ReServist Marilyn Shaw

Photo by Kyle Fischer

Marilyn Shaw is still lean and lithe some 40 years after her hope to become a weekend runner was dashed by creaky knees. Not one to mope, she became a walker, a self-described exercise freak and a volunteer with the New York Road Runners. “I was given a clipboard and asked to ‘check in the volunteers,’” she recalls. “That’s where it all began.”

Marilyn became hooked on helping others and was happy to be in the company of accomplished athletes. She served the Road Runners for 14 years, all the while working at TWA and enjoying employee perks of deep discount travel to distant places when time and space allowed. For the Road Runners, she recruited and coordinated volunteers for weekly road races-and for the New York City Marathon. “This volunteer job became the pathway to my new career after TWA went bankrupt and I was unemployed,” she says.

After years of donating her time to Road Runners, she started getting paychecks for managing volunteers for other major organizations, including the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York, the ‘96 Atlanta Olympics, the ‘98 Goodwill Games, Women’s World Cup Soccer and NYC2012, the organization formed to bid on the 2012 Olympic Games. Now she is in what she calls “semi-retirement” as a ReServist working at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.

Marilyn, an extraordinary woman herself, is in the midst of coordinating “Brooklyn’s Extraordinary Women,” an annual program begun in 2007 in which some 31 women are to be honored by the Brooklyn DA’s office next March in conjunction with Women’s History Month. Each nominee must be at least 18 years old and a resident of Brooklyn. Her actions should benefit Brooklyn residents and be beyond paid employment. A special committee composed of staff from the DA’s office and previous honorees will make the final selections.

Before this assignment at the DA’s office, Marilyn was a Reservist for Brooklyn Generation Schools, a model school at South Shore High School, where she was the logistical coordinator for student trips that were part of a college and career readiness program.

Marilyn came to ReServe in 2007 after a frustrating and fruitless search for full-time work.  In 20 job applications prior to becoming a Reservist, “Employers read my resume and I got the interviews, but once they saw me I was out. It’s really a matter of age, not a capability thing. People don’t want [older workers].”  She says that while she and many others have weathered the abuse of ageism in the workplace, she has high hopes for the bumper crop of Baby Boomers. “They just aren’t going to take it.”

At an age on the far side of 50, Marilyn takes special pleasure in working at ReServe. She says it reaffirms her skills.