Poverty Helps To Enrich Life For Many Jesuit Volunteers Youth Is Served Through Work At Spiritual Shelter For Homeless
Every year, two fresh-faced college graduates blaze into a bleak shelter in downtown Spokane to care for the rough-hewn homeless men who gather there.
The Jesuit Volunteers spend 12 months serving meals, gathering donations and doling out clothing, soap, razors and shampoo.
But mostly, they listen to the stories of the hundreds of men who pass through the House of Charity.
Then they go back to school, or on to a “real job.” But things are never the same. Those who have been through the experience frequently say they are “ruined for life.”
And that’s a good thing.
“I had no clue how it would it affect me,” said Pete Klecah, who was one of the first Jesuit Volunteers to serve at the House of Charity, in 1981. “But I still look back on it as one of the high parts of my life, a part that impacts me and my family to this very day.”
Dozens of volunteers have come to Spokane over the last two decades through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. This year there are seven. The others are working at other Spokane charities.
Like the Peace Corps, volunteers are recruited off college campuses to give a year or two of their lives in exchange for room and board, and a small monthly stipend.
House of Charity Director Ed McCarron said the volunteers become the backbone of the shelter, especially when the weather gets cold and homeless people come to spend the night.
“They put the guys to bed, get them up in the mornings,” said McCarron, a former volunteer himself. “They are a lot more important to this place than I am.”
There are roughly 500 Jesuit Volunteers, or JVs, in service at any time. The program was founded in 1956 to staff Jesuit programs and missions in Alaska. It has since spread throughout the Americas.
This year’s volunteers at the House of Charity are Rodney Abele of New Orleans and David Perfors from Montrose, Colo. Both are 22-year-old college graduates with liberal arts degrees.
“I wanted to do something that would take me somewhere that I hadn’t been to do something I’d never done before,” said Perfors, who majored in history at Colorado College.
“I come from a small farm community with a population of 10,000. We don’t really have a homeless problem there.”
Abele, who had never heard of the JVs, signed up last year at the suggestion of a priest. His plan was to spend his year of service contemplating whether he himself should join the priesthood.
But during the first days of a retreat last summer at a monastery, he decided against the priesthood. Still, he thinks the year of service will help him determine a direction for his life.
“I don’t know for sure what I’m going to do, but I know it feels good to be here,” he said. “It’s good work.”
The Jesuit Volunteer Corps is relatively unknown, even to many Catholics.
That works in the organization’s favor, said Dave Pastizzo, 37, who volunteered at the House of Charity in 1987.
“It’s kind of like, you hear about it from somebody, and it just clicks, it seems like the right thing to do, so you sign up,” he said.
Once screened, volunteers rate a variety of potential jobs and locations. Some get what they want. Some don’t.
“I originally thought I was going to work with farmers in the South,” said Klecah, who has a degree from the University of Georgia in agronomy. “Then they offered me this position, and it sounded interesting.”
Abele’s top choices were jobs working with AIDS patients or children. When the placement person called, she started describing his job: caring for chronic homeless men.
“I was all ears,” he said. “The whole philosophy of the place just sounded like something I could fit into.”
But there’s really no way to prepare for the House of Charity. It serves as a community gathering place for more than 100 chronically homeless men in Spokane. Many are addicts; others are mentally ill. They are always welcome - drunk or sober, dirty or clean.
“The boys,” as the homeless men call the JVs, always show up in August, eager to start their year of service. The one trait crucial to survival is flexibility.
During a slow Tuesday afternoon, two dozen people spread across the day room at the House of Charity, talking loudly or sleeping soundly on benches. The television was on, but no one was watching.
Abele was slouched in a chair beneath a sign that declared: “All personal items must be checked out by 3 p.m. Wednesday.” On the shelves next to him were dozens of dirty backpacks and bedrolls.
“Tomorrow’s Wednesday, right?” asked one of the few women who use the shelter. “I might not be back by 3 p.m. I’m going to work.”
Abele nodded.
“You’re not going to throw my (belongings) out?” she asked. He shook his head and she walked away.
“I like that just about anything goes here,” he said. “I mean we have rules, but we always break them.”
It’s not a place where most people from middle-class backgrounds would be comfortable. But that doesn’t faze Perfors or Abele. Not even when the people coming in are incontinent or have vomited on themselves.
“That’s happened, and you just give them clean clothes and they go and change,” Perfors said. “I’ve never been really grossed out or anything. Sometimes you just wash your hands really, really good.”
Abele spent the summer before last working as an office clerk in a law firm back in New Orleans. They offered to send him to law school.
“When I think about how easy it would have been to just slip into law school or slip into religious life, I’m thankful I was led to make a deliberate choice to do something else,” he said. “Because I’m not really a cause head. I don’t take a cause and run with it.”
JVs receive five days of training before they are sent to their assignment.
They are told to prepare themselves for a number of surprises about their jobs, including frustration and depression that will evolve into satisfaction and joy.
But beyond that, they are forced to rely on their strength and faith, especially at the House of Charity.
Abele discussed his feelings one afternoon last week, interrupting himself to hand out shower supplies and wash clothes.
“You want to be able to help the people who most need your help,” he said. “Not necessarily the people most like you.”
In addition to working with the poorest of the poor, JVs live a life of simplicity and poverty. They live in a Jesuit-owned home near Gonzaga University and get a monthly stipend of $80.
“You don’t walk into stores, because you don’t have any money to buy anything,” Abele said. “It forces you into a totally different mindset.”
Former JVs attest that frugality is just one of the lifelong consequences of their service.
Klecah, now 40, went on to marry a fellow volunteer and have three kids. He entered the mental health field, becoming a psychiatric case manager. He and his wife are trying to pass on the ethic of simplicity to their children, although it’s not always easy.
Pastizzo also has three kids. He recently took a job in Keene, N.H., teaching science to junior and senior high school students from low-income neighborhoods.
His wife stays home, mostly to care for their youngest child, who has rheumatoid arthritis. His entry-level salary is their sole income.
“That practice in simple living is really bearing fruit now,” he said. “Our life has been really challenging. I may have a less positive attitude had I not had that experience among homeless people back in Spokane.”
The biggest difference between the Jesuit Volunteers and the Peace Corps is the former promises a spiritual experience. Members learn to live in a community of other volunteers and attend several retreats.
“I think being here is really the spiritual experience,” Perfors said. “It’s given me insights into how God works in every facet of life.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: POOR MAN’S MEAL Jesuit Volunteers will be honored at this year’s Poor Man’s Meal, a fund-raiser for the House of Charity. The meal will be served at the shelter, 6 W. Main, from noon to 2 p.m. today. Tickets are $10 and available at the door.