Enfield AARP Tax-Aide Center Named In Honor Of Volunteer Bob Bourret

ENFIELD, CT — When the AARP Tax-Aide program in Enfield was recently named in honor of longtime volunteer Bob Bourret, the conversation around the Enfield Senior Center, where the service is based, sounded like this:

"I think Bob will be volunteering to do senior citizens’ taxes when he’s 100!"
"Well, he has already volunteered for decades."
"Bob was my mentor when I joined 15 years ago."
"Yes, mine too."

Another preparer recalled asking Bourret why he volunteered to do such a difficult task. His immediate answer? "Because here we do taxes for free," and gave an example of an elderly widow whose husband had just been hospitalized. She had no idea how to do taxes. With Social Security, two small pensions, two small individual retirement accounts and a little bank interest, they were not living on much. However, a paid preparer would have charged hundreds of dollars.

"Here we do taxes for free."

Now in his 23rd year as a tax preparer, Bourret is one of the most senior volunteers in the entire state. He ran the Enfield site for more than a decade, and handled the electronics of filing returns at the same time.

A job change in 1970 initially brought him to Enfield, and upon retiring in 2001, he needed a project to keep busy. He met Pat Long, then head of Tax-Aide in Enfield, who convinced him to join the program. When Tax-Aide went to computers, she asked Bourret to take over, as she did not embrace the new technology.

Bourret's fellow volunteers said spending several hundred hours each fall studying and taking tests in order to qualify to prepare taxes is the most difficult part of their job. One said, "I cannot imagine doing that for 22 years, as Bob has. That is thousands of hours of studying and taking tests."

When asked why he continues to volunteer to help people, Bourret laughed.

"I enjoy doing taxes on a limited basis, two days a week for three months. I look forward to starting the year and then ending it."