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INGHAM COUNTY, Mich. (WLNS) — Though you won’t find her face in the dictionary under the word “volunteer,” Violet G. Lentz has spent more than 75 years helping her community.

Lentz, 98, doesn’t think her service makes her better than anyone.

“I don’t think I am any different than anybody,” Lentz said. “I just like to keep busy.”

Lentz called Williamston her playground growing up.

“We could go into any store. Walk in and they’d say, ‘would you like to work for a while?’ you know, so we would,” Lentz said.

Money was tight growing up in a family of six kids.

With her understanding of the value of hard work and working together, it wasn’t long before she added volunteering to her resume.

Lentz’s efforts picked up in 1949 when she got married to her late husband Harold and started working on their family farm.

In addition to her farm work, Lentz also gave her time and talents to Wheatfield Township.

“I worked under four supervisors, seven clerks, and five treasurers,” Lentz continued.

What Lentz is most known for is her help in local elections; volunteering that she has done for more than 75 years. Lentz has kept opening and closing the polls in her own signature fashion.

“I would just holler ‘hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now open’ and then at night I would yell, ‘hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now closed.'”

While Lentz has kept things the same, the world has undergone serious changes in those seven and a half decades.

“I’ve gone through paper votes. We used to have big machines with screens on ’em that you’d have to pull ten, you’d have to get all the votings down and I’ve ruined more clothes with those old carbon sheets,” Lentz recounted. “But now they’ve got electronic books and it’s a godsend.”

Violet also spent decades helping out at the Ingham County Medical Care Facility and even established the facility’s pet therapy program.

“I spent 42 years there and would bring in cats and dogs and pigs, lambs, miniature horses, baby chicks, anything I could get my hands on,” she said.

But Lentz’s volunteering does not end with pet therapy, as she’s also spent more than 70 years helping out with her township’s three cemeteries.

She mowed the lawns, tended to flowers, repaired headstones and added American flags to veterans’ graves.

Violet’s late husband was a veteran, so of course, Lentz has also volunteered with the American Legion Auxiliary for more than 60 years.

The 98-year-old said that she still wishes she could do more for her community.

But why?

“The people in Wheatfield Township are family,” Lentz remarked.