Verna Swann, Diane Carberry and Barbara Reynolds have more than 100 combined years of employment at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London, and not even retirement could keep them away from their hospital families.

“This was my home away from home for 40 years, so it just feels right to be back,” Carberry said.

After decades of service at L+M, all three returned to the hospital as volunteers. L+M has about 300 volunteers in nearly 60 departments who provide such service as transporting patients, bringing music into the hospital and offering pet therapy.

Reynolds, 66, who lives in Waterford, worked at L+M for 16 years after transferring from Hartford Hospital. She was a cardiac nurse and the clinical coordinator of the cardiac catheterization laboratory. She said she was amazed by the technological progress made in her 46 years in the field.

“When I was in nursing school … I was very much enthralled with the technology at the time,” she said. “Being able to help people get through their event and come out on the other side well was very rewarding.”

She retired in 2014 and immediately reached out to volunteer coordinator Jamie Nadeau to find a volunteer position. She said she started in the cardiac telemetry unit, but it was difficult not to touch and interact with the patients like nurses do, so she transferred to the gift shop in the main lobby.

“It’s hard to get the nurse out of the person after almost 50 years,” she said.

Every Wednesday morning, Reynolds sells snacks and gifts to patients’ families and employees. She said people come in to buy gifts even if they aren’t visiting a patient. She sees a lot of coworkers stop in, and she still has lunch with her coworkers from the cardiac catheterization laboratory from time to time.

Carberry, a resident of Gales Ferry, retired in 2013 and also served as a clinical coordinator after working 35 years as a nurse in the emergency room. She started in the ER on the night shift, and she also served as a sexual assault educator in the department.

“You’re with people at their happiest of times and you’re with them at their saddest of times,” she said. “They were so grateful to have somebody with them.” She said one visitor who lost his wife in the ER sent her a letter thanking her for staying with him while his wife was dying and keeping the memory of her alive.

Carberry now volunteers at the front desk on Wednesdays, where she greets patients and visitors and directs them to the right place. She said she tried a few other positions, including volunteering in the ER, but the front desk was the position she liked best.

“The people are really nice to work with, and I just love seeing everybody coming in and out,” she said.

Swann, 68, lives in Niantic and worked in a variety of positions in her 45 years at L+M, including unit secretary, an emergency room registrar and the supervisor for the information desk. She said her role as patient relations manager was the most powerful to her because she was able to help patients and their families navigate through the hospital “maze.”

Now she volunteers at the Cancer Center where she assists with patient transport, manning the front desk and doing whatever tasks the staff needs help with.

“It’s not very easy when you’re a patient because you feel like you’re at someone else’s mercy, so it was a big role of mine to make sure they knew what their rights were and that if they had concerns how they could get addressed,” she said. L+M didn’t have this kind of program until she developed it with the director of public relations in 1988,s he said.

When she retired in 2013, Swann took the summer off and started volunteering at the newly-opened Cancer Center in Waterford that October. She said she had her own group of volunteer liaisons in the patient relations department, and she wanted to continue their work of making sure patients and their families are taken care of.

While all three said volunteering at L+M was much less stressful than working there, there’s no shortage of things for them to do in their retirement. Carberry also leads a Girl Scout troop with her daughter and visits patients at Fairview Retirement Community in Groton with her golden retriever Kahlua. Reynolds is a volunteer with the hospital’s Cuddlers program, where she holds newborn babies from the neonatal intensive care unit to help them bond with people.

For more information on the volunteer program at L+M, contact Jamie Nadeau at (860) 860-442-0711, ext. 2475.

a.hutchinson@theday.com