On her 85th birthday, Toni Wells swam a mile, “just to be sure I could.”
Since childhood, Wells has explored the boundaries of her own ability, and she’s found that these boundaries can often be reached by water. She swam 50 miles in the Indian Ocean at the age of 62, taught survival swimming techniques to soldiers during World War II and instructed American Red Cross swimming courses for more than half a century.
Today, she sticks mostly to land, but it’s safe to say her life has been touched by water much in the same way hundreds – perhaps thousands – of lives have been touched by her generosity. Wells, now 87, has volunteered for different organizations across the globe since she was 17.
“I think volunteering should be a parallel career,” Wells said recently from her Kalispell apartment. “You have to have a career to make money, but you have to have a career that teaches you about life. That’s what volunteering does.”
And Wells has taught many others about life through her volunteer work, stretching from Japan to California to, especially, Montana. Since 1966, Wells has called Kalispell home and before that, after her stint in the U.S. Marine Corps during WWII, she lived in Great Falls from 1945-1951.
Wells sees volunteering as much more than a community service; it is a way to make the entire world better. If you extend a helping hand, somebody will reach back, and the cycle repeats itself. Wells learned the philosophy of giving from her family as a child, and by the time she was 17 she was teaching water-safety courses for the American Red Cross in Buffalo, N.Y. She swam competitively in high school.
The required age for water-safety instructors was 18, but Wells believed the cause outweighed the fib.
“I lied a little,” she said with a grin. “But it was just for a few months.”
Wells continued teaching water-safety courses until 1998. But not only have children learned swimming techniques from Wells, so have adults around the world. Wells taught survival swimming for American troops in California and Asia.
After her cousin – “who was like a brother to me” – was killed in World War II, Wells joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served for the remainder of the war, “because I was patriotic and felt I should replace him as well as I could.”
In the Marines, she taught navigation to pilots and survival swimming at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro base near Laguna Beach, Calif. She could swim like a fish and after her courses, so could the troops. It was at Laguna Beach that she met her husband, Phil. She says that she and Phil were the first two enlisted Marines to marry.
Phil had been evacuated from Guadalcanal and, like other evacuees who had been bunkered down awaiting rescue, he suffered severe trauma. He spent a year in New Zealand relearning how to speak.
By the time he arrived at the air station, Wells said his condition had improved to where he was learning to name things through association. This is how she met Phil and earned her name, Toni. Up to that point, she went by her birth name, Marcella.
When Wells and other Marines would march at the base, they were often accompanied by a big St. Bernard dog named Toni. Phil took note of Marcella, but his mind kept recalling Toni’s name. Phil reached out to Marcella, and she reached back, accepting her new name.
Phil and Toni lived in Great Falls after the war and then moved to the Kindley Air Force Base in Bermuda. Eventually they ended up back in Montana, settling in Kalispell. They had four kids together before Phil was killed by a drunk driver on U.S. Highway 93 in 1979.
In her four decades in the Flathead Valley, broken up by stints overseas, Wells has carved out a respected name for herself in both community activism and local theater. Her acting roots are deep and she claims that the largest salary she ever earned was for her role in a Japanese horror film while stationed in Japan for a “Service to Military” program in the mid-1980s.
Previously, Wells had volunteered for the “Service to Military” program at the Diego Garcia military base on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It was there that she completed the first of many 50-mile swims in her 60s.
Sherry Stevens, executive director for United Way of Northwest Montana, has known Wells for nearly 30 years. Stevens said Wells still speaks to United Way’s “Leaders of Tomorrow” groups. In her later years, Wells has busied herself with public speaking invitations across the state, advocating on behalf of volunteerism.
“She’s just been a real inspiration to our youth and an inspiration to us all,” Stevens said. “She has inspired me for the last 25 to 30 years as a woman who has truly made a difference in this community.”
Wells believes it’s vital to instill the importance of volunteering into kids at a young age, so they will carry that belief with them their whole lives. Stevens said children embrace Wells.
“What she’s doing is inspiring them to consider volunteerism as a habit of the heart,” Stevens said. “And she just keeps going and going.”
Wells has been on the frontlines of disaster relief efforts following devastating hurricanes and dam failures. She has written about her experiences and shared them through public speaking. She has been busy in her 87 years, but not so busy that she can’t find time for fun.
Marge Fisher, a longtime friend, said she and Wells have traveled together to England, Turkey, Greece and Russia. Even on those trips, Wells meticulously documents each day’s details.
“We’ve had a lot of fun on our trips,” Fisher said. “Really, a lot of fun.”
Of the many things Wells has learned about people, one human reality stands out, and it is the basis for her volunteerism.
“We are all vulnerable,” she said. “We don’t know when we’re going to need the generosity of others to help us out. We never know when disasters will happen.”
She sums up her philosophy with a quote.
“We are each of us angels with only one wing. The only way we can fly is by holding up each other.”