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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is Friday, which means it's time for StoryCorps. In 2022, Marci Johnson was at a low point. She was in her early 70s and looking for a new purpose in life. Her friend Susan Baur leads a group called Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage. They dive into the cold, polluted waters of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to clean it up by hand. When Marci heard the group was holding tryouts, she dove right in.
MARCI JOHNSON: I had tried other volunteer things - stuffing envelopes and planting trees, picking up trash on the side of the road. None of them gave me that sense of adventure. So that day, I was so nervous. I didn't want to be late. Make a good impression.
SUSAN BAUR: You got out of the car, and in your arms was the biggest Tupperware thing of cookies I had ever seen.
JOHNSON: Outright bribery (laughter).
BAUR: I loved it. And I thought, even if I have to tow this woman for half a mile, she is going to make it. What I really was responding to was your absolutely quiet determination, and that came through on the toilet dive. We had found a toilet, and that thing was just stuck in the mud. But you brute force lifted that sucker off the pond floor, and that was it.
JOHNSON: One of my first swims, you beckoned me over. And this turtle comes out of nowhere and landed on your hand. It was so magical to see that. It's a feeling of actually belonging.
BAUR: Yeah. It's as if you were a leaf who suddenly discovers that you're part of a mighty tree.
JOHNSON: Yeah. Also, to have the people around me meant a huge amount. My life was a little chaotic back then. I had just lost my husband and a year later developed breast cancer. When grief happens and you lose someone, I was under that misconception you get over it.
BAUR: Yeah, no.
JOHNSON: And you don't. So you have to just find something else and get back into life...
BAUR: Yeah.
JOHNSON: ...Which this group, and you as a friend, help me do.
BAUR: Good.
JOHNSON: Yeah. As I aged, I had the feeling of being invisible. And that's a hard concept for someone who's younger than we are to understand.
BAUR: Oh, amen.
JOHNSON: When you get to be in your 60s, 70s, 80s, you just kind of fade into the background. But with the work that we're doing, I'm not in the background anymore (laughter).
BAUR: You're right. Right, right. I'm not fading into the sunset. I'm actually growing stronger.
JOHNSON: Absolutely.
BAUR: What are your hopes for the future? And you need to say that we're going to be friends forever because that better be one of your hopes, just saying.
JOHNSON: That's definitely one of my plans. Definitely.
BAUR: Good.
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MARTIN: Susan Baur and Marci Johnson in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Their StoryCorps conversation is archived at the Library of Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "HE HAS A WAY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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