The Oceanside/Island Park 2010 Person of the Year

The word most often used to describe Marge and Conrad Wilkie is “kind.”

Marge and Conrad — or Red, as people call him — both work for the Oceanside School District. Red works part-time, delivering lunches to all of the district’s buildings, while Marge is a full-time teacher’s aide in School 8. Between them, they seem to have made an impact on almost everyone they have met.

“I’ve never met two people who were so giving,” said Christine Blake, a teacher at School 8. “They’re just amazing people.”

  The Wilkies met when they both worked for the U.S. Coast Guard on Governors Island. Red, an electrician, was in charge of the electric shop, and Marge was a secretary. They have been married for 34 years.

When it came time to start a family, they decided that they wanted to adopt. So they worked with the private Family and Children’s Agency and adopted a daughter, Alisha, who is now 27. Later they adopted a son, Kevin, who is also 27, and their youngest daughter, Amanda, who is 25.

            The Wilkies have always been proponents of adoption, and worked with the adoption agencies — Love the Children, as well as the Family and Children’s Agency — not only to promote the practice, but to help those who wanted to adopt children of their own. For many years, Marge ran a volunteer organization whose members met children coming in from Korea at John F. Kennedy International Airport and introduced them to their new families. It was something that she and Red loved doing.

    The flights from Korea often arrived in the late afternoon, and Marge, who worked in the mornings at School 8, would leave to meet the planes at the airport. In 1998, School 8 Principal Ron Schoen said he wanted to go along, so that Christmas Eve, the Wilkies invited him to accompany them.

  “My favorite memory is the airport,” Schoen recalled. “Going with the two of them, watching her talk to the new parents, preparing to meet their new child. And then her taking charge and telling me exactly where I had to go, carrying the little baby. And she said to me she’s always in touch with the new parents, even years afterwards.” Marge and Red keep in touch with the families that they have helped enlarge over the years. Sent photos of the children as they grow by their parents, Marge watches them grow up from afar.

            Locally, the Wilkies have impacted the lives of nearly everyone in School 8. Marge is known for going above and beyond her job description, and helping everyone in the building. And Red is known in the school for his carpentry skills, and for building things for the teachers.

            “They do a million little things,” said Blake. “If they get wind of anything this school needs, we have it. All of a sudden, they show up with a Lost and Found box. They heard that a couple of teachers were having trouble with their doors. All of a sudden, everyone has door stops.”

            Each year, Marge prepares a feast of Asian food that she brings to the school and shares with students and staff in celebration of the Chinese New Year. She also teaches the students about the holiday.

            Marge collects letters from School 8 students and sends them in care packages to soldiers overseas. One year, she arranged for one of the soldiers she was corresponding with to visit the school and talk with the children.

            “They’re just truly good people,” Blake said. “I don’t think there are people like this in the world anymore. They just are amazing, good, selfless people. If there’s someone in need, they’re right there.”

            Marge loves making ceramics, and has made many gifts for the teachers. “She made [my newborn son] the most beautiful rainbow fish, and came with a book, and just very quietly gave me this book and the rainbow fish,” Blake recalled. “And if you look around the school, you see the rainbow fish in classrooms where she was in the classroom and they had a child while she was working with them.”

            Before she was an aide in the school, Marge volunteered with the PTA. It was through her volunteer work that she got a job at the school. And Red is just as involved. Myra Ackerman, a teacher who once worked with Marge, explained how Red came into her class one year and talked to the kids about the lighthouses on Long Island.

            “The last time that I worked with her, nine years ago, at the end of the year, unbeknownst to me, she had all the children in my class write on a little puzzle square about their favorite thing in third grade,” Ackerman said. “And she put it together and then Red framed it. And I still have that hanging in my house. I’ve had it hanging in my house for nine years.”

            For their untiring volunteerism and the quiet acts of kindness they do without any expectation of receiving anything in return, the Herald is proud to name Marge and Red Wilkie its 2010 People of the Year.

            “They are the most benevolent, kind, caring, selfless people that I know,” said  Ackerman. “They’re beyond wonderful. I’m just holding on to the school year because I don’t want [Marge] to finish working with me.”