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Chapter Four

Give What You Can

When the devastating tsunami hit Sri Lanka and Indonesia on December 26, 2004, I knew we had to do something to help the people most affected by the disaster. Our long-term partner in responses to situations like this has been FedEx and, within hours of the news, FedEx executives called to say they had cargo planes available to take supplies to the area as soon as we were ready.

Because disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis occur with some regularity, relief agencies know how to react quickly and efficiently. Transportation companies like FedEx and Yellow Freight, along with pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson, have something to offer when they partner with organizations that can get the materials into the right hands.

Responses from these companies underscore my feeling that most people want to help others. What often keeps them from doing so is that they don’t know how, or that they don’t think that what they have to offer would be helpful. FedEx offers us empty planes. Yellow Freight offers us empty trucks. Other organizations offer us things to put in those planes and trucks—all with the desire to serve others.

Within days we filled the FedEx planes with donated medical supplies, medicine, water, and water purification systems and headed to Sri Lanka. When we heard about areas in the region that were difficult to reach, the U.S. military let us load some of their helicopters with supplies and flew us to those remote places.

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Three television crews from the Kansas City area, along with U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, accompanied us to Sri Lanka. It was an opportunity for the world to see not only the devastation but also the outpouring of help from around the world. People were suffering, and people were responding.

This outpouring was similar to the response after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. On September 10, my staff and I had been in Memphis, meeting with FedEx to plan some medical airlifts for the coming year. We knew that we would be doing another airlift to China, where we had been providing medicines and conducting medical workshops for doctors and nurses throughout that country. We also knew we’d be doing an airlift to some of the former Soviet territories that were having significant problems with disease because of poverty and shortages of supplies.

We have done several relief responses in the United States— in Oklahoma where tornadoes ravaged cities, as well as in Florida after hurricanes devastated thousands of miles of homes and property. We have worked with cities throughout the country and partnered with shelters that protect women and children who have suffered from domestic violence, along with orphanages, homeless facilities, rescue missions, and food banks.

But the day after the September 11 attacks, when the country was still in a horrified daze, FedEx called and asked what they could do to help. We knew we could get supplies to the overrun hospitals quickly but we needed a staging area. FedEx offered their gigantic warehouse in Brooklyn from which we could distribute medical supplies. They also found us a facility right in Manhattan, close to the World Trade Center.

Our relationship with FedEx began with the Vietnam airlift I described earlier. I had spoken to a Rotary group in Kansas City about Heart to Heart’s desire to serve the people in Vietnam, telling the Rotarians that the only thing preventing us from doing it was getting the supplies there. It was a risky project in the first place. I had been hearing about the suffering of the Vietnamese people, where hospitals didn’t have enough supplies to treat the high-poverty regions, and clinics were re-using bandages, syringes, and other items that were spreading more disease.

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The problem with that project was obvious. The Vietnamese still thought of as enemies to some extent. But relations between Vietnam and the United States had been improving, and it seemed the right time to do something bold. The problem was that I couldn’t get anyone to agree to fly the supplies there. Politically it was too risky for the U.S. military to provide a cargo plane. I told the group this was part of what we were trying to do.

A man in the audience suggested I speak to another group he belonged to—a group of veterans. A few weeks later I told the veterans what Heart to Heart was trying to do, and one of the vets said “I know a man with airplanes.” It turned out the man he was referring to was Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx. I was not encouraged by the conversation, because I had approached FedEx before and my ideas never got past the first level.

But this vet had been in a Marine Corps unit with Fred Smith. In Vietnam. He said he’d write Smith a letter.

Within days my phone rang. It was Fred Smith. “How soon do you want to go to Vietnam?” he asked.

The first commercial plane from the United States to land in Vietnam after the war was a FedEx plane loaded with medical supplies for people we used to call our enemies.

The “big” responses to events like tsunamis and terrorist attacks started with one person doing something small. The Vietnam veteran wrote a brief letter. Everyone can do something to help relieve suffering. It may turn out to be something big, like getting FedEx planes, but that isn’t the point. Very few of us have access to planes, helicopters, trucks, and warehouses. But we can all do something.

In Calcutta, I saw that even nothing was something. During the airlift and volunteer effort I described earlier, a woman felt intimidated by all of the professional people in our group. Many of the volunteers were doctors or nurses. Others were technicians, engineers, or teachers. Still others were owners of companies who were providing supplies. Even members of the rock band Queen were with us because we were doing work with an AIDS hospice. The band was supporting an AIDS foundation named for their lead singer, Freddy Mercury, who died after a long battle with AIDS.

