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Champions for children
from the June 2001 Edition
of Presbyterians Today
A dozen inspiring stories
Readers sent us names of more than a hundred
Presbyterians who are working to make life better for today's children and
young people. We wish we could include all of their stories. As the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) concludes its observance of the "Year of
the Child" we thank God for the "champions" featured in
this issue, and the many others in our pews, who will continue to keep
before us the needs of children.
Kids helping kids
MARY HALEY
When Mary Haley graduated from Arkansas Tech in 1998
with a degree in elementary education, she says she was already
experiencing a career crisis. "I'm not a person who likes to stay
inside behind a desk," she freely admits. She had grown attached to
Arkansas Presbytery's Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center during her
summers as a counselor, and so she agreed to become its first program
director. She now runs summer programs that touch the lives of 600
children each summer.
But it is Ferncliff's ministry with children traumatized by school
violence that has touched Haley the deepest. Three months before she
started, two troubled students opened fire on their classmates at nearby
Jonesboro Middle School, killing and wounding dozens.
A week at camp is like a year at
Sunday school"
Ferncliff's response--to invite Jonesboro students to the camp for a
few days of recreation and relaxation away from the media glare--proved
therapeutic. Five subsequent special camps have brought students affected
by other school shootings--in Colorado, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and
Georgia--to Ferncliff.
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Mary Haley in a playful moment with one of her campers. Photo:
Kay Danielson
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"It's been such a powerful experience," Haley says.
"When they're in the spotlight, we forget they're just kids who have
the same issues as other kids. Ferncliff gives them a chance to really see
each other as compassionate human beings, not as celebrities."
Haley, a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Hot Springs,
Arkansas, says providing a place and a program where "kids can help
other kids who have gone through the same experience" is the key to
healing the trauma of school violence. "There are so many life
lessons at these events," Haley says, "that a week at camp is
like a year at Sunday school."--Jerry L. Van Marter
Campfire storyteller
CY BATTISON
"Kids today are a lot of bluster," Cy Battison says,
"with the baggy pants and the tattoos and the pierced lips and all
that stuff. But when you get them by themselves and talk to them
one-on-one, you discover they're good kids."
Battison has been seeing the good in kids for more than half a century.
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"The trick is to get across the
importance of their relationship with God and still see that
they have a good time."
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When he started his first boy's club, at United
Presbyterian Church in West Los Angeles, California, he says, "four
kids showed up, and looked me over with disdain"--but within three
weeks he was drawing 30 boys to the meetings, and not long after that he
found himself running clubs, six for boys and three for girls.
Eventually Battison quit his job in California state government, went
back to school to get a teacher's certificate, and answered his call to
devote his life to children.
For 53 years he has been the director of Camp Fox, a facility on
Catalina Island sponsored by the Glendale YMCA. He is widely known for
remembering every camper's name and for his legendary campfire stories,
which often bring tears to the campers' eyes and always have a moral
lesson to teach.
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Cy Battison, storyteller extraordinaire Photo: Mike Williams
Photography
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Battison is proud that the YMCA program lives up to the "C"
in its name. "It's a Christ-centered camp," he says, "and
we don't apologize for that. Our emphasis, with boys and girls alike, is
the importance of their relationship with God and with Christ. The trick
is to get that across and still see that they have a good time."
This summer, for the first time since 1948, Battison, 80, won't go
camping with the boys.
But he's not quitting cold-turkey. "I'll be there to help them get
ready, make sure they've all got sleeping bags and whatever else they
need," he says. "It's just that, when they're ready to shove
off, I won't get in the boat." --John D. Filiatreau
Bringing people home to God
ESTHER HAINES
On the one hand Esther Haines has found loving homes in the United
States for nearly 100 orphaned and abandoned children from China.
On the other hand she has found loving children for nearly 100 U.S.
families, including dozens of would-be moms and dads who bear the
emotional scars of miscarriages, stillbirths and unsuccessful struggles to
conceive.
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"Home is where you feel loved"
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She says it's all part of her special ministry to
"bring people home to God."
"Home is not where you live or where you are born," she
explains, speaking about adoption on the one hand, Christian faith on the
other. "It is where you feel loved."
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Esther Haines with Janis, the daughter she helped Jon Lowell
Teeter and Sharon Nutting (members of First Presbyterian Church
in Dundee, N.Y.) adopt. Photo: Dan Vecchio
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Haines' own most vivid "coming home" experience was her
return, a little over a decade ago, not long after her arrival in the
United States, to the Christian faith of her childhood, which had been a
casualty of China's Cultural Revolution.
