CREATING “HELP” [Thanksgiving weekend, Nov. 26, 2011]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

I was always better at thinking up ways to get stuff done than I was at actually doing it, so on this Thanksgiving weekend, I give my own thanks for all those, especially Helen, who took my ideas and turned them into reality.

In continuing to cull old files, so that my children will not have to when I die, I went through the folder that had newspaper clippings from our days in Normal, IL, when I was the campus minister of The Wesley Foundation at IL State U. One of the clippings announces the formation of a new social service agency called HELP, and names me as the director. That was a bit of a surprise. I know that I started HELP, and I guess I sort of acted as director in the beginning, but I only remember getting the idea and calling some people together and… letting them do the work.

Now it seems so audacious of me. Well, it was. I guess I was just too young and inexperienced to understand that.

Students came to me with all sorts of problems—psychological, financial, social. Everything from “I’m pregnant” to “My dad is in the hospital and I need a ride to home” to “I’m hungry and I’ve got no money for food,” to “The cops just arrested me and they’ll let me go if you’ll come down and take me home.” [All real examples]

I knew there were a lot of people with problems who had no preacher they could call on. So, I thought of HELP.

My idea was to create a database of volunteers who would be on call for various kinds of needs—a ride to the doctor, finding a place for a homeless person to spend the night, getting a battered wife or abused child to a place of shelter, etc. We’d have a 24 hour help line, for any kind of help. Hence, the name, HELP.

There were social service agencies, but the average person in need, especially emergency/immediate need, had no idea how to access them, or even that they existed. We needed a central place where a person could make one call and not just get a referral, but get help, now.

So I started asking around among clergy friends if they had folks in their church who might be interested in starting such a service. Eventually I had a dozen or so names. I called them up and asked them to come to a meeting. I outlined my idea to them. They liked it and said, “Let’s do it.”

There were telephone booths in those days. I envisioned all of them with a sticker on the phone saying, “Need help? Call 252-HELP.” But on campus we already had a 24-hour suicide counseling service called PATH, Personal Assistance Telephone Help, started by our sister campus ministry of the Presbyterians and Disciples. I hated to give up the name HELP, because it said it all, but it made sense to use the PATH line, because it was already in place and staffed.

The elegant Karin Bone, wife of retired ILSU president, Robert, for whom the ILSU Student Center is named, gave HELP instant credibility at the start by being our first volunteer driver, ferrying old ladies to the doctor, going out at night to rescue stranded students.

I looked at the online PATH page just now. It includes click buttons for United Way [where the telephone is answered now], Human Services Online Database, Homeless Services, Adult Protective Services, and Suicide Crisis Service. The database has links to over 20 different groups and agencies.

I saved the newsletter of Jan, 1972, one of the last before I moved away to do doctoral study at U of Iowa.  It was still called HELP, and had a telephone number of 452-5945, so, apparently, we had not switched over to the PATH number yet. The newsletter notes that services rendered were 27.5 % higher than in the same period the year before, and transportation included 425 medical, 148 MARC center [“developmental disabilities”], 12 school, 6 to Girl Scouts, and 25 Other, for a total of 616. “Additional services rendered: accompanying case workers out of town, visits to the elderly, tutoring, babysitting, information.”

The newsletter goes on: “Miss Grace Ackerson, one of our HELP recipients, wrote this shortly before she died:

            Mrs. Cohen drove me down the path I so much needed to go

            For in my aftermath, I am as poor as Job’s turkey

            Took along her girl and boy named Neal

            Whose curly head and mischievous eye would

                        steal your very heart away

            Are God’s children on this earth

            And there is no dearth

            Of one’s wanting the right life

            May they never know strife.”

 

John Robert McFarland

“In that you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it unto me.” Jesus of Nazareth