Giving From The Heart Some People Get The Most Satisfaction From Acts Of Selflessness And Generosity
Christmas is a time of giving. In the Spokane Valley, some people give to children living at the Hutton Settlement. Other people buy toys for trees of sharing, which seemed to pop up everywhere this year. Many keep on helping essential year-round operations like Meals on Wheels or the Valley Center.
The Valley Voice went looking, not for those who sign the fattest checks, but for people who give from a place deep in their hearts. Here are some of the stories we found:
Nourishing the spirit of giving
George Amend, assistant principal at Central Valley High School, has worked with students for many years. This episode occurred in December 1986. Amend was overseeing Key Club activities, including deliveries of food to needy families:
“As I sent the kids out, I required them to call me after they made their deliveries. This was for safety reasons.”
“Well, there were two young men. Both were varsity football players, both high in academics - good kids.”
“They didn’t call in and they didn’t call in. Eventually they called and said, ‘Mr. Amend, we’re lost. We can’t find the house.’”
Amend arranged to meet the pair at University City.
“It was about 6:30.” Amend paused and said, in a slightly changed voice, “This one chokes me up. This one is a tough one.
“The three of us searched around and eventually found the address. It was in the Kokomo area.
“It’s after dark, it’s cold, it’s snowing. We knock on the door and a little girl answered. She was probably no more than 7 years old. Well, she peeks out, I explain to her who we are. That, if she’d like, we have some food for her. Of course, she shouldn’t have, but she opens the door and we come to bring the food in.
“Inside the house, we see this is the eldest child. Another is about 5, another is about 3. They’re there all by themselves.”
Amend’s voice takes on a measured cadence. He’s told this story many times.
“There was a table in the kitchen, a television and an opened out cardboard box they’re laying on for a carpet. Nothing else.
“There was no Christmas tree, no presents. There was nothing else there in that house.
“We proceed to bring in 20 sacks of groceries - enough groceries to feed this family for two months.”
Amend asked the oldest girl, “Where are your mom and dad?”
“They’re out trying to find food,” she answered. “We haven’t seen them since lunch.”
“What have you kids had to eat today?”
“We shared a burrito,” said the 7-year-old.
Amend and the two students waited a while, hoping the parents would come home. “In the end we left. The two guys are outside with me. And they realize they’ve made a complete change in these lives. Now mom and dad don’t have to worry about what to eat tonight. Instead, they can work on whatever issues got them where they were.”
Amend takes a deep breath.
“From that evening, those two gentlemen - one of them went on to full-time Christian service, basically; the other eventually took his life - that night, what we did had real meaning.”
The two students were close friends. Bob Hoctor, a 1987 CV graduate, is now an occupational therapist in Seattle. Shanon Soom, committed suicide seven years ago.
Hoctor’s father, Jim, says, “If there was some unusual giving involved, Bob was probably right there.”
Soom’s mother, Shelley Harding says, “Shanon was a wonderful, extraordinary boy. He made a bad choice because what he had to offer the world was only beginning to flower.”
They call her Auntie Lois
The slippers are bright enough to make children blink: black and pink checks, kelly green and white; orange and grey.
And so many.
There were, in fact, 100 pairs of puffy knit slippers in Lois Bond’s little house off Valleyway. Each Christmas gift took her an evening’s work.
“And I would stop in between and do a baby afghan so I don’t get burned out,” she said.
She knit them all for Toys for Tots. And in the 20 or so years she’s been at it, no one has known, beyond friends, family and the bank tellers at the branch where she drops off her bounty.
The reason is simple. She never told anyone and never thought what she does is remarkable.
Bond, 52, has a passion for knitting, giving to others and loving her two Chihuahuas, Coco and Taco.
A nurse who retired early with health problems, she has two grown children and many other children who claim their own place in her heart.
“I don’t know how many people call me Auntie Lois,” she said.
Soon after Christmas, Bond will start next year’s knitting project.
“I like to do something like slippers or mittens or hats, so I can do a hundred and help more children,” she says. And then, of course, there’s her extended family to knit for.
“There aren’t enough hours in the day,” she said.
One candy cane at a time
This Christmas, Margie Tibbits’ first period class learned the power of working together. And the appeal of candy canes.
The social studies teacher at Bowdish Junior High School has for four years directed one of her classes through an ambitious Christmas project.
This year, the ninth-graders sold 1,200 candy canes during December. They made $600.
Because the candy canes sold so well, Tibbits located not one but two families in need. In one, a single mother is raising five children, including 4-year-old twins. In the other, a single father is raising three children, 6, 7 and 9 years old.
The students asked teachers and local businesses for donations. Some gave toys or clothes. Even haircuts. One businessman gave tickets to Disney on Ice.
Tidyman’s agreed to give the group 10 percent off on groceries. Six of Tibbits’ students went with her to Tidyman’s two weeks ago: George Koons, Reggie Lee, Eric Moss, Russell Puryear, Jessica Rudie and Justin Whitney.
Tibbits led them on a supermarket safari, hunting out the best deals.
Little kids usually like chicken legs and thighs best, Tibbits counseled.
“What kind of jelly, guys?,” she asked. “Hey, don’t be screwballing around.”
She gave thumbs up to the cheaper brands, nix to the Smuckers jam and “no way” to the Charmin.
The Tidyman’s total: $523.14.
The result of all the kids’ work was a caravan of six cars bringing Christmas to the two Valley families.
“The mom was there and she was really happy about it and started crying,” said Toni Johnson, who said she’d never done anything like this before. “It was really an experience.”
Sarah Takisaki summed it up this way:
“What I liked the best is just that we can help people and it’s really nice to know we can. The hardest thing is there are so many people out there who are poor and we don’t think about them. We just think about our own problems.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos Staff illustration by Molly Quinn