Haines is a graduate of Austin Presbyterian Seminary, but has not been
ordained. She and her husband, Todd Haines, pastor of First Presbyterian
Church of Conisteo, New York, are the parents of a 4-year-old daughter,
Esther.
Facilitating trans-Pacific adoptions is labor-intensive work. Haines
helps prospective parents fill out the necessary paperwork, translates it,
and sees it through the bureaucracy in China; she counsels and reassures
the soon-to-be parents, and satisfies herself that the children will be
joining Christian families, and accompanies the parents to China and back.
She works with about 10 families at a time.
She says she tries to be sensitive to the "emotion factor" in
dealing with adoptive parents. "Some of them have waited so
long," she says. "Some were pregnant but had miscarriages. Some
are adopting because their own children have died. I try to help them
overcome their pain and fear, put it behind them, and see the grace of
God.
"And finally, after much frustration, there is their little
precious child. They get to meet that strange face. And bring them
home."--JDF
A gift for growing things
ALAN AND CLETIUS WATSON
If you can't reach Alan and Cletius Watson on their car radio phone,
you can drive 10 miles on an unpaved road to their three-story log home 40
miles east of Missoula, Montana. City power lines don't extend this far
out, but the Watsons' house will be ablaze with light from their diesel
generator.
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Cletius and Alan Watson, surrounded by the kids they love: clockwise
from top left, daughter Jessie; her boyfriend Brad Cheff;
son Jubal; friend Phillip Curtiss; Anna Taylor, from Finland;
daughter Shandi; and foster kids Jonathan Maki, Travis Dethman
and Joe Thompson. Photo: Andy Holzman/Daily News
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If it's winter, you might find the couple on a frozen lake surrounded
by teenagers playing "broomball," described by Alan as "a
humorous form of hockey." He and Cletius recruited members of their
small Presbyterian church's youth group (which they lead) to form
Missoula's only church-sponsored broomball team.
"That's kind of our life," says Alan, "being right in
the middle of what the kids are doing."
The kids in the Watsons' life include their own three teenagers (Jubal,
Jessie and Shandi), Travis (a teen from a troubled home who has lived with
the Watsons since last July), Anna (a college student whose parents are
teaching in Finland), and three boys who stay with the Watsons whenever
their foster parents need a weekend off.
"The Watsons bring God's love to all children in every breath and
action they take," says Jody Wills, clerk of session at Blackfoot
Church of Potomac (Montana), where Alan, Cletius and their children are
active members.
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"That's kind of our life--being right
in the middle of what the kids are doing"
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Alan, a scientist involved in forestry and wilderness
research at the University of Montana, and Cletius, a horticulturist,
gravitate toward growing things-- especially children.
On Saturday nights the youth group gathers for sledding parties, Bible
study or community service projects. Sometimes the Watsons give parents in
the community a night out while they entertain their kids with games,
videos, crafts and goodies. "Spring Fling," a Watson-organized
family extravaganza, includes a barbecue, softball, sack races and a
puppet show about God's love.
Cletius has a knack for coming up with zany entertainment options. One
weekend she took a group of kids out for a french-fry-tasting contest, to
determine which local fast-food joint offered the tastiest fries.
When you live far away from malls and theme parks, you have to be
creative to have a good time, she says. "I just try to think like a
kid and come up with fun ideas."--Eva Stimson
Medical "miracles"
ROSE EMILY BERMUDEZ
When you ask Rose Emily Bermudez, president of Children's Cross
Connection (USA), how her work has affected her life, she replies in one
word: Transformation. Then she adds, "It's given me a real
understanding of what the love of God is all about. Anybody who does this
kind of ministry really has to love God in a very deep way because we are
confronted with so many cases that really get to your heart."
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Rose Emily Bermudez on the playground at First Presbyterian
Church in Atlanta, with 4-year-old Amadsu Bundro, from Ethiopia,
who faces extensive surgeries to repair burn injuries on his
face, head and hand. Photo: Nancy Anne Dawe
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Children's Cross Connection, a medical relief organization based at the
First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, brings children from all
over the world for surgeries that cannot be done in their home countries.
Bermudez matches the illnesses of approximately 75 children a year to
specific doctors who donate their services, and then finds hospitals and
airlines who will do the same. She also secures host families to keep the
children (and often their mothers) during pre- and-post-op care.
