Aminta Lara-Peters: A Life of Volunteering Comes Full Circle

Aminta Lara-Peters, who helped people throughout her life, including as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, passed away on June 17, 2024, at age 83 at her family home in Northfield, MA.  Aminta lived with her husband Malcolm Brian Peters, her daughter Olivia Lara-Cahoon, her daughter’s spouse Yaki, and her grandson Mauro, now 5 and a half years old. This made Aminta’s daughter Olivia part of the “sandwich generation,” taking care of both her parents and her child. 

 

Olivia, an RN, says, “LifePath was tremendously helpful: Their support in very different ways, including healthcare access and homecare, helped me to not carry the full burden. I’m very grateful for LifePath—I can’t even imagine not having their help.”

Before receiving LifePath’s services, Aminta was a bi-lingual scholar, known for her spiritual and practical insights. She enjoyed reading, writing, opera, and traditional Colombian music, and completed her university degrees in Anthropology and Latin American Studies at UCLA. With the Peace Corps, she deployed to rural Colombia and served her time in the Andean mountain communities, assisting churches and charities with community development and maternal and childhood health care in marginalized communities. She spoke of volunteerism in Colombia with much appreciation and nostalgia, calling the time pivotal, full of adventure and growth, where lasting relationships were formed. In MiraFlores, Colombia, she married her husband of 51 years, also a Peace Corps volunteer and teacher. Aminta and Brian, with their daughter Olivia, resided in Nagoya, Japan, from 1980 to 1999 where Aminta worked as an editor for the United Nations at the Japan regional office and taught Anthropology and English at Chukyo, Nagoya City, and Nanzan Catholic Universities. After returning to the United States, she continued to teach Anthropology and Spanish language in universities and local primary schools.

 

Aminta began her relationship with LifePath in January 2016 with home delivered meals, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. “It was harder and harder for her to cook. The home delivered meals meant she could continue to eat a hot meal with her husband,” says Olivia.

 

LifePath’s Home Care services followed in June 2016, to help Aminta with activities of daily living. Olivia says, “These services helped her tremendously, and she formed a significant bond with her caregiver Tammy. She really enjoyed the company and met so many people—she was a very social person, so [these connections] were so important.”

 

Rides for Health, another LifePath program, helped Aminta beginning in June 2017. Her Rides for Health volunteer, John Wood, would drive her from rural Northfield to her physical therapy and neurology appointments. In a typical trip, John logged 68 miles and spent 3 hours or more with Aminta. According to Olivia, “Having someone like Mr. Wood, who was so compassionate, was an enriching experience.” Aminta also got to know John’s wife, and enjoyed both of their company.

In October 2019, after a hospitalization, Aminta moved into Charlene Manor Extended Care Facility (CMECF) in Greenfield. John continued to call and visit her there. A Long-Term Care Ombudsman Volunteer from LifePath also began visiting, and based on their conversations, advocated for the extension of Aminta’s skilled therapy services under Medicare, recommending that physical therapy was necessary “in order to prevent or slow further deterioration in her clinical condition” and therefore that Medicare should continue to pay for her care. The physical therapy department at CMECF pursued the extension of skilled services and the request was granted. This extension enabled Aminta to receive ongoing physical therapy. According to Olivia, Aminta had fallen into a bit of depression after losing the ability to move freely, and the physical therapy helped her with that.

 

Aminta also developed a lovely friendship with her roommate at CMECF, Anna Mae Smith, who was also previously a LifePath Home Care client. Anna Mae pre-deceased Aminta. Before she died, she purchased a brand new upright walker for Aminta, to increase her stability, help prevent falls, and to increase Aminta’s independence in mobility.

 

Aminta moved back in with her family in Northfield in December 2023, and resumed home delivered meals. She passed away at home with her family present, hearing them say “I love you.”

 

Spirituality was a central part of Aminta’s life, says Olivia. Aminta was born Catholic, and although she visited different churches throughout her life, Catholicism remained her choice, and she found it to be a central strength. “She expressed a lot of gratitude and grace which were central to her as a person,” says Olivia.

 

Yaki Lara-Cahoon, Olivia’s spouse, says that while at CMECF, Aminta heard they were interested in going to Canada on a trip and said that she had saved some Canadian currency that she would find for them. A week and a half after she passed, they found a box of the currency on their porch, a place they never saw her go before her death, as it was too difficult to get to. Yaki also remembers Aminta as “really interested in understanding people.”

 

A celebration of life ceremony for Aminta will be held Friday, September 13, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst. All are welcome.

The service that Aminta provided to others throughout her life was returned to her when she needed it, in part by LifePath volunteers. Please consider continuing this gift of service by becoming a volunteer—to get started, visit  our Volunteer webpage or call 413-773-5555.