VOORHEESVILLE — Dianne Luci believes in the power of bringing people together.

“I so strongly believe if people traveled more and got to know different cultures that we wouldn’t have so much divisiveness in this country and hate,” she says in this week’s Enterprise podcast.

Luci is a world traveler who has taken each of her grandchildren to a place they wanted to go. She took her grandson Mason to Machu Picchu, the 15th-century Inca citadel in Peru. She took her granddaughter Lindsey to Patagonia at the southern end of South America.

“I’m not going to leave anybody any money,” she said. Instead, she’ll leave her grandchildren with the richness of their memories.

Locally, Luci has brought people together, too.

Working through her church, the First Methodist Church of Voorheesville, Luci assembled a panel made up of the Pakistani manager of the village gas station, who is Muslim; the church’s minister at the time, a Korean; the Jewish church secretary; a Buddhist from the Hilltowns; and a woman from a nearby Hindu temple.

“I was delighted with the turnout and, as the Hindu woman said, ‘I think we all worship a god. It’s just how we get there that is different.”

For the past 15 years, Luci has brought the community together every Wednesday afternoon for a farmers’ market that she organized, which takes place in the front parking lot of her church on Voorheesville’s main street, at 68 Maple Ave.

She and her husband visited established weekend farmers’ markets and asked vendors if they would like to participate in a mid-week market in Voorheesville. One of the vendors, Worldling’s Pleasure, which sells cheeses, spreads, and baked goods, “has been with me right from the get-go,” said Luci.

Attractions at the market have included local musicians playing, a knife-sharpener, the governor’s chef preparing food from produce at the market — and this year, there is a face-painter to delight the children who come to the market with their parents.

The church’s mission team sells lemonade and iced tea with the profits going to buy backpacks filled with school supplies for children in the Hilltowns.

Luci knows all the regular shoppers and worries if one doesn’t show. “I love it when I see new people,” she said.

At last week’s market, Luci chatted with a new Voorheesville resident and, when she found out where the newcomer lived, Luci introduced her to the woman who used to live in the house.

“Putting people together just makes me feel good,” she said.

Luci had a somewhat isolated childhood. She grew up on the campus of the Marcy State Hospital in Oneida County. Her father was a psychiatrist, treating people with mental illnesses.

Located on Old River Road in Marcy, the hospital ran from 1912 to 1982. “It’s now a prison,” said Luci.

She remembers telling her mother, “I wish I was brought up in a town because it was pretty isolating up there.” She went on, “It’s a different life. We didn’t own our home. My mother most often had a patient who came and helped her clean.

“I didn’t even know how to grocery shop when I went to college because my mother had a checklist and she would order canned goods and bread and pies and flour and meat — and it was all delivered to our home. They also had a dairy farm there.”

Luci did have one friend from high school whose father was also a psychiatrist. “I used to hear people screaming and yelling,” Luci said, noting it was before modern medical practices had evolved for treating mental illnesses.

After she graduated from college, Luci said, “My first job as a dental hygienist was actually at Marcy State Hospital, in the dental office, the clinic. And women came in, men came in with lobotomies.”

But the experience of living and working there, she said, helped make her a compassionate person.

“People in school were kind of cruel,” she said, using terms like “nutcase or words like that.” She went on, “But I was much more empathetic because I grew up around it.”

Music and religion have always been important parts of Luci’s life. Her mother, raised a Baptist, played the piano and her father played the trumpet. Lawrence Welk’s champagne music often played in her girlhood home.

When Luci was in ninth grade, her music teacher chose her to perform a solo rendition of “O Holy Night,” which classmates still comment on at reunions.

Luci sings now with the Thursday Musical Club, formed more than a century ago by the wives of General Electric executives, which still gives two concerts annually, “Our director, Julie Panke, I just love,” she said.

Luci met her husband — they will be celebrating 35 years of marriage in August — at a singles event when he came up to her and asked, “Do you know how to ballroom dance?”

She did, having taken an Arthur Murray course in college. “My husband is going to be 87 — and  he just loves to dance,” Lucci said. They belong to a dance club called The Cotillion, which holds formal dances in elegant venues six or seven times a year where the women wear long gowns and the men wear tuxedos.

“We dance to trip the light fantastic,” she said.

When Luci took a lay ministry course and had to give a sermon, she said, “I wasn’t ever much of a speaker … but I’ll sing any day.” So for part of her sermon, she sang an acapella hymn.

“It’s a big part of my religion, music is, and how I feel.”