TRINITY - Three years ago, Bill Humphrey and his wife, Sue, said goodbye to their big, two-story colonial house in Basking Ridge, N.J., and moved to Pasco County.
"We wanted to be closer to family," Bill Humphrey says. "That's the reason we chose this area."
They also fell in love with Trinity, specifically Fox Hollow, where they built a 3,100-square-foot home sweet enough to grace the front of a postcard. On a fine spring Florida day, Sue's perfectly manicured flower beds bloom the color of a Gulf sunset, and an American flag ripples in the breeze.
The Humphreys share the house with their big, powder-puff white standard poodle Sugar which they adopted through an area rescue program. They have the house decorated like a dream, too, with lots of white wicker and room for their collections of cuckoo clocks and tools, even a horse racing trophy won by Bill's Uncle Andrew at the 1914 Tennessee State Fair.
At 66, Bill Humphrey really should be retired, hanging around the house more, and playing a lot of tennis - his favorite sport.
Instead, he's worrying about tax returns - though not his own. Humphrey, a Vanderbilt University graduate and former financial manager for a software company, now runs 10 tax help centers for low-income people around Pasco.
Known as the AARP Tax-Aide program, the service really is open to people of all ages whether they're middle and low-income, though special attention is paid to those 60 and older. Volunteers prepare tax returns and answer tax questions for free. A volunteer himself, Humphrey oversees a team of 65 volunteers. What started as occasional effort in his down time blossomed into a soulful experience that transformed him. "I was involved in this program in New Jersey, but few people in our suburb really needed the help," said Humphrey, who first learned tax preparation techniques to help his wife, a self-employed real estate agent. "But when I moved to Florida and started doing this, I developed a soft spot. There is so much more need down here, a much higher volume of people who really need our services."
Humphrey finds the experience rewarding, particularly because the program prevents a lot of people from being taken advantage of by companies that promise instant returns but keep a large percentage of a client's tax return money.
"And it's always the people who can least afford it," he says.
When Humphrey talks about an elderly woman named Mable who used a walker and always arrived in "high heels, stockings, hat and a dress," he wipes away a tear. She was so dependent on his help that when she died recently, her heirs found his name in her paperwork and sought him out one last time.
He also recently helped a single father who hadn't filed an income tax return since 1998 and whose wages were being garnisheed - mistakenly - by the IRS. As it turned out the IRS owed the man nearly $13,000.
"People are so grateful for our help," he says. "It really makes you feel good about what you do."
Like so many people who devote their lives to volunteer work, Humphrey says his helping spirit is a "personal issue."
"I have to be active," he explains. "The tax work needed to be done, and there was no one to do it, so I just stepped in - it was one of those things."
He's also involved in a long list of community programs around his neighborhood. He's president of the Trinity Men's Association this year, serves on the Fox Hollow transitional committee that will transfer the homeowner's association from the builder to the residents. He's also active in Fox Hollow's community crime watch group, recruiting block captains to oversee 912 homes.
During tax season, which runs from October to April, Humphrey estimates his volunteer work balloons into a full-time job. He must borrow computers, train volunteers to use tax software and find free places for them to work. In the past, he relied heavily on the Pasco County Library System, which didn't allow his group to use their facilities this year. Now, his volunteers are tucked away in myriad locations from the Polish American Club in Holiday to the Hudson Senior Center to the Regency Park Civic Center.
Anyone may use the service, providing their taxes don't require filing a complex return. "If someone has a huge portfolio of stocks and investments, we won't do it," he says. "We stick with simple Schedule Cs."
When he talks about retiring, he knows he never will. Really. He used to dream about whiling away his days in a log cabin in the mountains of North Carolina.
"That's never going to happen," he says. Life would be too slow. His wife, Sue, 61, worksfor Richard Samuelson, whose company built their home. Once a week, she takes Sugar around to Pasco nursing homes as part of the Pets Add Life Program.
They have tickets to the Florida Orchestra, the Performing Arts Center and Buccaneers football games. Even with all his volunteer work, Humphrey manages to squeeze in a few sets of tennis a week. And he's thinking about taking up sailing. At one point, they looked at Heritage Springs, one of the Trinity communities for residents 55 and older. "Though I loved it, it wasn't homogenous enough," Humphrey explains. "Here we've got kids setting up hockey nets in the streets. I think we just weren't ready for retirement."
