The Santa Claran received a different honor this December, however, when she—along with her family and close friends—was feted with a private tribute reception and program in the Villa's St. Ann's multipurpose room in recognition of her 52 years of leadership and service to the nonprofit facility, a skilled-nursing center at 20400 Saratoga­Los Gatos Road run since 1947 by the Dominican Sisters of Kenosha, Wis.

Contributed photograph Volunteer Mary Schott is flanked by brothers Gene and Jim Ryley at a dinner held to honor her for her years of service to Our Lady of Fatima in Saratoga.

Schott, 93, has lived in the same house since 1929 and still has her driver's license. She says she enjoys volunteerism for the simple joy of bringing pleasure to others, and she wishes more people felt the same.

"I have so many peers who feel the world owes them a living. Don't be like that. Don't be like the grasshopper from [Aesop's fable] The Ant and the Grasshopper. You can't help but feel better if you can make others feel better," she promises.

"The greatest word in the English language is 'empathy.' It costs so little to do, but it makes such a big difference," adds Schott, who says she never seeks to draw attention to herself and prefers that others refrain from it as well.

"I have always gotten more out of the service to the ladies at Fatima than I have given," Schott says. "I have seen what Fatima does for women. They are cared for. They are kept clean. Fatima has wonderful employees who care."

"There were just five nuns running Fatima at the time I came—short little nuns from Portugal," Schott says with a chuckle, recalling the determined Dominicans who paved the way for the 85-bed skilled-nursing facility the Villa has become today. And it is still growing, with a new building in the works that will include 34 assisted-living studios and one-bedroom apartments, 14 of which will be designated for dementia care.

Schott first joined the nuns' mission through one George Reilly, who sat on the California State Board of Equalization during the 1950s and had an aunt living at the Villa. He recognized the need the nuns had for some help from the community, so he invited several female friends, including Schott, to a brainstorming session.

"There, the idea of forming an auxiliary surfaced. Their first event was a luncheon at Fatima. The turnout was surprising and they ran out of food," says Scott Johnson, a friend of Schott's and director of the Villa's capital campaign, which is funding the expansion project through bank financing and capital fundraising. Construction will hopefully begin this summer, Johnson says.

In the decades of the past, smaller victories were the fundraising goals on which Schott and her young auxiliary members set their sights. Over the years, the group held luncheons, barbecues, rummage sales and auctions to provide the Villa with amenities like handrails, heated food transport carts and "geri-chairs," which are multi-positionable, reclinable chairs on wheels. Clothing for the auctions was donated by the late Audry Raymond, who owned Idamina's dress shop in Los Gatos.

"The auxiliary was a service group rather than a social group. They lost many ladies to membership when [the ones who left] realized the objective was service rather than social," adds Johnson, who notes that Mary's cranberry juice/vodka punch was an infamously favorite refreshment at the rummage sales and auctions.

The auxiliary's focus on service over socializing, which disenchanted some members, didn't faze Schott, who never left the auxiliary and also found time to serve terms on the Villa's board of directors and advisory board. She even recruited her husband, Edgar Schott, who was a Santa Clara University professor and Santa Clara city engineer, to serve on the board for three years.

"As an engineer's wife, I have given a lot of input to [CEO] Preston Wisner regarding the design of Fatima. My specialty is floor plans," Schott states.

More than for her floor plans, Wisner enjoys Schott's company for her personality and friendship.

"When I first met her 15 years ago, I thought 'This lady's gonna be a tough one to contend with,' " he says, chuckling. "When she sets her mind on something, there's no changing it."

"She's very determined and hardworking, and she's very sincere. I love her; she's a sweetheart to everyone here," adds Wisner, who says that even though he always considered himself a "perseverer," he's become even more so after being inspired by Schott's perseverance and generous dedication.

Contributed photograph Father Mark Ravizza speaks at a dinner to honor his grandmother, Mary Schott, a longtime volunteer at Our Lady of Fatima in Saratoga.

She also suggests that when people have trouble seeing each other's point of view, they stop and consider something her "Irish mother-in-law" was fond of quoting: " 'Every man to his own taste,' said the old lady when she kissed the cow."

"It takes so long to figure that out that the people will forget what they were disagreeing about," Schott adds with hearty laughter.

When visiting with the Villa's residents, many of whom are younger than she is, Schott is known for that ready sense of humor, as well as for the empathy she speaks so highly of.

"You never go in to a care facility and ask, 'How are you?' If you do, immediately they dredge up everything that's wrong with them. Instead, you say things like, 'You look lovely today' or 'Who did your hair so nicely?' " she advises.

"I don't think they want to be entertained, either; they want to be part of it," she adds, referring to the times when singers, musicians and variety acts have come to perform at the Villa. Schott knows of what she speaks, having led a cadre of residents in singing the German version of Silent Night during a Christmas program many years ago. Rather than sing it herself, she took the time to teach the song in small phonetic components so that her carolers could sing it without actually knowing the German language.

"They all sang it as though they knew what they were saying. One of the daughters asked me afterwards, 'Mrs. Schott, how did you find so many German ladies?' " Schott recalls, laughing again.

The language came easily to Schott, whose parents emigrated to San Francisco from Essen, Germany, in 1907. "My mother cried all the time, wondering why they had left Germany and a good job for San Francisco and its earthquake holes and tough times," recalls Schott, who was born on Christmas Eve, 1909.

She was born two months premature and weighed only 4¹/2 pounds, so her parents wrapped her in cotton and tucked her into a shoebox, which they placed near a wood-burning stove kept lit day and night to warm the tiny infant.

By the time she was 5, the family had moved to rural Petaluma, where, Schott says, her greatest joy was the mischievous saddle horse she received as a seventh-grader. After bonding with "Billy" the weekend he was purchased, she was riding him to school the next Monday. No one else was lucky enough to get as close to him, however.

"Billy wouldn't let anyone but me ride him without rearing up!" she says, chuckling. The horse was intelligent, too, she adds, citing the time she walked to school instead of riding the horse. Just like her nursery rhyme namesake whose pet lamb followed her to school, Schott discovered Billy, too, had snuck out of his stable and turned up in the schoolyard. She rode him home bareback, she says.

Schott and her husband were married in Petaluma and lived there until 1929, when they moved to Santa Clara. At the time, she says, the city's only paved road was Franklin Street, where William A. and Ursula Wilson—friends of the Schotts—ran the first incarnation of Wilson's Jewel Bakery, a Santa Clara fixture since 1921. In the 1960s, the bakery relocated to the Santa Clara portion of Homestead Road, where it stands today. It's the same road on which the Schotts made their own homestead.

Schott, who now has 13 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren, says she sometimes worries she rambles too much with all the stories and anecdotes she's collected in her 93 years. In fact, she says, she made a resolution when she began spending time at Our Lady of Fatima Villa that she wouldn't let her loquacity get the better of her. She ended up breaking that resolution, she reveals with a giggle, but she's also come to the realization that nobody really minds.

"Sometimes I tell people, like my dentist, that I'm afraid I talk too much. But they say, 'That's all right, Mary, because you always have interesting things to say!' "