Shirley Clark needed a friend.
“I was in an apartment in Lake Placid,” Clark said. “There was nobody around, and I was very, very lonely. I cried a lot.”
One day, she phoned the Essex County Office for the Aging to learn what programs might be available to someone like her—an isolated, older adult in need of activity and companion-ship. That call led to what Clark now describes as a miracle: the arrival of Margie Gallagher.
Gallagher visits Clark once a week, and Clark describes her as a “really good friend.” At 90, Clark is blind in one eye and no longer drives. Gallagher, a 65-year-old retired schoolteacher, takes her to do errands and on outings—to the library, to the horse show in Lake Placid, to Lake Flower for milkshakes and strolls.
“She found out what I like to do, what I like to see,” said Clark, who now lives alone at the Saranac Village at Will Rogers in Saranac Lake. “She showed me the area.”
Clark might consider Gallagher’s friendship a miracle, but it has a very earthly source.
Gallagher comes from Mercy