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This particular woman did not have professional training, and she repeatedly asked herself: “What can I do? I’m just a mother. I have nothing to offer these people in need.”

Her volunteer assignment in Calcutta was to work in a clinic filled with babies who were brought there to die. There were about twenty cribs in the facility, designed for one baby each. But the babies in this clinic were so emaciated and tiny that the cribs had up to four babies in each of them. Diane, our volunteer, counted at least seventy-five babies. Parents, family members, or social workers had brought the babies because there was no one else to care for them. Diane then noticed a sign on the wall.

“Do not hold the babies,” the sign said.

Diane asked one of the Sisters of Charity about the sign.

“If you hold one of the babies,” the sister said, “the other babies sense it and cry because they want to be held too. It’s just too much noise, because all of the babies can’t be held.”

Diane had nothing. Nothing but open space between her hands. Nothing to offer except. . . nothing.

For the rest of the day Diane picked up babies, comforted them, prayed over their tiny bodies, wept, and helped usher them from this world to the next. She had nothing to offer, which is exactly what these babies needed.

In overwhelming situations like the tsunami, it is easy to watch the news accounts and feel helpless. Even when there is access to medicine and transportation it is easy to feel that what we have to offer is too tiny to make a difference. But that sense of helplessness didn’t stop one college group from doing something anyway.

An a cappella music group called Pointless, from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, was on a singing tour up the West Coast when they saw the news about the suffering in Sri Lanka.

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“We sat there and watched the images, and knew we wanted to do something,” said Gerard Brown, one of the singers. “Our hearts really went out to the victims.”

They all wanted to do something. But what? They decided that they would donate the tour proceeds, originally planned to fund the recording of their next CD. They kept doing what they were already doing. They simply rerouted some of the money they were taking in. They didn’t start a tour for tsunami relief. They merely adjusted what was underway—almost nothing.

When they got back to San Diego they saw that their peers at the university were also trying to do something with almost nothing. The students arranged with the campus food service, Sodexho, to allow them to skip some of their meals, and Sodexho donated the monetary value of the meals to relief efforts. Other students conducted a “beverage fast,” which meant that instead of spending money on coffee drinks or sodas, they drank water and donated the money they would have spent. The senior class decided not to go on a class trip at the end of the year and donated the money they would have spent. One of the members of the music faculty didn’t have the money he wanted to donate, so he performed several benefit concerts at churches and senior citizen centers in San Diego and gave the money to the relief effort.

The chaplain at the university patched me in from Sri Lanka by phone to the university chapel, where I told them about our relief efforts. I wanted to challenge them further.

“Everyone can do something,” I told them. “Even if you don’t have a singing voice or a relief agency or a fleet of airplanes. Everyone has something to offer.”

Many students gave money, for which I was grateful. Pointless put together a benefit concert with all of the proceeds going to tsunami relief.

Eating nothing became something. Drinking nothing became something. Going nowhere became something. Everyone can do nothing and turn it into something.

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Within a few weeks, the proceeds of the benefit concert, the contribution from students, Sodexho, the beverage fast, and the cancelled senior class trip came to more than $40,000, which they gave to Heart to Heart’s tsunami relief efforts. And since Heart to Heart can turn $1 into $25 worth of equivalent product, more than $1 million in aid went to tsunami victims from this small school alone.

The interesting thing about doing whatever we can, regardless of how seemingly insignificant, is that this is often precisely what the other person needs.

At a San Diego charter school in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, some of these same principles were applied, with very interesting results. The King-Chavez charter school is in an area where the federal government took over the public elementary school because the students consistently scored below level for standardized tests required by the government. One hundred percent of the students at King-Chavez are on the government lunch program. Within a short time after the charter school began, students scored much higher on their tests than they used to—well above the required level.

“It’s a school based on the principle of love,” the school’s director said. “We don’t start with state standards and teach to them. We start with Matthew 6:13 of the Bible: ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.’

“We didn’t come in with new programs. We started by loving [the students]. The other things came along. When the love set in, their test scores went up.”

John Walton, the billionaire son of Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, was a financial supporter of the King-Chavez school, as well as other innovative schools throughout the country. Walton, 58, was killed in an ultralight plane accident in 2005; a few months before his death he dropped in at the school unannounced.

“He put up the money to start this school,” the director said. “But there were never any strings attached. We were always happy to see him when he came by.”

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After a few moments of discussion during this particular visit, Walton told the director that the school looked good and asked if there was anything else he could do for them.

