enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

Linda LeClair cooks onions to go with hamburgers she’ll serve to her friends, from left, Barbara Luther, Fred Lorfano and Ron Cyr, at Seaside Health Care earlier this month. “I don’t feel like I’m in a nursing home,” she said of her almost-daily visits.

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I BELIEVE

EDITOR'S NOTE: For some people, passion and commitment to an ideal is more than something for the holiday season. For them, faith in that ideal is a touchstone for their lives. Third of five parts.

Making this plan holds special meaning for both women.

Luther lives at the Seaside Health Care nursing home in Portland and uses a wheelchair to get around. LeClair works for the U.S. Postal Service in Portland, lives nearby and doesn't drive far at night. She hasn't seen a live band since the early 1970s, when Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons came to Portland.

LeClair believes this adventure will happen, however, and that she can help make it happen. Her belief in the power of small deeds has helped Luther and other Seaside residents see that they can do more than they realized.

LeClair reaches out daily with small acts of kindness at the nursing home. She doesn't seek recognition. She said she didn't understand why her actions would attract any publicity.

Her modesty, though, belies what she has accomplished. Also hard to spot, at first, is how the power of friendship flows both ways. It is clear the residents have given LeClair a sense of purpose that is transforming her life.

LeClair comes to Seaside Health Care nearly every evening. She has been doing it for the past four years. She's not a volunteer, she'll tell you, just a visitor. Never mind that some residents mistake her for a staff member.

LeClair's visits began when Luther, who is 54 and was a colleague at the Portland Post Office with multiple sclerosis, suffered a stroke. One evening the women didn't want to sit in Luther's room, so they went to the lobby.

There they met Fred Lorfano, who is paralyzed from the armpits down and lies on his stomach on a gurney. Soon they were joined by Ron Cyr and Chip Kraul, who are in wheelchairs following accidents; and Alice Toothaker, who suffered a stroke and had a leg amputated.

Someone wanted a cup of coffee. LeClair got it. LeClair and Luther were visiting one later evening and the group assembled. Someone was hungry, so they ordered pizza. LeClair decided to bring Luther a homemade supper one Sunday. She wound up bringing extra servings for the group.

Friendships took root, and the dynamics inside the nursing home began to change. Luther at first hadn't spent much time outside her wing of the nursing home. She soon looked forward to the nightly gatherings in the lobby.

This is how Lorfano explains what was evolving: "Coming into a nursing home is like shock therapy, seeing old, disabled people. You wonder how you got in this setting. So you set up cliques. Linda just happens to be in our clique, or we are in hers, depending how you look at it."

LeClair, too, began to look forward to her visits. Her husband, a construction worker, goes to bed early; so she thought it would be nice to stop at Seaside on her way home from work.

As she became a regular, LeClair noticed need. That's why Cyr was wearing a new winter jacket early this month. He didn't ask for it; LeClair just saw how lightlyhe was dressed as the weather turned cold.

She treats residents to fast food, gives haircuts and pours drinks; but the real need LeClair has come to fill is emotional, not material.

At Thanksgiving, Seaside staff members carved two turkeys in the lobby. The hallway was crowded and some of the residents who are less mobile, the group said, didn't get the pick of the bird. LeClair had a solution: Let's have our own holiday dinner.

LeClair showed up that weekend with a 21-pound turkey and all the fixings, from stuffing to cheesecake. A dozen residents shared the meal, and a sense of community at a time when they might have felt isolated.

LeClair doesn't consider her actions noteworthy. She's not motivated by religion. She believes in God, but isn't a big churchgoer. She just has an internal sense that by doing nice things to people, something good will happen to her, somewhere,...