He’s a Triple Threat Volunteer
Retiree Bob Bellandi of Manlius had a career that featured a series of engineering, tech and writing positions. Now he is very busy with his various volunteer commitments
By David Figura
Retiree Bob Bellandi has been volunteering and making a difference in three ways for the past three years.
“There’s nothing exceptional about me,” the 75-year-old Manlius resident said. “I’m just an ordinary guy. I’m trying to pick opportunities that have some relevance to me and I hope, to the world.”
Bellandi is a member of the Minoa Volunteer Fire Department. He doesn’t fight fires. He is a support member, handling the department’s website, email accounts and taking pictures of department events. More recently, he put the department’s 750-plus-page policy manual and list of department and village policies online and created an easy-to-use AI chatbot for the volunteers to access the information.
That accomplishment, along with his other contributions, earned him the department’s “Member of the Year” plaque in 2024.
Bellandi also volunteers for Book Buddies, a CNY United Way program. Once a week he drives to the Seymour Dual Language Academy in the Syracuse City School District and meets with two young students in half-hour sessions, teaching them the basics of phonics.
Finally, he volunteers for the Jail Ministry of Onondaga County program. Each week he travels to the Onondaga County Justice Center (the county jail) in downtown Syracuse and meets for an hour with a prison inmate.
Bellandi, who retired at 72, had a career that featured a series of engineering, tech and writing positions. His last job was with PayPal, a huge financial technology company that offers customers online payment, debit and credit card and crypto services.
“My plan was to figure out retirement when I retired,” he said. “I found out that doing so is an uphill struggle unless you know how you want to make the transition. Luckily, I happened to see a video about the four stages of retirement.”
He said the first stage for many men is that they quit work, which is their main source of identity and relevancy. Having put so much time and effort into work, many then lack social connections, with the exception of their family — sometimes not even that. “You feel cut off and useless,” he said.
“Then, many men try doing full-time everything that they enjoyed doing part-time while working. “That’s why some guys try to play golf every day or go fishing. But that peters out quickly because you can’t do that every day. It doesn’t fulfill you.
“Then they start looking around to see what kind of things that they can do that would be fulfilling. It could be another job, volunteering, anything. You try a bunch of things. Some things work. Some don’t.
“The final phase is when you’ve whittled down that list to a few activities that work for you. That’s where you find your new [social] connections. You find things that succeed and you persist in what succeeds. In essence, you redefine yourself, a wrenching process. That’s where I am now.”
The volunteer fire department
“Joining the Minoa Volunteer Fire Department has been absolutely fulfilling and fun, one of the best things I’ve ever done,” he said.
Early on Bellandi realized that it was onerous for the volunteers to use and digest the voluminous pages of policies; so, he put it all online on a private server.
“I put a chatbot at the front end of the manual and connected it to an AI tool,” he said. “So now, you can go online, ask the chatbot a question and the AI tool will go through the entire 750+ pages for you and quickly give a custom answer of about 300 words.”
It simultaneously shows you the verbatim policy from the manual.
He named it “Ask Carlos.”
“For example, what’s the policy on personnel transfers, respiratory protection, tactical withdrawal?” he said. “You just type it into the chatbot and it goes through all of the policies and gives you a concise answer.”
Bellandi noted he’s made a wealth of new friends since joining the department.
“I interact with men starting in age from their teens into their 80s. These guys are the real deal,” he said. “They’re the ones who will run into a burning building to save people. This is no joke. No posturing. No falsehood about it. It’s unvarnished and I appreciate that.”
Book Buddies
Bellandi said he got involved in the Book Buddies program on the recommendation of a friend.
Prior to retiring, Bellandi said he volunteered in an adult literacy program in San Jose, California In Book Buddies, he is currently working with a boy in kindergarten and a girl in first grade.
“I’m just trying to work with little kids on phonics, because they need a little boost in learning to decode words, from the sounds to the word,” he said.
The volunteers are assigned students by the Book Buddies coordinator at each school.
“It’s very organized, so our time is maximized while we’re there,” Bellandi said. “It’s so important, so cool to work with the kids. Each one is different, so delightful and innocent. A breath of fresh air.”
Laurie Black, community education coordinator for Book Buddies, said Bellandi is one of those volunteers “that you just love having.”
“He’s optimistic, supportive and goes above and beyond not just for the students, but our program in general. He’s helped recruit a lot of volunteers for us,” she said.
Book Buddies has a contract to serve six schools in the Syracuse City School District for the current academic year and is need of more volunteers. For more information, see cnybookbuddies.org
Jail Ministry Program
Finally, Bellandi volunteers for Jail Ministry of Onondaga County, a grassroots social justice, spiritually based program founded in 1976. The program’s goal is to “enhance the dignity and quality of life of incarcerated individuals in Onondaga County through daily presence, support, and advocacy.”
Bellandi currently meets weekly with a 31-year-old male inmate.
He said he had to undergo “a lot of training, fingerprinting, background checks, etc.” before being allowed in the jail. He added he specifically asked to be paired with someone who has “nobody else, no outside connections.”
“I go in and spend an hour with him, chat, listen to what he has to say and that’s about it. I’m not there to judge if he’s guilty or not. When I’m with him, he can express anything. It’s all confidential,” he said.
Why does he do it?
“It’s my faith, because I sincerely believe in the admonition that we need to try and reach out to people who have a more difficult situation than we do,” Bellandi said. “I’ve had a very good life. I’ve had many opportunities and I owe it to the world to try and do what I can.”
Keith Cieplicki, executive director of the Jail Ministry program, said Bellandi has been a “very committed and faithful visitor in terms of being present weekly for the individual he visits. His presence is a great gift to us and to the folks in the jail. He also composes the ministry’s quarterly newsletter.”
The Jail Ministry program currently has 30 volunteer visitors, both men and women, along with an additional 80 individuals, including Bellandi, who volunteer as pen pals for inmates, Cieplicki said. For more, see www.jailministrysyr.org
Bellandi stressed there are countless opportunities in society to volunteer.
“You just have to figure out where you can best contribute,” he said. “There is always someone who needs a hand or a good word. There always will be. They’re all around us. I hope that my contribution is consequential. The people I encounter enrich my spirit!”