Most people agree that the stereotypical “only child” is often characterized as spoiled, pampered, a “brat,” often lacking social skills, but Penny Campbell is as far away from that description as you could possibly get. When you ask the 76-year-old Boone Hospital Center retiree what makes her tick, she quickly admits, “I love life and I like people.” Those who know her best call her a people magnet.
It was, perhaps, during those early years in Hawaii that her passion for people was cultivated. “Although I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, I knew that I wanted to work with people, and that goes back to that only child thing,” she explains. She has four adult children but remembers how, as a child, she envied people who had large families with siblings, aunts and uncles. At school, she played and studied alongside a potpourri of children from all over the world including “Asians, Japanese and military kids,” but what she most remembers about that experience is everyone being readily accepted by the Hawaiian kids.
As a little girl, she often overheard people talking about how outgoing she was and how comfortable she was around people. “As a child, I was never shy and it never bothered me to meet new people,” she says. Some even described her as gregarious, precocious. Her tenure in Hawaii was a training ground for her decades-long career helping people at Boone Hospital.
“When people have been in a few times, they get to know you and begin to look for someone they recognize…a trust relationship is built,” Campbell explains. In retirement, she still finds herself asking, “How is so and so doing? I miss that.” People often arrived at her desk nervous and stressed, wanting someone familiar with whom to talk instead of seeking out staff from social services or the chaplain’s office. It was not unusual for a total stranger to walk up to her desk and say, “I was told that you’ll know who I need to talk to and who I need to see,” she said.
And her passion for sports goes way beyond simply wearing the team colors and showing up for all the home games. Campbell knows the game! “As a seven year old, I remember watching the World Champion Kansas City Chiefs and my mother knowing every single penalty foul the referee called,” her son Chris Campbell, boasts. “She can break down a 1-3-1 defense on the basketball court and can explain the reason for a referee’s flag on the football field.” He attributes his lifelong passion for sports to his mother’s knowledge of the “inner workings” of the game.
As she settles into retirement, Campbell will do anything but fade into the background. “I’m 76 now so I call this my ‘gravy train.’ Both my mother and grandmother died at 72, so I love getting older. Whenever I have another birthday, I say, “Yes!” In retirement, she plans to fill her time with travel to visit her out-of-town children and the seven kids who call her by her very favorite name, “Grammie.” She proudly admits, “I’m totally in love with my grandchildren!” There will be lots of Mizzou games, out-of-town shopping trips with friends, movie nights and, of course, attending Tiger Talk every week. She admits, “I don’t like just sitting at home.” She also wants to have a few computer lessons and admits to never having ordered anything online. “And, I don’t have a Facebook page. That’s on my ‘to do’ list,” she confides.