Bermudez, a native of Colombia, relates some heart-rending stories and
their attendant "miracles": a young Haitian boy born without
ears who had never spoken a word--but who now has "beautiful"
ears and speech; a Somalian boy, attacked by hyenas that not only ripped
off his nose and ripped out one eye but killed his parents and siblings--
"who has had five or six surgeries so far, and whose host family is
adopting him"; 3-year-old Kalina Krassimer of Sophia, Bulgaria, who
had a cancerous eye removed and replaced by an artificial one, plus
therapy that saved her sight in the other. And 4-year-old Amadsu Bundro
from Ethiopia, who fell into a hot pan as his mother was cooking outside,
severely burning the left side of his face and head, leaving no left eye,
and fusing together all the fingers on his right hand. He faces extensive
surgery.
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"We've seen lives changed in such an
incredible way"
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"You learn how wonderful doctors are--so willing to
help other human beings with their skills," says Bermudez. "I
believe that what they give is a miracle in itself. We've seen lives
changed in such an incredible way. We suffer and struggle, but then
rejoice in the Lord when we see a child who was so sick go back to his or
her country with a life that would never have been possible unless
somebody had helped. It's a ministry of love and compassion for children
all over the world. I call it the gospel in action."--Nancy Anne
Dawe
School peacemaker
TIMIR BANERJEE
Timir Banerjee recalls that his childhood home in India was always full
of children. Kids seemed drawn to his father and maternal grandfather,
both doctors, who treated many of their patients without charge and gave
money to young people so they could afford college.
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Timir Banerjee in one of the 11 schools he visits regularly to
teach nonviolence. Photo: David P. Young
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Their example has stayed with Banerjee. When he's not
training doctors or setting up medical programs overseas, this 58-year-old
retired neurosurgeon--who calls himself an "international
volunteer"-- often can be found in a classroom teaching students
nonviolent ways of resolving conflicts.
Banerjee, who has lived in the United States since 1967, was baptized
as a Christian in 1979 and is now a member of Springdale Presbyterian
Church in Louisville, Kentucky. A 1997 school shooting in Western Kentucky
that left three students dead convinced him of the need for a mentoring
program in Louisville's schools. He founded SPAVA--the Society for the
Prevention of Aggressiveness and Violence Among Adolescents--and began
recruiting volunteers from his church, local businesses-- even a former
mayor--to serve as mentors for groups of children.
"We talk about things that can cause conflict and how to diffuse
it," says one of Banerjee's first recruits, lawyer Scott Furkin, a
member of Springdale Church. He encourages the fifth-graders he meets with
once a week to write essays about famous peacemakers such as Martin Luther
King Jr. or Mohandas K. Gandhi.
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"I want the children to understand
that we need to know our neighbors"
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Sometimes Banerjee asks students to tell three things
they appreciate about a particular classmate. It's a way of encouraging
the kids to respect each other in spite of their differences, he explains.
"I want the children to understand that we need to know our
neighbors."
Now entering its third year, SPAVA has more than 85 mentors working in
45 public, private and parochial schools.
"If the kids don't get anything out of this other than that
there's somebody who cares about them and wants them to do well,"
Furkin says, "that will make it all worthwhile."--ES
Foster faith
JIM AND ERVIN HAAS BULLOCK
Pastor Jim Bullock and his wife, Ervin Haas Bullock, "really put
their faith in action," says Michelle Thomas-Bush, associate pastor
at Riverside Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Florida. "They have
a heart and a passion for youth at risk, and a lot of compassion for young
people."
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"A heart and a passion for youth at
risk"
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The Bullocks are certified foster parents. Each of them
runs a non-profit program that helps children and teens in trouble through
Fort King Presbyterian Church in Ocala, Florida, where Jim has been pastor
since 1989. They also are parents of adopted twins, Robert and Jesse, 15,
and legal guardians of Dwayne and Darrell Baum, also twins, 19. They
raised three children of their own earlier in their 34-year marriage.
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Jim and Ervin Haas Bullock at home with their "second
family": left to right, twins Dwayne and Darrell
Baum and twins Robert and Jesse Bullock. Photo: Danialle K.
Leach/Rhodes College
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When the Bullocks went looking for ways to serve, they got involved in
what became the "Fort King Family Resource Center" and
"Church Without Walls." "It's just evolved as our sense of
call," Ervin says. "It's something we do because we really enjoy
it. It's very fulfilling."
Jim runs Church Without Walls, in which more than 100 volunteers from a
number of denominations mentor and counsel young people in prison. The
program includes church school, Bible studies, reading-intensive academic
classes, and a 12-step program for fighting addiction.
Jim says prison ministry is "a real way for churches to see what
redemption is about."
