Meet...Santa's helper
Name: Dallas Shilling.
Department:
Volunteer
Services.
How long at MUSC: Since 1995.
Born: North Canton, Ohio.
Favorite book: The Bible.
Favorite entertainer: Bob Hope.
Favorite kind of music: Big band.
Where do you like to go out to dinner? Ryan’s, we have them in Ohio too.
What do you find most rewarding about your job? Bringing cheer when I deliver the flowers for volunteer services.
Fondest memory: The time when I worked at Stark Technical College, in Canton, Ohio.
Accomplishment you are most proud of: I was with the Army during WWII and was in Paris when Gen. Charles de Gaulle went up the Champs Elysees after the German occupation.
What do you do when you are not volunteering at MUSC? I like to do some woodworking.
Something people don’t know about you: I scooped ice cream for Borden’s for 25 years.
Biggest challenge: Settling down after I left the Army. My father died a couple of months after I got home so I took my car and drove around the country for a few years. I worked in the mines in Kentucky, a peanut farm in South Carolina; I was a maritime worker on the docks in New Orleans, I banded pipes on an oil drill in Texas and when I got home to North Canton I got a job at the Hoover Company making vacuums. That’s where I met my wife of 52 years, Anne, who is also a volunteer here.
What do you like best about Charleston: The weather! I remember, in 1960, I looked at the thermometer before going to work to make sure I had enough clothes on. It was –21 degrees and I had to work outdoors.
Words of advice for your friends back in Ohio: “Retire
and come South!”