Tornadoes and the Crying Lady at the Library

The other day, on my way into the Fremont library, I passed a woman who was in the vestibule, on her cell phone, sobbing. That’s usually a fairly awkward thing to encounter.  Do you say something? Do you see if they need help?  What do you do?  All I heard as I passed her was a fragment of conversation – “No… they said they couldn’t help me.  I don’t know what I’m going to do…”

“Uh, oh…” I thought.  She had probably been to TrueNorth and for whatever reason, didn’t qualify for services, or we were out of funding or something… and since I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the situation, nor did I have the knowledge of the current state of most of our funding, I decided to keep my nose out of it. When I came back out a few minutes later – she was gone.  I’ve mentioned before that, thankfully, I’ve not yet had to access the services of an agency like ours, but this encounter got me thinking about how I would react in similar circumstances.  How would I react in an emergency?  If history is any indication – probably not very well…

A few weeks back we had a very large storm pass through our area.  It was severe thunderstorms with lots of lighting and something called straight-line winds, which I’ll talk more about in a little bit. As I drove to work that morning, completely oblivious to what I was driving into, I noticed that the sky in front of me (to the west) looked, well… sick.  Like… green and black and nasty. There was a LOT of lighting going on, but no rain… yet.  As I drove west on 112^th, and got about to the Chinook Campground, very large raindrops started to splotch on my windshield, and by the time I got to the stop sign at 112^th and Warner, maybe 200 yards further – the deluge had started.  In the span of about 2 seconds, (and I mean that literally) things went from bad to really, really scary.  As I sat there in my car at the stop sign, looking out the front window, the rain suddenly started falling sideways.  Huge, never-ending sheets of water moving horizontally.  The car began to shake in the wind, and then suddenly it moved about 4 inches to the left. I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of the car, but I knew it had to be a tornado.  “I have to get to a basement”, is all I could think as I threw my little Civic Hybrid into reverse and did a Rockford-Files-style spin around, and raced back toward my home, now about 5 miles away.

I raced east on 112^th (well…“raced” is not entirely accurate, since I could barely see anything, I don’t think I got past 40 or 45 MPH) completely convinced there was a tornado somewhere very close that I just couldn’t quite see. “God – just let me get home, just let me get home…”  Suddenly out of the darkness in front of me I saw a huge black shape looming, coming from my left down across the road.  “It’s a tree, coming down right in front of me!”  I slammed on the brakes, only to see the shape snap back upright.  Back on the accelerator and back to praying.  Another mile down the road, and it happened again - a large black shape looming, coming from my left down across the road in front of me.  Again, I leaned on the brakes, only to see it snap back upright.  I was really starting to get scared now and the adrenalin was pumping.  I turned left (north) onto Bagley and now had to drive about a mile totally exposed through open fields with the wind hitting me on the left side, without anything slowing it down.  I was fighting hard to keep the car on the road, and fully expected the twister to appear out of the cornfield on my left and sweep me away to Oz.  “I have to get to a basement!” 

As I approached the wooded section of the road, just before it intersects with 104th, I hunkered down in my seat, as if making myself smaller in the car might protect me.  Suddenly – all I could see in front of me was a large, irregularly shaped dark blob, and for the third time in about as many minutes I slammed on my brakes.  This time there was a huge tree that had already fallen across the road and I skidded to a stop with the front of my car just hitting the branches.  I think I said something unprintable just then, and glanced out my window to my left to see a raging electrical fire burning just off the road.  I mean raging!  Electrical fires look weird anyway – but to see one in a complete downpour, about 10 feet from my car, which was now blocked, while a tornado was ripping the world apart around me, was all it took to send me over the edge into complete panic.

I threw the car into reverse again and did another spin-around turn.  I fumbled to get my cell phone open and called home with shaking hands telling my wife to “Get in the basement!  Get in the basement!”  I then dropped the phone (since I was shaking so badly) and raced to go the long way around to get to my house, dodging all the debris that was now littered all over the roads.  Downed trees and large limbs partially blocking the road.  Garbage cans.  A dog house.  Was that a port-a-john?  I finally got home, and miraculously, we still had power.  I parked the car in the garage and raced to join my wife in the basement.  She was calmly watching the news reports detailing the severe thunderstorms and straight-line winds that had just raced through the area.  “Straight-line winds are common with the gust-front of a thunderstorm or originate with a downburst from a thunderstorm. These events can cause considerable damage, even in the absence of a tornado. The reason these storms are so dangerous is because of the consistent wind that does not let up. The winds can reach 80 m.p.h. or more and can last for periods of twenty minutes or longer.” (Thanks Wikipedia!).  No tornado.  I had panicked and done the absolute wrong thing, every step of the way.