Ervin chairs the board of Fort King Family Resource Center, which helps
troubled families. The program got its start in 1995 as a center for
children at risk of abuse and neglect.
"We try to mend and strengthen the family, "Ervin says,
"not just take care of the child."--Evan H. Silverstein
Reading Buddies
PAT QUIGG
It started in 1968 as a modest, one-day-a-week outreach program of the
First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Every Monday
church volunteers of all ages organized activities for neighborhood
children, most of whom attended a nearby public school.
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Pat Quigg, center, pairing elderly volunteers with kids
who need help.
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In 1982 one volunteer moved into Riverside Presbyterian Towers, a
building for low-income elderly people, managed by PresbyHomes and
Services. When she came back to church she said she was happy enough with
her new digs, "but oh, how I miss those children!"
That's when the formula popped into Pat Quigg's mind: Kids needing help
and attention + elderly men and women feeling lonely = mutual joy.
That bright idea grew into a program now known as Reading Buddies,
which pairs elementary school children with volunteer grandpas and
grandmas who live nearby in government-supported buildings for low-income
elderly people.
The program, which each year involves more than 125 children and an
equal number of residents of eight facilities for the elderly, is in its
19th year. Its annual budget is $300, for refreshments.
Last year Reading Buddies was honored as the single "best
practice" in the nation involving properties of the federal
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Six of the eight
program sites in Philadelphia are HUD facilities for the elderly and
handicapped.
Quigg, who describes herself as "70, but young at heart," is
still the driving force behind the program. She visits all eight
institutions every day. "I try to get to know all the children, and
all the adults," she says.
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"I have no children, and yet I have
hundreds"
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"It's like one big extended family. I have no
children, and yet I have hundreds."
Quigg says the program was conceived as a way of enlisting older people
to help children, but it soon became clear that it was "doing as
much, if not more, for the older people."
People like herself.
"Lately I am just beside myself with work," she says,
"and joy."--JDF
Good neighbors
STEPHANIE MAIER
For Stephanie Maier, Christian faith means being a good neighbor.
"We have a call to be good neighbors," says the director of The
Open Door, an outreach ministry to kids sponsored by First United
Presbyterian Church in the Crafton Heights section of Pittsburgh.
"I'm not interested in brownie points or becoming a jewel in Jesus'
crown."
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Stephanie Maier, who reaches out to what she calls
"self-parenting" kids--children left to take care of
themselves and sometimes their younger siblings. Photo: Bonnie
Schrenker
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Maier calls The Open Door, which operates out of a former movie theater
near the church, a "catch-all ministry." Through before- and
after-school programs, Friday night recreation activities, summer day
camps and peer counseling, The Open Door reaches out to what Stephanie
calls "self-parenting" kids. "These are more than latch-key
kids," she explains. "A lot of them have to do their own cooking
and they take care of their brothers and sisters as well as
themselves."
Being a good neighbor means being an ally of parents, not blaming them
for their perceived neglect. "In the three years I've been here the
kids and their parents have awakened me to the reality that the parents
aren't there out of choice but out of necessity," Stephanie says.
"They're working and trying hard because their hopes and dreams for
their kids are as big as mine."
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"I'm not interested in brownie points
or becoming a jewel in Jesus' crown"
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Stephanie tirelessly promotes the church and the
community to each other. "For me being a good neighbor means being an
ally of both the kids and the church. The congregation really feels
ownership of The Open Door and it's clear in the community that this is a
church-based ministry."
Even the worship life of First Church has been revitalized by The Open
Door. Every week as many as two dozen neighborhood children attend
worship-- without their parents. Pastor Dave Carver says Stephanie pairs
kids up with families or adults with whom they sit so they can "learn
the language of faith."--JVM
Rebuilding neighborhoods
GENEVA HAYDEN
"You never know what you're going to do after your
own kids move away," says Geneva Hayden, a former teacher's assistant
in the Syracuse, New York, public schools.
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"These kids have to know that we love
them and want to open doors for them"
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For Geneva, a member of First Presbyterian Church in
nearby Marcellus, a 1994 encounter with a young child on the school
playground led her to create Communities United to Rebuild Neighborhoods (CURN),
a grass-roots organization that is reclaiming the lives of countless
children in Syracuse.
"I asked this boy what he was doing," Geneva said about that
life-changing encounter, "and he pulled out a bag of cocaine he was
carrying for his older brother. I knew then that I had to leave the inside
and work on the outside."
