight or tell me, ‘Let it go,'” Ricker said.
Macaione has no plans to stop volunteering.
“I’ve met some wonderful people and I get a lot of satisfaction to think I’m helping,” she said.
