News

Doug Gubbels
Volunteer - Guide
Healthpark Medical Office Building
Importance if Caring | my journey into volunteering

Doug Gubbels is a Columbus man, through and through. Ever since his family moved here when he was in 6th grade, he has fully embraced the city’s agricultural and community lifestyle through his choice of jobs and devotion to family.

Now that he is retired, Gubbels is contributing to his community in a new way — as a volunteer at Columbus Community Hospital, helping people find their doctors’ office and offering a friendly smile along the way.

Gubbels graduated from Scotus Central Catholic High School in 1972. After receiving an associate’s degree in diesel technology from Central Community College in Hastings, he worked for various companies, including Columbus Irrigation and Farm Equipment and Klug Trucking. Near the end of his career, he was a mechanical technician at BD Pharmaceutical, then decided to retire from that career and work full time in housekeeping at the hospital.

Just a few months after Gubbels retired from his job at CCH, he started volunteering. “While I was working there, I saw what the volunteers were doing for the hospital,” he said. “They were so helpful, and I decided I wanted to be a part of that.”

Gubbels splits his volunteering time between working at the front desk of the Healthpark Medical Office Building and showing people around as a guide in the main hospital.

“When I’m in the medical office building, I’m continuously helping people get to where they need to go,” he said. “Sometimes people will sit at the benches across from me and they’ll talk a lot. It’s just like they need to visit with someone, so I like being there for them in that way.”

While he’s volunteering, he said, he sees lots of people he knows from the community. “I enjoy volunteering,” he said. “I meet and assist people, and get them to where they need to be. I can visit with people I haven’t seen for a long time.”

Gubbels and his wife Joan have three children and 10 grandchildren. They frequently visit their children, who live in Omaha and Lincoln. Gubbels makes quite a few trips back and forth between Omaha and Columbus to help his daughter with her house. He’s Mr. Fix-It, assisting with lots of wood projects and landscaping and taking care of the jobs his daughter doesn’t have time to do.

He also enjoys riding his bicycle, and has participated in the Bike Ride Across Nebraska twice.

While Gubbels and Joan used to have pets, they don’t have much time for them anymore because they’re always on the road. In addition to visiting their children and grandchildren at their homes, they also like going on road trips. Most recently, they visited the Grand Canyon with their oldest daughter and her family.

“We really like hiking and just being active,” Gubbels said.

To learn more about volunteer opportunities available at the hospital, visit columbushosp.org.