The walnut chest with brass handles holds the papers, photographs and cards that mark the milestones.

It sits against the wall in Betsy Vatavuk's bedroom. The drawers hold her 4-H memories. She has been a member since she was 7 years old, following her parents, who were lifelong members.

Like the porcelain dolls, embroidered pillows and Persian rugs she has kept throughout her 62 years, she has kept the chest, a time capsule of her life.

This weekend, she is in Washington, D.C., where she is being honored at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center. Vatavuk has received the 2007 National 4-H Salute to Excellence Award for being an Outstanding Lifetime Volunteer.

"It's hard to be around Ms. Vatavuk and not know that she has a real passion for 4-H, and she cares about kids," says Harriett Edwards, an assistant professor and extension specialist at N.C. State University who helped nominate Vatavuk.

"It's very obvious very quickly that that's where her heart is ... she leans forward and her eyes light up," Edwards says. "It gets her attention when you talk about young people."

The thick, turquoise scrapbook in Vatavuk's walnut chest binds yellowed newspaper clippings: her national 4-H award for canning and food preservation in 1962, her landslide 1963 election as 4-H state historian.

Black-and-white photos show a bright-eyed teenager sitting with her mother in their kitchen, holding a jar of preserved peas or strawberry jam. Or of young Betsy shelling peas with her parents.

A green records book with a large four-leaf clover 4-H logo shows 16-year-old Betsy gathering corn in a sleeveless denim blouse, denim shorts and red shoes.

"I sewed those myself," she says, "the whole outfit."

It had been a sewing project for 4-H, she explains. Several pages later, past more photos in gardens of strawberries, corn and grapes, she pauses.

"It was a lot of hard work, but I learned a lot of life lessons," she reflects quietly.

She has carried those lessons to the young people she works with today. She used to teach teenagers to sew, crochet and knit. These days, she teaches Durham youths the basics, such as writing.

Vatavuk works with young people in substance-abuse-prevention programs in Durham County as well as with other at-risk teenagers.

"One of the unique things about 4-H programs is it's all volunteer-based," says Marshall Stewart, director of the state 4-H program. "With all the things going on in the world today, with what youth are facing, we need people like Betsy."

Vatavuk opens her home to teach reading, math and English during the school year. It is mainly to help the students who have fallen behind. She, her husband and her son had been teaching writing at the Durham County 4-H Agricultural Building on Foster Street during the summers.

Twice a year, 4-H holds a conference for young people who have alcohol or substance-abuse problems or have parents with those problems. It is held at the Lyon Park Center in Durham during spring and fall breaks. Every year that the Vatavuks go to the conference, the children and teenagers greet them with hugs and big smiles.

"They don't get much guidance and care and love," Vatavuk says.

Her husband became like a father to them. Some have a parent in jail; some have both parents in jail.

"Many of these kids come from all over Durham," she says. "And they have no adult supervision."

Last year, the conference hosted a jewelry-making class. It turned out to be more than just making jewelry.

"As they made the jewelry, they would talk about the problems in their lives. They talk to you, they pour their heart out to you," Vatavuk says. She remembers one girl made jewelry for her aunt because she thought her aunt was the only person who cared about her.

Tradition of sharing

Vatavuk didn't grow up the way these teenagers have grown up.

She has lived her whole life on the family homestead off Pickett Road in Durham and remembers when that part of Durham was a rural area.

Her parents had "shelling parties" when friends and neighbors would help them shell peas. They would share their first fruits and vegetables of the season with their neighbors.

"The things you do for others, you get paid back for in return -- you feel good for helping," Vatavuk says. "Helping others makes you stronger."

As a girl, Vatavuk accompanied her parents to the Durham Curb Market and the Carrboro Farmers Market to sell their produce and canned goods. Later, when her parents were too sick to sell there, Vatavuk, her husband and son took their place in Carrboro. For more than 10 years, they continued the tradition, giving a large percentage of the proceeds to 4-H scholarships.

"When someone dies, people remember you more for what you did for others, not for your possessions," Vatavuk's mother used to say. "That's your legacy when you die -- not the material things."

When her parents died, her father in 1989 and her mother in 1998, she saw what her mom had meant.

Vatavuk received many cards, now in her walnut chest. Some thanked her mother for teaching them to read. Some thanked her dad for teaching them about agriculture.

The cards came again this year when Vatavuk's husband, Bill, died of lymphoma. This time, she was the one people thanked.

Vatavuk's son, Chandler, says his mother has taught him a lot about helping others.

"To have pride in your community, to make future generations, future communities better," says Chandler, 25, an N.C. Central University Law School graduate who is studying for the bar. "And citizenship: It's not only about democracy. It's the care and concern for how one's community is, the quality of it and how to improve it."

Every night, his mother makes a list of things to do the next day. If, at the end of the day, she has not completed some items, she moves them onto the next day's list.

But it's not just things on the list.

It's also people.

"She keeps a list of friends who could use a call, who need encouragement," Chandler says. "It's really such a simple thing but so much at the same time."

But in the past few months, Vatavuk has needed encouragement. In addition to her husband, her uncle died, her aunt went into a coma and her best friend had a mastectomy.

Vatavuk says she has never been through such a rough time and turns often to her walnut chest and 4-H memories.

"It's soothing to reminisce of old times," she says. "It's kind of nice sometimes, at night, when I'm by myself, to come back to it."