Northwest Volunteers Reach Out To Romania Farmer, Grandmother And Others Have Long Offered Hope To Country

Celeste Shaw knew exactly what to do.

The Spokane nurse bought and studied $200 worth of medical books so she could persuasively discuss a child’s heart ailment with any Romanian doctor. She waited four hours at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest to get the proper visa.

Then, using a borrowed telephone, she found the boy’s Romanian doctor, his Portland aunt and free medical care so that the ailing boy can come to Spokane for surgery.

She did it all in five days, 5,000 miles from home and without ever meeting the boy.

How? Shaw’s knowledge of Romania is like many in the Inland Northwest, quiet but deep.

From a Reardan farmer who helped open Romania’s first privately-owned seed plant to a Walla Walla grandmother packing her 17th ton of aid to orphanages, hands reach from here to there.

Newspaper and television coverage of the Spokane chapter of Northwest Medical Teams International’s mission to an orphanage has highlighted needs in Romania recently. But the region’s residents have long tried to help.

“You do what you do and you don’t make a big fuss,” says Penny “Pearl” Burley, 74.

They call her “Pearlitsa” in Cimpulung-Muscel, Romania, although all the children at the orphanage call her “Mama.”

Since she first saw televised reports of the terrible conditions five years ago, she’s spent all or part of each year volunteering in orphanages. A retired nurse, Burley just returned from a four-month stay.

Now she’s packing five tons of donated clothing gathered through her husband, Dick Burley, churches and 50 Rotary clubs from Spokane to Nelson, British Columbia. She’ll deliver it to Romanian orphans and street children using the State Department’s Denton program, which transports relief boxes on routine military flights.

A plane will take Burley’s boxes from Fairchild Air Force Base to Romania this spring. She’ll fly ahead to meet it.

The arrangement is a welcome relief for the Burleys, who in addition to paying Pearl’s own travel and living expenses in Romania, cover up to $4,000 in shipping costs themselves.

“This is somebody who is totally involved and totally selfless. There’s no personal gain in it for her, period,” says Michael Conley of the Aurora Northwest Rotary Club in north Spokane. The 40 club members were moved to help Burley after looking at her slides.

“She doesn’t even pitch hard,” Conley says. “She’s compelling without selling.”

In Romania, the grandmother’s daily goal is to let orphans crawl all over her. She buys them healthy food, 25 pounds of chicken at a time, fresh vegetables, and for the first time last summer, watermelon. They’d never had it. They loved it. Now she’s thinking … ice cream.

“She’s the best grandmother in the world,” says Janice Neilson, executive director of the World Association for Children and Parents, a Renton-based international child welfare agency.

Amazingly, Burley has never met Celeste Shaw, even though their paths have surely crossed. The same Rotary clubs that support Burley support Shaw’s work for Northwest Medical Teams International in Romania. And in Romania, Burley has prepared orphans for Spokane surgical teams, which Shaw served on three times.

On those trips, Shaw helped Spokane surgeons fashion skinflaps for orphans whose eardrums were destroyed by untreated infections. Photographs of burn victims they treated fill her albums and scar her heart. The cardiac nurse at Deaconess Medical Center is now pursuing a master’s degree so she can one day join the international agency, World Health.

She wants to sow health policies for children in Romania.

Other Spokane-area people are sowing winter wheat.

Fred Fleming, owner of Reardan Seed Co., was among a small group of men and women who envisioned, paid for and grew a 450-acre farm owned and operated by Romanians near the town of Braila.

Romanian farmers will be able to buy seed from that farm at the country’s first private seed plant, which Fleming and other businessmen opened in June under a for-profit company. The farm and seed plant employ dozens of Romanians and a portion of all profits support churches, a medical clinic and a Bible college.

“We’re kind of like a bunch of Peace Corps workers, only we’re 40 years old and we don’t want to do anything through the government,” says Fleming.

His involvement began in 1992, when Romanian pastor Joseph Stefanuti visited Spokane. After the 1989 Romanian revolution, evangelical churches like his were allowed to exist, but had no way to pay for programs or seminaries.

Fleming, Keith Davis and other Christians created the International Assistance Program, a non-profit agency in Spokane whose business projects would provide a financial base for Romanian churches.

“The only reason I’m in Romania is Joseph showed up on my doorstep and asked me to be farmer of men. So, it’s basically a God-driven deal,” Fleming says.

Marlin Statema of Deer Park felt the need to get involved like a sharp elbow to the ribs. In fact, it was a sharp elbow - his wife Sharon’s - that hit him during a presentation at Northview Bible Church.

The Romanian project needed someone with agricultural, financial and business experience and Statema had all three. “Your screwy background is finally starting to make some sense,” his wife told him.

“The Lord blessed me so much and this is a critical time in all of Eastern Europe, they need help,” says Statema, president of LMF Feed Inc. in Deer Park. “The average person on welfare in the U.S. is wealthy compared to the average person there. The average person doesn’t have anything.”

With their children grown, Statema was able to leave his job and his wife left her job teaching speech and debate at Northwest Christian to spend a year in Braila. They bought an apartment and helped Romanian partners acquire and outfit the 250-acre corn, soybean and wheat farm that has since nearly doubled in size.

“The bureaucracy is overwhelming, but if you have a hard head and a stiff neck, you can keep going.”

During delays, they opened a training school, teaching everything from budgeting to soil management. And they fell in love - with Romania.

Material things are not as important, Statema says. “Nobody has anything so the most important thing is the relationships with people.”

The Statemas returned to Eastern Washington but he continues to travel to Romania, next month for a grain silo project. In the last two years he’s seen a flood of U.S. investment in a country that desperately needs it.

“There is hope,” he says. “I see a country with unbelievable natural resources, oil, gas, forest and some of the best farmland in the world.”

In Romania, the Statemas found a way to serve others and showed them, again and again, the hand of the Lord at work. But they cannot leave the country behind.

“I have a business here, but my heart is Romania,” he says. “We want to work there.”

Burley shares the same yearning.

She stays busy so she doesn’t dwell on the children. Some nights she plays tape recordings of their voices. One 3-year-old boy had never been out of a crib when she met him. He couldn’t walk or talk. She treated him for lice and worms and carried him in her arms all the time, trying to make up for the neglect. By the time she left a year later, he could speak Romanian and English, but more importantly he could laugh.

She listens to his laugh.

“I’m happy when I’m with the children,” she says. “I don’t think you can ever give them too much. They never fill up.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: See related story under the headline: Publicity closing some doors

This sidebar appeared with the story: TALES FROM A TRIP Penny “Pearl” Burley will address the Aurora Northwest Rotary Club Thursday, Nov. 14, at noon at Solicitor’s Corner.