The winds of theses storms are strongest at the leading edge and this particular storm had produced winds that were up over 80 MPH, and the storm itself was moving in basically a west to east direction at approx. 60 MPH.  So, when I turned around and drove home to get to my basement – I basically kept myself right in the most dangerous part of the storm for about 10 minutes, or about how long it took for the worst of it to move past. I honestly thought I’d be calm, cool, and collected in an emergency, and usually I do pretty well, but not this time.  How would I react if a different kind of “storm” hit my family?  What if I suddenly couldn’t pay by the gas or electric bill and winter was raging?  What if our house was in foreclosure?  How would I react then?  How would you? 

Later in the day, I saw the woman from the library at TrueNorth.  Turns out, she had been to another service provider earlier in the day, and sure enough – their funding for the specific kind of assistance she needed had run out, and luckily, we still had enough to help.  She had collected herself, and found a place to get help, and I for one, was very glad to see that she had weathered that storm. 

And that’s what happened in a day in the life of TrueNorth.   

101 Reasons

A woman came into TrueNorth the other day needing to access our Food Pantry. It seems that for the first time in her life, she simply couldn’t make ends meet and there just wasn’t enough to eat. Sadly, there is nothing “special” about this story… quite frankly, it happens all day long, pretty much every day we’re open.  Nope, nothing out of the ordinary, save one small fact.  She was 101 years old. 

I have no idea if anyone reading this has ever “lived in poverty”, or not had enough to eat. I know my family struggled a bit when I was a little kid. I grew up in a tiny little rural community in western New York called West Falls, and I went to elementary school with a lot of kids who got free lunches. I mean - A LOT. I only got free milk, and not really getting the concept, felt like I was getting ripped off. I remember eating a lot of casseroles at our house, but I also remember eating at friend’s houses where they had Hamburger Helper, without the hamburger. When you’re little, you typically don’t really understand what it means to struggle, financially. I had relatives who lived in Buffalo that were really quite poor, but I figured they were lucky ‘cause they got free cheese from the government. Free cheese!  

By the time I got to middle school, we had moved to Michigan and my dad was a big-wig making decent money. I spent the next 15 years living among the “haves” in Oakland County, and kind of forgot about the “have-nots”. When I got married in 1994 and moved to Grant, where my wife is a teacher – I was reminded. She would tell me about her students, and I’d even meet some of them, and they reminded me of the kids I went to school with back in West Falls. When I started work at TrueNorth in 1999 (then NCCS), every day I would see the people who had genuine needs come through our door, and... well... I don’t need to be reminded anymore.

I’m grateful today that both my wife and I have jobs that we love. I’m grateful we have health care. I’m grateful that my folks are still around and in relatively good health, for people in their upper 70’s. I’m grateful my sister is still alive (another story for another day). I’m grateful that I get to live where I do. I’m grateful that I haven’t (yet) had need of a food pantry like the one at TrueNorth, but I’m even more grateful that ours was stocked and we were able to help a 101 year-old woman who needed it, for the first time in her life. Today I have 101 reasons to be grateful.

And that’s what’s going on in a day in the life of TrueNorth.

Here’s Mud in Your Eye.

I’d like to start right off by pointing out that I have a college degree. In Communications. With concentrations in both Mass Media and Interpersonal Communications. A degree that cost my father a good deal of money (thanks dad!), and took me 7½ years to earn (I worked full-time all the way through school, gimme a break). Yep – I’m college-educated and I spent a recent Friday at work making mud. Dad must be proud.