“Yes,” the director told him. “The bathrooms need cleaning.”

Without hesitation, Walton said, “Where’s the mop?”

About thirty minutes later Walton reappeared, the task complete.

“We had a tension-and admiration-filled moment of staring at each other, where neither one of us said anything for about five seconds,” the director said. “I was in a Holy Ghost/ poetic irony moment.”

Walton left as unannounced as he had arrived.

Compared to what he could have done, like spread around more of his millions of dollars, some might say that he did almost nothing. It was a waste of his time and resources to mop a floor. But it was what was needed at the time. So it was everything, to Walton and the school.

Blake Nelson, a young man I have known most of his life, suffered a serious upper-leg injury as a two-year-old, and was confined to a plaster cast that started at mid-torso and went the entire length of one leg and partway down the other. He was immobilized that way for six weeks and was in considerable pain. It was impossible to keep the cast completely dry in the crotch area, so in addition to his pain and lack of mobility he had urine burns on his skin. His family lived in southern Ohio in a rented house with no air conditioning, and this was July. He was miserable, and his parents were out of ideas to keep him comfortable and occupied.

A neighbor, Mrs. Fleming, knocked at the door one afternoon. She had noticed the parents taking Blake for walks in a wagon padded with pillows, watched as the parents carried Blake up the stairs in his mummified form. Was there anything she could do to help?

Mrs. Fleming was in her eighties. She weighed about ninety pounds. Her posture was stooped from osteoporosis so that her head preceded the rest of her body. She looked frail and weak. The parents couldn’t imagine how she could help with this sweaty, stir-crazy kid confined in several pounds of plaster.

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Blake’s mom had the wisdom to ask this question: “Did you have anything in mind?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Fleming, reaching into the pocket of her house dress, “I brought something we could play with.”

She pulled out a single red balloon. She blew it up, tied a knot at the end, and batted it meekly toward Blake, who was lying on a blanket on the floor of the living room. Blake lit up, laughed, and swatted it back to her. Mrs. Fleming sat in a chair across the room and hit it back to him.

Marcia, Blake’s mom, left the room, sat at the kitchen table, and burst into tears. It was the first time she had heard him laugh since his accident. To her, it was the sound of hope. While Mrs. Fleming and Blake played, Marcia cleaned up dirty dishes that she had neglected because it meant leaving Blake unattended.

Playtime with Mrs. Fleming lasted about thirty minutes and it wore both of them out. As she bade Blake goodbye, he said to her: “You can come back tomorrow.”

Which she did. For most of the days of his recovery.

Mrs. Fleming wasn’t an orthopedic surgeon, or a bone-density specialist, or a specialist in anything. She could have easily watched that little boy go by in the wagon and said: “What a shame. I wish there was something I could do. But I have nothing to offer him.”

She had space in her life. And air for a balloon. Almost nothing. Just what Blake and his parents needed. What do we live by? Small acts of service to one another.

In his novel Jayber Crow, the writer Wendell Berry tells of a small town whose young men were being sent off to war. Jayber, the novel’s narrator, was the local barber, and people often came into his shop for something more than a haircut. They needed someone to listen to them.

Late one night, hours after he had closed the shop, Jayber sat in his own barber chair to read. A patron, Mat Feltner, wandered by and looked in the window. Mat’s son Virgil was missing in action. Jayber called for Mat to come in.

Jayber and Mat chatted about meaningless things—what was happening in town, the weather, a little about the war—and then they fell into silence.

Finally, Mat said that he had had a dream about his son Virgil as a boy. In the dream it became clear to Mat that his son would not be found. In the novel, Jayber continues narrating:

“He told me this in a voice as steady and even as if it were only another day’s news, and then he said, ‘All I could do was hug him and cry.’

“And then I could no longer sit in that tall chair. I had to come down. I came down and went over and sat beside Mat.

“If he had cried, I would have. We both could have, but we didn’t. We sat together for a long time and said not a word.

“After a while, though the grief did not go away from us, it grew quiet. What had seemed a storm wailing through the entire darkness seemed to come in at last and lie down.

“Mat got up then and went to the door. ‘Well. Thanks,’ he said, not looking at me even then, and went away.”²

It doesn’t have to be an airplane flying to Sri Lanka, although that helped a lot of people. Once serving others becomes part of everyday life, we can offer something as little as skipping a meal, drinking water, opening our arms, cleaning a bathroom, batting a balloon, or getting out of a chair. Virtually nothing.

To someone in particular, what seems like nothing can be everything.