Sag Harbor Lions Club Helps Install Ramp for Longtime Sag Harbor Resident

Kindness comes in many forms. For Dorothy Giles, she is now reminded of that every day she leaves her home in Sag Harbor.

In January, on a rainy Thursday morning, the Sag Harbor Lions Club and a team of volunteers funded and installed an aluminum accessory ramp for the 94-year-old matriarch — a pillar in the community who relies on a wheelchair to get around — in place of the stairs that led to her front door.

“It’s a blessing,” her daughter, Gay Giles, said. “It’s a blessing that there are still goodhearted local people in this community.”

In December, Giles — who relocated from Virginia back to her childhood home six years ago to look after her mother — reached out to Paul Zaykowski, co-head of the Sag Harbor Lions Club, to ask for help after her mother’s hip replacement.

It was “virtually impossible” to get her mother in and out of her house — where she has lived for 62 years — without another person, she explained. Two days later, she was met with good news: The organization would pay for the ramp in full and secured help to build it.

“Mrs. Giles is just a lovely lady, she’s just a sweetheart of a person,” Zaykowski said. “When we found out that she needed some help, it was an automatic yes.”

The Lions Club enlisted the help of woodworker Keith Dutcher, owner of Deerfield Millwork, and builder Bruce Bennett, who both live in Sag Harbor. Over several days, they spent hours discussing measurements, materials, designs and placement of the J-shaped ramp. And on January 19, the duo and a small team of volunteers installed it.

“It started to pour around 1 o’clock,” Zaykowski said, “so they finished just in time.”

As chance would have it, Gay Giles used the ramp to bring her mother to an unscheduled doctor’s appointment the very next day — a reminder to her, as well, of the kindness that exists in the community.

“This really just shows to me that it’s still a small town with a big heart,” she said. “It just proves that it doesn’t matter what’s going on around and around — and the things that are happening that we might not be fond of — the fact that there’s still the roots to the community, it’s just a beautiful thing. I’m just so grateful.”