A few years ago, a pastor of a local church visited our agency to find out who we were and what we did. He showed up late in the day on a Friday, and when our Development Director at the time got the call from the front desk asking if she had time to give him a tour, she was less-than-enthusiastic. Being the pro that she was though, she put on her “Development Director Hat” and did her job. She took Pastor Roger Grandia, the interim pastor from The First Reformed Church of Fremont on a tour and told him about all the many different services we provide for “the needy”. He was impressed. So much so, that he decided that he and his congregation needed get involved. He dreamed up an amazing idea for a fundraiser for our agency; a mud volleyball tournament and “Mud Bowl Mania” was born.

Mud Bowl Mania is a big event, and one of the biggest tasks is field prep. A couple of years ago, volunteers from the church sunk permanent poles for the nets, but each year the ground still needs to be turned, rocks need to be “picked” (and every year, there are more and more rocks..), and the courts need to be flooded and the dirt turned into mud. Dirt Bowl Mania doesn’t have the same ring, and doesn’t sound nearly as fun. The first year, we tried running garden hoses and sprinklers out to the fields. That didn’t really do the trick and we ended up paying for some of the water to be delivered via water trucks, and begging the Fire Department to make many more trips than the one they had generously agreed to.

Last year our well guy, Ron Wells (yes – the guy who put in our well is named “Ron Wells”… I’m not being funny…) donated about 300 feet of plastic pipe and let us borrow a bunch of fittings and large hoses to run water directly from our new well out to the courts. What a life-saver. Being the ‘Facilities Manager’, as I was last year – a lot of the field prep work fell to me… at least the mud-making part. The Wagenmaker family of Fremont has volunteered a lot of time over the 3-year life of Mud Bowl Mania prepping the fields, and there have been a countless number of people who’ve picked rocks out of those courts over the years. But I do believe I’ve probably made more mud than any other one person… a fact that I am oddly proud of.

Let me just say - It’s a terrible job. It’s back-breaking, dirty, and sweaty work. I think my exact words after last year were; “I’ll quit before I do this again!” or something equally melodramatic. This year was going to be different though. I’m NOT the Facilities Manager any more. And we’ve got a great, new Volunteer Resources Coordinator that had scheduled a bunch of people to pick rocks and make mud, etc.… ahhh – the best laid plans, right?

On the Friday before the event – we were supposed to have a large group of big, burly teenage boys here to make the mud. Two showed up. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. They were awesome and the two of them worked very hard, but it just wasn’t going to happen. Since I am the “most experienced mud-maker” on staff – I was called to duty. The process is simple, albeit back-breaking, dirty and sweaty. You haul a hundred lbs. of plastic pipe and rubber hose around spraying gallon upon gallon of water into the courts while walking around mashing the earth into mud with your bare feet. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

About 3:00 in the afternoon, I realized that at the rate we were progressing, there was simply no way the courts would be ready by Saturday morning. Wasn’t gonna happen. So I hosed myself off, and went inside to inform the “powers that be” that we were in trouble. In all fairness - throughout the day, there had been a handful of our staff out picking rocks, and helping to water the courts (thanks to Ricky, Calvin, David, Charlie, Lora, etc., etc., etc.) but we were in an “all hands on deck” scenario now.

What happened next was right out of a bad Lifetime movie. I went back out to continue watering, mud-making and rock picking, and for the last two hours of the day, groups of staff came out to help. First the Director of our Housing and Family Services Department with a bunch of our case workers came out, rolled up their pant legs and waded into the mud to pick rocks. Then the Director of our Project FOCUS and PACE programs came out, then our Food Programs Volunteer Coordinator, then the CEO of the entire agency came out... and she’s… well, I don’t know how old she is, and it’s probably rude to speculate, but she’s older than me, and she’s my boss’ boss, and in charge of the whole place! We even had this guy who is a college student, who was doing an internship with us out there, and he was wearing linen that day… LINEN… in the mud! Finally, about 5:00 PM a big blue van pulled in full of Jr. Camp Counselors from our girl’s resident camp - Camp Newaygo, and they jumped in (literally) to help.

I’ve said it before – but it’s worth repeating; I work with and for some very cool people. With only a couple of exceptions, every one of the people out there making mud and picking rocks, in their nice work clothes that day, was a “college-educated professional”. Social workers, educators, graphic designers, and a CEO for Pete’s sake. I suddenly felt in very good company making mud. But if this happens again next year, I’ll quit first… just sayin’.   

