(Editor's note: The Herald-Mail's annual "Making a Difference" section, spotlighting people who better the lives of others in the Tri-State area, will appear in Sunday's newspaper. Photos and profiles will also appear on the Making a Difference page on www.herald-mail.com)

HAGERSTOWN — For years, Darcé Easton has spent her Friday evenings volunteering at Washington County Hospital’s information desk.

To her, even something that seems small, like giving directions, means a lot.

It’s one of the many ways Easton has spent her life serving others — something she says she does out of a sense of obligation.

“I do what I do because I enjoy doing it,” said Easton, 79, of Hagerstown. “Not because I want other people to know about it. I’m just passionate about it.”

Easton is a volunteer at the hospital and with Community Action Council, a group that helps low-income residents in Washington County.

She is the former chair of the Washington County Rural Heritage Museum and was a docent with the Miller House.

Born as Darcé Palmer in Clear Spring at the dawn of the Great Depression, Easton said her family planted the seed for a life of serving others. She grew up at Washington Monument State Park, where her father was superintendent. Her family routinely took in people to whom they weren’t related.

At age 19, she married Ernest Leon Easton, a veteran of World War II. He died in 1987, after 37 years of marriage and a tiresome bout with several health problems. Easton, a retired school teacher, said her husband’s death was the reason she wanted to become more involved in the community.

“I was without responsibility of having to care for anyone,” Easton said.

So she started volunteering at the hospital and with CAC. She also became more active with the Rural Heritage Museum and Miller House.

Easton said she recently has had to scale back her involvement in several community groups due to health issues, and she is focusing most of her attention these days on volunteering with CAC and at the hospital.

But serving others, she said, is something she’ll continue to do, whether its caring for one of her five great-grandchildren or helping someone else in the community.

“It’s just one of those things,” Easton said.

Q&A with Darcé Easton

Resides in: Hagerstown

Occupation: Volunteer, Washington County Hospital and Community Action Council

Q: What is your proudest moment?

A: Her family and children. “I am very proud of the fact that they’re both intelligent, responsible people.”

Q: Whom do you most admire, and why?

A: Abraham Lincoln. “He had the character and the foresight to guide a nation when it was in its deepest trouble.”

Q: What is the best piece of advice you have received, and who gave it to you?

A: “My father told me, ‘Because is not an acceptable answer.’ My father and I went around and around for years on that one.”

Q: What is the next goal you would like to achieve?

A: To live to be 100. “My mother lived to be 102. My aim is to torment the devil out of people for as long as I can.”