BERNE — Mildred and Alan Zuk are consummate givers.

Constant in their commitments, they have been married for 50 years.

Throughout that half-century, Alan has been involved either driving school buses for Berne-Knox-Westerlo or supervising the transportation department.

He has also served Berne as supervisor and as a town justice.

Millie taught elementary school children for 35 years, along with coaching cross-country and track, and then went on to earn certification as an emergency medical technician to help with the Helderberg Ambulance squad.

Alan says he can pinpoint the event that made him get involved in community service. In 1977, as members of the Berne Reformed Church — another long-time commitment for the couple — the Zuks were involved in an activity at the church hall when the fire siren sounded.

“Basically, every man left our activity to go fight the fire except me …,” Alan recalls in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “That’s when I joined the fire company.”

Millie recalls how, as Alan’s parents aged, the Zuks had to call the ambulance more and more. “We decided people were giving to the community,” she said. “And we decided we wanted to give back to the community as a thank-you for coming when Alan’s parents needed them.”

Really, their roots of community giving go back much further — all the way to childhood.

Millie, the oldest of three daughters, was raised in the Dorchester area of Boston. “My mother and father were very active in the church and they were on all kinds of committees over there in Boston,” she said. “And I remember my mother was known for her lemon meringue pies.”

Alan was raised on a dairy farm in Berne, the oldest of three siblings; he has two younger sisters. His parents worked their 250-acre dairy farm themselves and worked on another 200 acres on top of that.

They grew and harvested their own grain — oats and corn — and took it to the water-powered grinding mill at the Agway in Berne. They also raised their own hay, said Alan, describing the self-sufficient farm.

At the same time, Alan’s father, Paul, worked as a school bus driver, for the medical benefits.

Paul Zuk worked a 15-hour day for decades, starting with farm chores at 4 a.m. before making the morning bus run, returning to the farm for more chores before the afternoon run, and then going to bed after the evening milking and feeding.

When Alan would fill in for his father, as “a teenage strong kid,” he was exhausted, he said. Most people think of their fathers as strong, he said, but he knew how strong his father was. His father could throw a hay bale the way athletes throw a shot put.

“And I never could do it,” said Alan. Neither could any of his teenage friends who helped with farm work.

On Saturdays, Alan would go to the school to help his father clean the bus he drove so it would be ready for the week ahead. That was the start of his own BKW bus career.

“I think we both grew up in families that were community-oriented,” said Millie. “Alan’s mother was on the school board and she was on the cooperative extension … She did not only the farm work, but she went out and did volunteer work as well. And my parents were involved in that … That was just instilled in us — that you try to go out and help your community members.”

Alan and Millie met as college students. She was at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts and he was at Clarkson in Potsdam, New York. Cliff Barber, Alan’s classmate at both BKW and Clarkson, was dating a student at Gordon College who was Millie’s roommate.

“He met me and he went back and told Alan, ‘I have the girl for you,’” Millie recalled. “And so Alan and I dated once a month for two years.”

She went on, “I knew that Alan was in love with me when one time I came out to visit him and I was out in the barn and he said, ‘I want to introduce you to someone.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ And they lifted the cow’s face — and they had named her Millie.

“I knew it was true love … You know, not everyone can say that,” said Millie.

After they were married in 1971, the Zuks moved into the big double-family farmhouse on Canaday Hill Road with his parents until they could build their own house on a piece of the farm’s land. Later, after his parents retired and sold the farm, they too, built a house on another piece of the farm’s land.

The Zuks’ daughters then grew up being able to walk to their grandparents’ house. “They would just enjoy being with my parents,” Alan said. “And my parents, of course, loved having them as well.”

Alan had become BKW’s transportation director the year after he graduated from Clarkson, a job he held until he retired 36 years later, stepping up again as director when the district needed him. In his retirement, he filled in as a substitute bus driver when needed.

Meanwhile, in 1980, he began his town service as a justice. A Democrat, he then served as town supervisor from 1984 to 2000. He was supervisor during some tumultuous times — for instance, when the Hilltowns went through their first property revaluation.

Alan said he was proud of the civil tone that was maintained at the packed meetings and in the community afterwards.

Once, when the crowd in the meeting hall was sharply divided, a moment occurred similar to the one that caused Alan’s epiphany with the fire siren sounding. Beepers went off — a call for help — and those who had been arguing moved as one to help a neighbor in need.

While discussions were heated, Alan said, “When that discussion was over, you were still civil to each other … We would shake hands.”

Later, when chance meetings would occur, like at the old Maple Inn, Alan recalled, “You would just strike up a conversation with, you know, ‘How’s it going? How are the kids? How you doing?’ It was just a civil conversation, away from politics.”

He thinks the current political polarization in town is not unique to Berne. “It’s all forms of government,” Alan said. “And it’s very unfortunate.”

Reflecting on how he kept an even temperament at those heated meetings, Alan said, “Probably the reason I was so civil was my background as a town justice because you could have some difficult situations but you needed to maintain your professional, ethical standards.”

“Also from dealing with parents,” his wife chimed in.

“That’s true,” Alan agreed. “Dealing with administration students, parents, coworkers.”

He went on, reflecting on himself, with humility, “I could never do anything. I really have no skills.” He gave an example: “I’m not a mechanic. I’m watching the mechanics … repair things that I couldn’t even begin to do. 

“But what I could do was say, ‘Mr. Mechanic, I really, really need this bus in, like an hour. Do you think you guys can drop what you’re doing?’ … And they would do it. And it worked.”

In 2013, Alan took on the role of town justice again, a job he still holds.

But the Zuks are now building a condominium in Glenmont where they plan to move soon. They are already volunteering in their new town, Bethlehem.

Alan is becoming a driver for the senior van there and Millie is training to be an attendant on the van. “We’ll take folks to the grocery store or to activities or to doctors’ appointments,” Millie said.

That work will be less taxing than their current Helderberg Ambulance duties where Alan is a driver and lifter and Millie is an EMT who also writes a column for The Enterprise, “Volunteer voices,” on the squad’s work.

“We’re old enough to be the parents or grandparents of the responders,” said Alan. Both the Zuks are in their seventies. The work is physically demanding, especially in the time of COVID, Alan said.

“An ambulance call for us is three-and-a-half to four hours,” he said. Once they’ve transported a patient to the hospital, they often have to “wait an hour or two for our patient to be transferred from our care to the emergency-room care,” he said.

Often, the Zuks are “out and about at all hours of the night,” he said. “It’s rewarding but it’s exhausting.”

The patients, too, are often younger than the Zuks. “We’re taking these folks who are way younger than us and we’re lifting them and bringing them downstairs across the lawn in a snowstorm, and we’re older than they are,” said Alan.

In their new volunteer gig in Bethlehem, the Zuks are also older than many of the seniors they will be transporting.

One of the things that has always sustained them is family. As a kid, Alan worked on his family’s farm. In his teenage years, when a decision had to be made regarding the farm, his father would consult with him.

“My father would say, ‘Well, I’m getting ready to buy a new furnace for the house.’ And I said, ‘Dad, why do you want to buy a furnace when you are shoveling silage out of a silo? Why don’t you buy a new silo with a self-unloading piece of equipment and not work so hard?’ …

“So he did and it made me feel good,” concluded Alan.

Raising their own children, Millie and Alan Zuk always made sure they and their daughters ate breakfast and dinner together.

“I think it’s important that … you sit together as a family and do family things, not just work, but do family things together …,” said Millie. “So we’ve been blessed with our girls who are very, very close to us.”

The beat goes on.