Anyway, that’s what happened in a day in the life of TrueNorth.           

Pink in the Pantry

I was just away from work for 19 days.  Went camping for a week up in the Porcupine Mountains (cold and wet, thanks for asking), saw U2 at Spartan Stadium (quite awesome, again - thanks for asking), lounged around the pool with my wife, took a bike trip and stayed at a B&B, went to Grand Haven, watched the fireworks in Hesperia, and started a new book.  Overall – a pretty darn good vacation.  But now, I’m back at work and finding it difficult to get back into “work mode”.  You know how the first day back at work after a long vacation is, like… how to put this…?  The worst day of your entire year.  Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.  You’ve got 567 e-mails, 84 voicemails, and two-weeks of back-logged work that apparently nobody else could do.  Welcome back!  It used to be, that after two weeks off, I was ready to get back to the office. The older I get though; I’m starting to think that I’m really going to enjoy retirement.  Yes, I know I still have about 20 years to go before I can realistically even think about retirement, but still…

Ever given any thought to what you’d like to do in retirement?  My wife and I keep talking about opening up a little art gallery to sell her paintings and my photographs.  I’ll carve walking sticks and sell them to tourists, and maybe we’ll sell ice cream too.  My dad surprised the heck out of my when he retired.  He spent the first half of his career as an engineer and the second half in sales for a very large auto-part supplier (windshield wipers).  He was a very successful, high-powered businessman, and I fully expected him to move south and take up golf.  Instead, he started volunteering for his local hospital, where he “works” 3 days a week.  I guess that after working 50-60 hours a week for 45 years, he didn’t know how to do anything else.  I also have a nagging suspicion that I’ll be the same.  I got my first job at age 13 and have, literally, not been without a job since.  I’ve been working full-time since the age of 19… that’s 25 years, and I’ve been at TrueNorth for almost half of that. 

We get a lot of retirees who volunteer here at TrueNorth.  There are a couple of older gentlemen who work in the Food Pantry that really remind me of my dad; kind of gruff and grumbley on the outside, but big-ol-softies on the inside.  These are men who worked hard their whole lives, and aren’t about to stop just because they’ve retired.  There’s also a group that volunteers in the Pantry on Wednesdays who all wear pink shirts every week (just for the fun of it). Whenever they’re here, our staff has started to say - “it’s pink in the pantry today.”  I can imagine a day, in the not-so-distant future when an employee at some non-profit asks a co-worker; “Hey, where’s that nice lady who used to be an art teacher and her grumpy, bald husband?”  And the reply will be; “Oh they only volunteer here on Tuesdays and Thursdays… they run a little ice cream shop the rest of the week, I think they sell arts and crafts stuff or something too…”

It’s Wednesday today and it’s pink in the pantry.  And that’s what going on in a day in the life of TrueNorth.    

Sometimes I really love being proved wrong.

The other night, our after school programs (Project FOCUS and PACE) held their first “Youth After School Awards” (YASA). When I first heard about it a few weeks ago, I was fairly skeptical of the idea. Why? Well… first of all, because I’m skeptical by nature – which I realize really bugs a lot of people. Honestly though, I like to think of myself as “quality control”. Once a skeptic like me can no longer find anything wrong with an idea or plan – it’s usually foolproof. I really didn’t think a “dress-up” dinner and awards night would mean anything to elementary, middle school, and high school kids; I thought parents would be annoyed with having to drive into Fremont for some silly awards program; and quite frankly (but only half-seriously), I doubted the ability of our after school program staff to pull it off. In a classic case of me not knowing what the heck I was talking about, I was proved oh-so-wrong… about a great many things.  

First of all, the YASA Committee did a wonderful job of decorating the room; it looked amazing… maybe better than I’ve ever seen it. They had all the Site Coordinators and their line staff there working the event, all dressed in blacks & grays and looking great. Seriously – this didn’t surprise me that much, because I know what awesome staff we have. The real surprise for me was the kids and their parents.    

