Rev. Donald Rock

When Rev. Donald Rock Sr. of Lehigh Acres celebrates his 90th birthday next week, it will be a year of two milestones for him and his wife, Helen. First off, they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary a few months back with a week-long trip to remember in Hawaii and on Aug. 31, he and his family and close friends will fill several tables at the Country Roads Caf on Homestead Rd. in the Publix shopping center for a birthday party.

Rock may be celebrating his 90th birthday, but age doesn’t keep him still nor at home. He is the chaplain at the Lehigh Regional Medical Center on Lee Blvd., and puts in at least three hours a day and is on call 24/7 as he wife says.

“The hospital’s my other family,” Rock said. “I’ve been there going on 14 years and I have seen many come and go. When I first became chaplain at the hospital, I was asked not only to be on hand to visit patients, but to be chaplain for the hospital’s employees.

“And I have enjoyed it and hope I can continue to do it until my health won’t allow it,” Rock said as he sat in his comfortable condo on W. 10th St.

They were married 60 years on Aug. 23, but vacationed in Hawaii a few months back to celebrate their anniversary.

Donald and Helen Rock

“The big one is coming up next week,” Rock Laughed. “I’ll be 90 and don’t’ know where the years have gone.”

As the volunteer chaplain at the hospital, he has visited hundreds or thousands of patients and has offered to pray with them.

“There have been a few who didn’t want prayer and told me to pray outside in the hall, so that is what I did,” he smiled.

But mostly, people welcomed Rock’s conversation and his offer to pray. Most who know him will tell you of his interesting personality and wit.

Rock was born in South Ashburnham, Mass., not far from the New Hampshire line and has pastored for at least 40 years. He is a Methodist minister.

He and his wife, Helen, lived in Alva for 40 years but moved to Lehigh nine years ago where it was more convenient for him to travel to the hospital as chaplain.

“I’m interested in church work and helping people and I enjoy meeting people,” said Rock. As a minister and chaplain at LRMC, he has conducted marriages for some of the employees, and he has been a confidant for many other employees.

He’s been called to counsel families who have lost loved ones, not only as patients’ families, but also of employees of the hospital.

“They are my second family for sure and I love every one of them,” he said.

Both Rev. Rock and he calls himself “senior” because he has a son who is Donald Jr., who is the church organist at Christ United Methodist Church in Lehigh. The other son is Dennis and he and his wife, Sally live near LaBelle. There are three grandchildren and “all are in their 20s or more,” Rock said.

They probably won’t be at the party since they have moved here and there, but the intermediate family and some close friends will fill the tables. And Helen is planning a big birthday cake and wondering if she should cause a major fire by putting 90 candles on top of it.

She doesn’t want the fire marshal called in when they are lit.

“That’s a lot of candles,” she mused. “What I think I am going to do is what they did for me when I was 83; they put those number candles on top. I teased them and said to turn them around to 38, not 83,” she laughed. “So I plan to get a 9 and a zero candle and light them.”

Both Donald Rock and his wife, Helen Rock, are well- known in Lehigh.

Helen Rock has been playing the French Horn since she was in junior high school and for several years has played the horn for the Lehigh Concert Band and was its director for 17 years.

“We put on six concerts each year and I do my best these days to be there,” she said.

Rock has a personality that seems to draw people to him. The reason has to be that he enjoys meeting and getting to know people.

“I do enjoy working with people, that’s for sure,” he said.

The trip to Hawaii for Rev. Rock and his wife was for sure an interesting one. They have piles of photographs they took while in Kauai, Hawaii for a week.

And while they were there, Rev. Rock lost his driver’s license and before he could leave on his flight, had to retrieve another license. He went to the police station, knocked on the door, he said, but nobody would open the door.

“So I did the next best thing, I called them on my cell phone, explained what I was there for, and they came and opened the doors. They got me another license and then my original license were eventually found, so now I have two,” he laughed.

And Helen has some memories not to be forgotten, too.

“Well, I thought I lost this new strange key to the van we rented and I didn’t know what we were going to do, but someone at the place we stayed, showed me that I hadn’t lost the key, that it was in the device all the time. I had never seen a key device like that. And the van we rented was a large one and we have a smaller one here in Lehigh, so that was some getting used to,” she said.

Both carried walkers with them on the long flight to Hawaii. They wanted to make sure they could get around and by all accounts of what they said they saw, they did well.

“We remember cats and chickens everywhere,” Rev. Rock laughed. “The mountains were beautiful. It was a nice place and we enjoyed ourselves. We made many friends.”

When will Rev. Rock retire? Apparently nobody at the hospital wants to see that happen and Rock himself said he hopes to continue on as chaplain for as long as his health holds out.

He doesn’t look 90 and both said their health was “fairly well,” so LRMC and Lehigh may have several years yet to keep him working and her playing her French Horn.

“I’ve enjoyed being chaplain for sure,” Rev. Rock said.