‘Sprout’ makes big impact

When a single mother moved in near Jeffrey “Sprout” Rich, he brought her firewood and, sometimes, food.

He didn’t ask her to pay or try to sell her his handyman services or anything else. Jeffrey dropped off his load, laughed with the kids and went on his way.

“He’s always helping someone or giving away something or gleaning fruits,” says his friend, Ken Casler. “He’s always doing things for other people and never things for himself.”

That’s why Jeffrey was the first recipient of the Barbara Veranium Random Acts of Kindness Award. Ken bestowed the award to Jeffrey at Earth Day activities in Sandpoint last month partly because Jeffrey models so many of Barbara Veranium’s compassionate and generous characteristics and partly because Ken just wanted to honor Jeffrey for his kind soul.

“I was really honored,” Jeffrey says as he hands a sprig of purple lilac to a mother and her baby passing his table at Sandpoint’s Farmers’ Market. “I don’t think I’m deserving.”

Barbara Veranium was 62 when she died from cancer and its complications in January. She was a special education teacher from New York and the divorced mother of a son and daughter when she found Sandpoint in the 1970s.

“She was an eco-feminist who lived with incredible integrity,” says Ellen Weissman, one of Barbara’s friends. “She lived what she spoke. She was a real lover of life.”

Barbara was part of the local human rights task force and at the forefront of Earth Day recognition in Sandpoint. She built her own cabin north of Sandpoint, protected the environment, cleaned trash off the roadways and kept the area aware of the latest in alternative medicine.

Barbara organized two events Sandpoint won’t forget for years. She convinced fire trucks and other big trucks to park near City Beach so people could explore them, sit in them, learn about them. She also organized a weeklong, round-the-clock peace vigil in Sandpoint last year right before war was declared on Iraq.

“She was a beautiful soul,” Ken says. “If something was happening in town to do with public service or human rights or healing—if it was good for the community—Barbara was there.”

Her spirit deserved continued appreciation, so Ken and Ellen started the Random Acts of Kindness award in Barbara’s name. Ken knew the award fit Jeffrey in every way.

Sandpoint residents find Jeffrey, 62, selling wheat grass and sunflower sprouts at the local farmers’ market twice each week. He knows most shoppers and their children by name. He’s a Vietnam veteran who studied early childhood education in graduate school after trying an engineering career.

His work ethic developed from childhood on a New England dairy farm. Building stone walls, baling hay and managing gardens taught him the satisfaction of hard work. Co-workers at one job nicknamed him Sprout because he was small but worked so hard. Jeffrey didn’t like seeing technology deprive people of such fulfillment.

He returned from Vietnam in 1969 convinced that the United States misuses its resources, mostly for profit reasons. The profit-before-people philosophy angered him. He married and moved to Israel for two years, until he couldn’t stay any longer without serving in the Israeli military.

Divorce and a new love interest landed Jeffrey in Massachusetts working with autistic children. The work fit him so well that he decided to pursue a new career in early childhood education. He finished school at Idaho State University after he joined friends heading to the Pacific Northwest.

Sandpoint offered the simple life Jeffrey craved. A private school he helped start in 1977 went a different direction than Jeffrey had hoped, so he worked in organic gardens when he wasn’t hitchhiking back east to visit his family or protesting with Earth First in California.

Now, Jeffrey distributes hats and vests he knits to anyone he decides needs them. He collects rocks off roads and builds walls with them wherever they’re needed in town. He portrays William Clark for school kids and takes care of friends’ homes while they’re gone. He counsels children at a summer camp and teaches people the therapeutic wonders of wheat grass juice. He apprentices with a master mandolin maker in Cocolalla and just finished crafting his first instrument.

He’s happy and he makes other people happy without expecting thanks. But Ken and Ellen believe Jeffrey deserves some.

“We don’t take time to thank people anymore,” Ellen says. “But Barbara Veranium did.”