Happy to Help
Paris Sterrett’s acts of kindness uplift others and enrich his life in the process.
Paris Sterrett is a “people person.” Having grown up in a household with a father who worked for a community center and a librarian for a mother likely helped. Born in Rhode Island and educated at the University of Buffalo (now SUNY at Buffalo), he came to the Philadelphia area in 1971 with his wife, Joan. He spent the next 25 years at the VA, helping disabled Vietnam veterans through the vocational rehabilitation program.
“I enjoyed the interviewing, finding out what type of educational program would make [each veteran] happiest—their interests, aptitudes, what careers they would like to pursue—in relation to their disabilities,” Sterrett recalls. “I helped the full gamut of people with disabilities. Every person was different. It made me want to go to work every day.”
He retired in 1998, but his service to others was just beginning.
He had taken up golf as a way to stay active. The year prior to his retirement, a friend who was a science teacher at Episcopal Academy tasked him with starting a junior varsity golf for the school. As of 2025, Sterrett has been helping EA students get their golf game “to the next level” for 28 years.
He’s also a volunteer coach for blind and visually impaired golfers through the Middle Atlantic Blind Golf Association, of which he is vice president. He once coached a blind 89-year-old golfer who shot a hole-in-one at the ACE Club, now known as The Union League of Philadelphia’s Liberty Hill course, in Lafayette Hill.
“It’s very rewarding,” he says. “You’re not solving all the problems of the world, but you’re joking around, having lunch, and having a good time playing golf. If the person is playing well, I feel like I had something to do with it, somehow enhancing the life of someone with no vision.”
Such acts of kindness are invaluable because they enrich another person’s life. Research suggests the person who performs the kindness may get something out of it, too.
A December 2024 NPR story cited the observational and experimental evidence studied by Tara Gruenewald, a social and health psychologist at Chapman University in Orange, California. Perhaps the most compelling involved the Baltimore Experience Corps trial, in which adults ages 60 and older were assigned to either volunteer at elementary schools or be put on a waiting list. The volunteers spent at least 15 hours per week tutoring underprivileged kids. After two years, researchers found that the volunteers had no decline in memory or cognitive function, something that could not be said of those in the control group.
Having spent more than 45 years in Narberth, Paris and Joan Sterrett moved to The Mansion at Rosemont, near Bryn Mawr, about six years ago. He oversees the community’s raised flower beds, weeds for a few friends, and writes for the community newsletter, The Voice. Now in his early 80s, he credits his longevity to staying active, his happy 55-year marriage to Joan, and his devotion to helping others.
“I’m a very happy person, and I enjoy people,” he says. “I’m probably busier than any other male here [at Rosemont], and doing all these things can really enhance someone’s life.”
Photo courtesy of The Mansion at Rosemont
Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life, July 2025