The only safe place Geneva could find in her troubled neighborhood,
wracked by violence and drugs, was her own home. So she created a library
and activity center in what she laughingly calls "extra space,"
and CURN was born.
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Geneva Hayden with children in her after-school program. Photo:
Dan Vecchio
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Today, funded by local businesses and several Presbyterian
congregations, CURN includes a year-round before- and after-school program
housed at a local school, a community garden and park, a Girl Scout troop,
and a variety of tutoring and mentoring programs.
"We have to take care of the whole child," Geneva insists.
"We try to address spiritual development, moral guidance, physical
needs, social skills and academic achievement. These kids have to know
that we love them and want to open doors for them."
Six years later CURN is still based in Geneva's house. "We gotta
get us a bigger place," she says with a chuckle, marveling at what
God has wrought since that playground conversation. "We started with
a penny and a dream, and it's been a journey of faith that has taken me
way, way beyond anything I thought we could do in this community. Praise
God!"--JVM
Child support enforcer
LAURA KADWELL
Jesse "The Mind" Ventura doesn't butt heads with Presbyterian
elder Laura Kadwell. She's the wrestler-governor's tag-team partner in
helping Minnesota's children.
Kadwell runs the Child Support Enforcement Division of the Minnesota
Department of Human Services.
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Laura Kadwell at St. Anne's Place, a shelter for homeless
mothers and children that she helped found. Photo: Heidi
Vardeman
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"Why would a Republican milkman's daughter from Buffalo, New York,
end up serving in the state administration of Minnesota?" Kadwell
asked rhetorically on Peacemaking Sunday 1999. "Because I believe
what I learned in our Presbyterian church every Sunday, that the poor and
the weak and the young need our very special care."
Kadwell, a schoolteacher-turned-lawyer, has worked hard to improve the
lives of children in Minnesota, especially those who are poor. In her
work, she has forsworn negative terms like "deadbeat dads,"
encouraging non-custodial parents to be involved in their children's
lives.
"Children are our future," says Kadwell, a mother and
grandmother. "What we do for and to our children says volumes about
us as a civilization--and either destroys or builds the civilization that
we will leave. This is our legacy."
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"The poor and the weak and the young
need our very special care"
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A member of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, an 88-member
redeveloping congregation near downtown Minneapolis, Kadwell has taught
Sunday school, served as clerk of session and sung in the choir.
She also has been interim director of the Children's Defense Fund of
Minnesota; a board member of St. Anne's Place, which offers transitional
housing for homeless women and children; and a child-support consultant to
the government of South Africa.
"We can use and nurture and develop the gifts that children bring
us, or not," she said. "To me, the choice is pretty
clear."--EHS
Hearing the deaf
RAMONA MEESTER
Kathi Hesser belonged to a church that was unable to meet the special
needs of her deaf 8-year-old triplets, who felt unwelcome in the church
community and left out of Sunday school.
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"It is important that people with
disabilities
are able to participate"
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Now that has all changed--thanks to Ramona Meester, a
member of Hesser's new congregation, Heritage Presbyterian Church in
Lincoln, Nebraska. Meester, 42, who has a background in education of the
deaf, teaches Amy, Sarah and Michael every Sunday.
"She's made it possible for them to participate fully in Sunday
school," Hesser says, "which was something they couldn't do
before. She adjusts her teaching and everything so that it's appropriate
for them. They feel a part of the community at the church."
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Ramona Meester with triplets Amy, Michael and Sarah Hesser.
Photo: Alison MacDonald
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Meester has taught Sunday school for about three years at Heritage
church, where her husband, Mark, is pastor. Six deaf students between the
ages of 6 and 9 are enrolled, including Hesser's triplets. Meester says
she became interested in working with the hearing-impaired after
befriending a deaf classmate in college.
"A lot of people with disabilities--not only deaf, but other
disabilities as well--don't really have an open door to our church,"
says Meester, who uses sign language to communicate with her students.
"I think it is important that they are able to participate."
Meester, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, earned a bachelor's degree in
deaf education and a master's in early childhood education from the
University of Tulsa.
"They bring their own gifts and talents," she says about her
students. "It certainly goes both ways. I'm not only on the giving
end."--EHS
Jerry L. Van Marter is coordinator of and Evan Silverstein is a
reporter for the Presbyterian News Service; Eva Stimson is editor and John
D. Filiatreau is assistant editor of Presbyterians Today; Nancy
Anne Dawe is a writer/photographer who lives on Seabrook Island, S.C.
The cover picture on the main Presbyterians Today Online page
was taken by Dan Vecchio.
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