People Profile: Area Woman Splits Time Between Part-time Jobs and Volunteer Efforts

Denise Armbruster never met a stranger. Like most volunteers, she enjoys meeting new friends and giving back to her community.

Area residents may recognize Armbruster as one of the faces behind the camera at Romeoville Village Board meetings, which she videotapes for Romeoville Public Television. Others may know her as one of the coordinators of the event, a huge community effort held annually to collect donations for area food pantries.

Armbruster finds time to volunteer despite holding down three part-time jobs: one at a before- and after-school day care program at , another delivering newspapers and yet a third as a retail merchandiser for Hallmark.

She and her husband had been married for 25 years when he died in 2006, leaving behind three sons: Rick, now 31; Brian, 28; and Steven, 24.

Patch recently had the opportunity to chat with Armbruster about volunteerism, a subject near and dear to her heart.

Patch: Are you a resident of Romeoville?

Denise Armbruster: I live just outside of the village but I lived in town for 50 years, which is amazing, since I’m only 39.

Patch: How and when did you come to be involved with Romeoville Public Television?

Armbruster: I became involved with RPTV 25 years ago. I actually was at a village board meeting and I saw a man standing behind a video camera taping the meeting. I thought, oh, that looks cool, that would be fun. Why not give it a shot, see if they need help with anything? The organization has come a long way; I’ve come a long way. I enjoy every minute of it.

Patch: What is your role there?

Armbruster: I am the administrative director of the organization. A gentleman was hired by the village to oversee the channel, the operations of the channel. He works in conjunction with the organization, and he does a lot of the governmental things. The organization is a group of volunteers that go around Romeoville and tape the different events of town. Everybody within the organization is a volunteer.

Patch: What is the purpose or mission of Romeoville Public Television?

Armbruster: RPTV is a PEG channel. The P stands for public access; the E, educational; and the G, governmental. And so what we do is based on being a PEG channel. Anyone who lives in Romeoville can come into the studio and produce a TV show. That’s part of public access. Educational refers to anything within the schools or any type of show we would consider educational, like demonstrating something, or some kind of forum, for example, on elderly abuse. That would be educational. Governmental is anything having to do with village government. So that’s what we do. To put it into simple terms, we want to bring quality programming that falls under those three categories to the residents of Romeoville.

Patch: What else can you tell us about Romeoville Public Television?

Armbruster: It started as a video club, and then it evolved. It has had a couple of other names over the years. It went through a major reorganization and become RPTV. It now has bylaws and is more structured than it was originally.

Patch: What do you enjoy most about your involvement with RPTV?

Armbruster: There are lots of things that I enjoy … I enjoy operating a camera, always looking for what the next shot will be. I like doing on-camera interviews, because I enjoy talking to people and I have all my life, so doing interviews is just a natural progression of that. The thing about RPTV is, it’s a small group, but it’s a dedicated group. We’re always looking for new members. My son started operating a camera when he 10 years, and when he was 11, he had his own show. Everybody needs help with the technical end of it, but we’re very blessed to have a crew that is always willing to help everybody else. We work very well together as a group. It’s not a cliquish group at all.

Patch: You also help to coordinate the annual Harvest Saturday event. Tell us a bit about those efforts.

Armbruster: It’s probably the largest community service project that the village has. We collect food to stock area food pantries: Shepherd’s Food Pantry, We Care, Community Service Council and one or two others. It’s a large-scale operation in that last year we had 530 volunteers and we collected maybe 1,200 or 1,300 boxes of food. It’s a very massive event. We always do it the Saturday before Thanksgiving. We have three or four drop-off points, but the reason we need so many volunteers is that we go door to door.

Patch: That does sound like a massive event. How does it work?

Armbruster: The village is separated into different routes. We take a driver and two to four young people, and they knock on the doors of each route. I think we have 103 routes. We have volunteers in Lakewood Falls, Carillon, parts not actually within village limits, but our neighbors. The thing that is so cool about it is that because the economy has been so bad, the people that can give are giving more, because they know there are more people out there that need help. Everybody realizes that there is a hardship for a lot of people.

Patch: How did you hear about Harvest Saturday?

Armbruster: Probably through St. Andrew, the church I belong to. When I first started working with Harvest Saturday, I coordinated the drivers. I don’t even know how I moved up to being one of the coordinators.

Patch: Why did you want to become a part of it?

Armbruster: I think for me it has to do with my upbringing. I was very blessed to be raised by parents who taught me the importance of giving back to God, my church and my community. I believe that’s what we’re all supposed to do. If everybody put in an hour or two a month to whatever organization or church or school, we would be able to accomplish so much.

Patch: What is your specific role with the Harvest Saturday activities?

Armbruster: One lady is in charge, and two of us are under her. I’m not a boss or anything, but I touch base with the drivers, touch base with the people working out in the parking lot. When all the cars pull in, we have a row of cars of people dropping off food, so I just kind of walk around and see where I’m needed and just jump in wherever I’m needed.

Patch: What do you enjoy most about your involvement with Harvest Saturday?

Armbruster: The knowledge that with the help of the entire community and all of the volunteers that we have — the people that donate food, the people that donate money — there are people who will have food on their table, a nice Thanksgiving dinner, that’s why I do it. When I wake up on Thanksgiving morning, there are people who have food on their table, thanks to the entire community.

Patch: Do you participate in any other community service?

Armbruster: I’ve helped out with a couple of Rec Center activities, and I do some volunteer work at St. Andrew school. I like working with kids, so for me, volunteering at the school is a natural fit. I really enjoy getting to interact with the kids and the teachers, and St. Andrew is a great school.

Patch: Why is community service such a big part of your life?

Armbruster: Well, it’s because of my parents. And it’s because a couple of years ago I found myself between places … I didn’t really have a place to live.  I knew how depressing and sad it was to go through that for the very short time that I did. I wouldn’t want that to happen to anybody. The very least I can do is to help … I can’t give someone a place to live, but I can help wherever I can to put food on somebody’s table.

Patch: What do you like to do in your spare time?

Armbruster: I like to sing, I write poetry, and I love reading.

Patch: What was the last good book you read?

Armbruster: “The Promise of an Angel,” by Ruth Reid. It was an awesome book.

Patch: What do you like most about being a part of the Romeoville community?

Armbruster: Being a part of the community for as long as I have been, it’s the sense of neighbors helping neighbors. I see a lot of that … strangers helping strangers, who then become neighbors and friends. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met through the course of my volunteering that I now call friends. Without the volunteering, I wouldn’t have met them. During the time following my husband’s death, there were so many people that supported me physically, emotionally, all ways. A lot of these people were people I met through volunteer work. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without them, I really don’t.

Patch: If you could give one gift to Romeoville, what would it be and why?

Armbruster: If I could give one gift, if I win a million dollars, I would open up a community food pantry. That would be the first phase; then the second phase would be a soup kitchen. We have several food pantries in town, and they’re wonderful; they all do a wonderful job, I just think it would be nice to pool all of them together. We all work together through Harvest Saturday, but it would be so nice to work together all the time to operate one food pantry.