To see the pride in the eyes of students and parents alike was unexpectedly quite moving and powerful. They really appreciated being honored and acknowledged. Students received awards for attendance, improvement, respectful attitudes, enthusiasm, and being especially helpful. These aren’t things that I thought would matter all that much, but they sure did. It made sense though when I thought about it further. Project FOCUS and PACE operate in 5 school districts that were chosen specifically because they are among the economically hardest hit in the area; Baldwin, Hart, Hesperia, Walkerville, and White Cloud. These are districts that have extremely high percentages of students receiving free and reduced meals, and unemployment rates that consistently rank higher than state averages – in a state that has one of the highest rates in the nation. To put it bluntly – a lot of these families are struggling.

I’m married to a teacher, so I have an “insider’s perspective” on the difficulties school districts face when funding keeps getting cut, and then cut some more. The first things to go are “the extras”; things like field trips, “the arts”, and after school clubs and programming. It’s why Project FOCUS and PACE are in these communities, and it helps explain why getting an award at a really nice event with a catered dinner might mean so much to a family.  

As I stopped by table after table and asked who was winning an award, I saw parents and kids visibly swell with pride as students raised a hand. It was especially cool to see a single mother there with her three daughters that I know is currently staying in one of our Homeless Duplexes. I only know this because she had allowed us to interview her and feature her story and photo in our 2009 Annual Report. I remember her telling me then how excited she was that her oldest daughter had just gotten involved with this really cool afterschool program called Project FOCUS. I don’t know if she even knew at the time that it was our program. Just to know a bit of her history and story and then to see her and her girls doing so well… and how proud she was of her daughter, how proud the young girl was, and how proud her sisters were of her… well, that was very cool. I’ve never been happier to be wrong. 

 And that’s what happened in a day in the life of TrueNorth.

Old Folks & Remote Control Cars

Every Monday through Thursday, about 10 – 15 senior citizens eat lunch in our building. It’s part of The Commission on Aging’s Senior Meals program. According to the COA website – “Everyone is welcome to attend the congregate meal sites. For people age 60 and older, there is a suggested donation of $2.00 per meal; however, no one will be refused a meal for inability to donate.” That’s pretty cool. For some of these folks, getting an affordable meal makes a real difference in their lives and helps them avoid going hungry. For others, it is about the only “social time” they get in their day. For me, Senior Meals traditionally meant something very different…

Up until very recently, half of my job here at TrueNorth was as the Facilities Manager, so Senior Meals was just one more “thing I had to deal with”. Making sure their tables and chairs were set up; finding their missing coffee pot that someone moved over the weekend; moving them to the Youth Center when we needed the multi-purpose room for some other large agency event, and then trying to get staff to remember to leave the parking spots closest to that door open for the seniors. It was always something. Some of the seniors are really sweet, and some are kind of cranky. I have a sinking suspicion that I’ll end up as the crankiest of cranky old men – yelling at neighborhood kids to “get off my lawn” while waving my cane at them. I hope not, but I worry that I will.

Some people are really good with little kids, and some are really good with the elderly. Me? I’m good with dogs. Although, I will say this – since I am a crank myself, I tend to do pretty well with cranky seniors. They’ll complain about something and I find myself complaining right along with them, and there’s nothing a crank likes better than someone who will be cranky with them. Poor Kay – the woman they’ve hired to run the Senior Meals program that uses our building, herself a senior… It seems that at least a couple times a month someone uses and misplaces one of her pots, or uses up all her paper cups, or forgets to tell her that we’re moving her into the Youth Center for the week. She’d come to me to help her and before long, the two of us would be deep into a crank session. “Kids today!” “Tell me about it.” “My bursitis is acting up” “I know – my ankle’s been killing me… must be it’s gonna rain soon.” She still brings me extra garlic bread on spaghetti days, so we’ve got that.

Anyway – the other day, someone stopped by my office and asked me if I could come to the multi-purpose room to shoot some photos and/or video of the seniors running the remote control cars. You just re-read that, didn’t you? I did a double-take myself. Turns out, one of our off-site staff, Dan Postema, who is the Project FOCUS Site Coordinator at Hesperia Middle School, had decided it would be cool to bring the remote control cars in for the seniors to “play with.” I walked in there with my cameras, completely unsure of what to expect. What I found was a handful of senior citizens playing with remote control cars – and seeming to have a blast doing so. The cars were the large kinds that really get going fast, and it’s a big room, so they were flying and smashing into each other, and into chairs, and table legs. It was awesome.

