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GREENSBORO - "If you volunteer an hour or 25 years, you're still a volunteer."

If there is anyone who can make pronouncements about volunteering, it's Donna Hudson Turner. The day after the High Point woman retired in 1979, the only aspect of her life that changed was that, instead of going to work after breakfast, she went to volunteer.

"One day I was working and the next day I was volunteering," Turner said.

After 25 years of volunteering with Hospice of the Piedmont, racking up almost 25,000 hours of service, Turner is being recognized with the President's Volunteer Service Award. Turner will meet President George W. Bush and accept her award Tuesday when Bush visits Greensboro. Before Hospice, Turner volunteered at her church and with the American Cancer Society.

Bush will be in Greensboro to meet with children whose parents are in prison and the children's mentors.

Bush's Mentoring Children of Prisoners program provides grants and support to groups that match at-risk children with mentors.

Monday, a White House representative called Turner and told her she had won, but she couldn't tell anyone until the White House announced Bush's visit to Greensboro.

Not her children. Not Hospice. She had to keep quiet through Thanksgiving, when her three children, six grandchildren and brand-new baby great-grandson would be together.

Finally, at 4 p.m. Friday, Turner got another call from the White House - her fourth in 10 days - giving her the OK to spread the word.

Now, her family teases her. One son-in-law has told her he thinks Bush will be offering her a pardon, not an award.

But Turner thinks it is volunteering that keeps her out of trouble - all kinds.

"People retire and they sit down in a chair and they get sick and they die," Turner said. "You've got to keep going."

It's that attitude that had Turner continuing to volunteer through her rehabilitation after suffering a stroke that left half of her body paralyzed. Through hard work, she has regained the use of her left arm and hand and can walk with a walker.

"The first time I learned to walk, I don't remember it," Turner said. "But this time was rough."

But, Turner said, she might take a wheelchair ride across the tarmac on Tuesday to meet the president in front of Air Force One. Not because she doesn't have the strength, but because she will be nervous, she said.

"I can't believe it," Turner said. "When you volunteer, you never even think of getting an award. It's such an honor."

Contact Sonja Elmquist at 373-7090 or sonja.elmquist@news-record.com