Union resident Elsie McGill spends a lot of time in Greenville.

She has a reason.

That’s where her three grandchildren live.

“Since I had grandchildren, they have been my top priority,” the senior citizen said.

McGill deserves the time off.

She retired in 1994 after working 30 years in the Union County school system and having two children of her own. She and her husband moved here in 1957 from Columbia where they both attended the University of South Carolina.

The former physical education and life sciences instructor, however, hasn’t forgotten her hometown. Instead, she’s become involved in several organizations in Union as a volunteer.

It’s for her dedication and commitment to one such organization and Wallace Thomson Hospital — which it serves — she recently was honored.

McGill was named the Wallace Thomson Hospital Volunteer of the Year at the hospital volunteers’ organization annual Christmas party on Dec. 15 at the hospital.

She has volunteered at the hospital nearly 15 years, beginning in 1995 after retiring. Myrna Kennedy, the then-president of the volunteer organization, recruited her.

“Myrna Kennedy was very interested in the hospital volunteers,” McGill said. “She was recruiting a group of ladies and I happened to be one of them.”

She — and a full roster of volunteers — help in several areas around the hospital through their organization. McGill said volunteers work at the information desk — she does three hours each week — and a host of other jobs hospital employees need done. They work in the courtyard, decorate for holidays, volunteer in the patient surgery and pain clinic departments and work other events like bake sales, book sales and jewelry sales.

“It fluctuates,” McGill said about the number of hours she and her fellow volunteers give to the hospital each week. “We just kind of rise to the occasion. We all work together and enjoy the friendship.”

She was humbled when her group awarded her as Volunteer of the Year.

“I was very surprised,” McGill said. “I was very humbled and very undeserving, but I appreciate being able to represent our group of volunteers in that way. It is a nice thing, but it’s very humbling.”

She said her fellow volunteers are a group of very dedicated people.

“They each help each other and they’re a great group of people,” McGill said. “And the hospital employees are so good to us. They are so appreciative of what we do which only makes it better.”

She encourages people to become volunteers — no matter what group or organization they choose. McGill did, however, point out her group of hospital volunteers is a great one with which to be associated.

“The hospital volunteers offers a lot of things,” she said. “There’s a lot of different things to interest people.”

McGill invites anyone interested in getting involved with the volunteers at Wallace Thomson to get in touch with the group’s coordinator Catherine Childers. There are certain qualifications a volunteer must meet before becoming a member, but the Volunteer of the Year said it is worth the effort of completing the necessary steps.

“I think they’d find it most gratifying,” McGill said about becoming a part of the group.

She enjoys her volunteering at the hospital and also helps out at the Union County Arts Council and, of course, has her church work. And while it does take some time away from her grandchildren, in the long run she’s okay with that.

“I feel like it’s the one unselfish thing I do,” McGill said.