What was and is so cool about this is that I get to work at a place where this kind of thing can happen, and I work with some very cool people, like Dan, who just decided to do something nice for some people – not even people that are part of any of our programs, just people who happen to be in our building. It’s cool that his boss let him do this. It’s cool that his program (Project FOCUS) even has these cars – they use them to teach kids all kinds of interesting things about radio frequencies, and electronics, and other stuff I don’t even understand. It’s just plain cool. There’s one gentleman that always comes to Senior Meals – I don’t know what happened, if he had a stroke or what, but he uses a walker and shuffles along with tiny little baby-steps, obviously compensating for some very serious balance impairments. Watching him run the R.C. cars, sitting in his chair, with a little smile on his face... well, that just made my day.  

And that’s what happened in a day in the life of TrueNorth.      

   

Inaugural Edition

This is my first attempt at a blog. Ever. So, if I’m lousy at it at first, bear with me – it should get better. I am, after all, paid to write so it stands to reason that at some point I’ll be able to make this interesting.

I am the Assistant Communications Director at TrueNorth Community Services, which was, up till a few weeks ago, known as NCCS (Newaygo County Community Services). Why the name change? Well – that’s a story for another day, or you could just check out our C.E.O.’s blog at www.truenorthbev.blogspot.com, she covers it pretty well.

No, the purpose of my blog is to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in an average day at a place like TrueNorth. Maybe you know a little bit about us because you’ve accessed one aspect of our services. Maybe your kid participated in our Student Theater program in middle school. Maybe you had to get food from our Food Pantry that one time you just couldn’t make ends meet. Maybe your grandmother wears one of our LifeLink pendants just in case she… you know - falls and can’t get up. Whatever.

Locally, almost everyone knows a little bit about TrueNorth. At the very least they might say something like; “Oh yeah, that’s that place where they do all that good stuff.”  BTW – I, unsuccessfully, suggested that as our official tagline more than once. Most people though, have no idea what goes on in that big building on M-82, just south of Fremont. If you’ve ever wondered – you might really dig this blog.  For example…

We tend to get real busy on the first of the month, particularly over the fall, winter and early spring. Heating and energy cost have gone through the roof (just in case you haven’t noticed), and people who are struggling financially tend to live in houses that aren’t exactly “energy efficient”. Most of the funding we get for heating and energy assistance runs on a monthly cycle, so essentially there is a “new pool of money” available the first of each month. It’s actually a lot more complicated than that, but this blog is not called a day in the life of a CPA, so…

It doesn’t take very long for people to figure out that if you’re not here early on the first of the month, there’s a chance there won’t be any money left to help you. All April Fool’s Day jokes
aside, April 1^st was very busy. Like… crazy busy. I can guess what you’re probably thinking; when I say we were really busy, you think I’m exaggerating, a little, right? I know exaggeration – I used to work customer service for a large West Michigan shoe manufacturer and once received a 25 minute voice mail from a client who owned a bait shop in Louisiana. On this message, he hastily informed me, in his very thick Cajun accent, how incredibly busy he was and that he didn’t have time to be calling me to check up on his shoe order. He then set the phone down without hitting the hang-up button and unknowingly left me 24 more minutes of his discussion with a gentleman named Skeeter about the best bait to use for catfish. “A wiggly worm!? Ya can’t catch the big ‘uns with no wiggly worm… yer crazy!”  Busy, indeed.

According to the Assistant Director of our Housing and Family Services Department, by 10:30 AM that morning we had between 75-80 households that had come in for assistance, and we had to turn away everybody else for the rest of the day in order to assist everyone who was here. We spent close to $48,000 on utilities in that single day. Like I said – we were busy.

At one point, near noon, one of our Case Managers walked through the lobby and overheard a woman say – “Where is she going? She better not be taking a lunch… there’s people still waiting here!”  ...I know, right? A group of us heard this story over lunch that very day and as everyone (myself included) was grumbling and making jokes about it, this thought entered my mind; we’d all like to believe that in the same situation, we would be gracious, and patient, and thankful. And maybe we would. Then again, perhaps we wouldn’t.

Either way – that’s what happened in a day in the life of TrueNorth.