This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show,

from the arts to sports and from business to history, and everything in stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports

and from business to history, and everything in between, including your stories. Send them to our

American Stories.com. They're our favorite stories, and proof of that is our next story by Paul

in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Let's take a listen to Paul's story, Wilbur and the Empty Nestor.

I met Wilbur in the senior home because I was bored. Like a lot of 50-something guys my age,

I'm a man in transition. The kids have grown up and moved out. It's just the two of us again,

Cindy and I. I'm missing the rush of activity that used to

clog our house and hustle us on to the fields, the ice rinks, and the gymnasiums that our kids

and all their teammates used to inhabit. There must be something more I can do, I heard myself

saying. I wanted to be more involved, more engaging, more invested.

Volunteering seemed like the right fit for me.

So one day I drove to the senior home near my home in Shacapie, Minnesota.

There was nothing formal about it. The staff allowed me to come once or twice a week.

I didn't visit the residents in their rooms, but I hung out in the

activity room and the cafeteria. I tried to meet some other lonely people. In other words,

people like me, who needed new activities and new friends. Some were easy, some were tough. Wilbur

was one of the hard ones. He was 89 years old back then.

His wife had died 26 years earlier.

In his prime, Old Wilbur was a hardworking farmer on a farm near New All, Minnesota,

a small town southwest of Pryor Lake.

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