Salvation Army Works Hard to Give Everyone a Merry Christmas

They are woven into the tapestry of the American Christmas.

They serve chili and stew in Grand Central Station. They play their cornets in front of Saks Fifth Avenue. They carol from house to house in Concord, N.C., visit nursing homes from Detroit to Danville, Ky.

They carry food baskets to shut-ins. They decorate about 200 Angel Trees in malls from Lynchburg, Va., to Seattle. They put coats on the backs of poor children. And they man the kettles, the inevitable kettles, all across America’s wintry map.

The largest kettle is in Los Angeles, about seven feet across and five feet deep, a glass fiber vessel attended by a quartet and, on its opening day at the Farmers Market, by such notables as Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows, Vincent Price, Foster Brooks and Janet Leigh. The first kettle was set up in San Francisco in December, 1891, attended by a Salvation Army captain.

This is their season. And it can be truly said that the sun never sets on the Salvation Army.

Safety Net for Homeless

Worldwide, the army collects its mercy money and distributes food and relief in nearly 20,000 centers in 83 countries. Its soldiers preach in 111 languages. They man their kettles from South Korea to Chile, from Britain to Japan.

Everywhere the army serves, it acts as a safety net for the homeless and the hurt whom other charities and governments miss.

This Christmas it will serve dinner to 8,000 homeless people in its New York City headquarters alone. In all, about 6 million Americans will get a hand from the Salvation Army this Christmas season.

Even motorcycle clubs pitch in. In Kansas City, 300 motorcyclists brought new toys, food and money to the army for the fifth straight year. They arrived with a police escort.

Around Concord, N.C., a rural area with a 10% unemployment rate, Lt. Jim Arrowood, his wife and young daughters and his volunteer staff feed 60 a day in the soup kitchen, deliver food baskets to 116 shut-ins and find time to carol door to door to bring Christmas cheer.

In New York City the traditional quartets ring out “Joy to the World” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” on Fifth Avenue. And the coins that tinkle into their kettles fuel mobile kitchens that visit the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue and dole out hot food to the street people who live in the shadows of Manhattan’s granite walls.

A few blocks away, Betty Baker, a 61-year-old major with a trace of a Scottish accent, drives through Times Square. She tends to the young prostitutes, serving hot chocolate, advice and sympathy while pimps patrol the same women to keep them hustling.

It’s a different sort of Christmastime in those grim precincts. Baker still aches from the killing of one girl she had been trying to help for two years. In two years, Baker has been able to send only two girls back home. She dreams of a safe house, somewhere outside the city, where she could give haven to street girls and their babies.

A signature of army work is “to be continued.” They feed the hungry and clothe the poor, and they try to reach the souls of those they help. Says Arrowood, a transplanted Texan whose parents are Salvationists too, “My greatest reward is seeing someone’s life change.”

Cases are often hard and change is slow. Consider two young girls of Christmases past. Police brought them to the Arrowoods after the girls, abused by their stepfather, were kicked out of their mobile home in a worker camp. The youngsters were hostile, alienated, wild on the streets.

Patiently, Mrs. Arrowood worked with them, took the eldest on her rounds of nursing homes, gave her clothes, showed her how to use makeup. The Arrowoods took the younger girl on vacation with them. They took them to the state fair. Inch by inch, the sense of being loved and cared for took effect. The girls had at least glimpsed a different way of life.

Last Christmas, a 12-year-old girl came to the Arrowoods in Concord to apply for food. She was eight months’ pregnant. “She asked for toys for her unborn child and for herself.”

In the year since, a Salvation Army worker has tried to help her with the basics of living. The family is impoverished. Now she is considering putting her baby up for adoption. That story too is to be continued.

Arrowood is the only army officer in Concord, not an uncommon situation. “We allow God to work through us,” he says. “We are a catalyst in the community.”

Volunteers do much of the work. One army officer might enlist dozens of volunteers within the community. In Chicago, the army staff numbers fewer than 500; there are about 5,000 volunteers.

Angel Tree Program

Just as the kettle was unique at the turn of the century as a money-collecting device, so today is the Angel Tree, a unique way of sharing the Christmas spirit.

Each ornament carries a child’s first name, age and clothing size. Passers-by in shopping malls pick up an ornament, register it with the army officers and return later with the gift-wrapped clothes and toys. The mound of packages under the tree grows until the army collects them for Christmas delivery.

And for those who donate, the Christmas ornament with the child’s name becomes an ornament for their tree.

The tree also delights retailers, who provide 24-hour guards for the tree and the presents.

Lt. Ward Matthews is the only officer for rural Boyle County and Danville, Ky., a tobacco-growing area feeling the no-smoking pinch. He and his volunteers help make rent and mortgage and utility payments, and this Christmas they will again tend their Angel Tree. “It is a program,” he says, “where nobody loses.”

The Angel Tree at Seattle’s Northgate Mall is expected to collect more than 4,000 gifts this year. “People love to see the pile grow,” says Maj. Raymond Peacock. “They want us to wait as long as possible before distributing the gifts.”

It’s difficult to list all of the services the army provides. There are drop-in centers for teens, runaways and prostitutes.

The more than 20,000 League of Mercy volunteers visit 11,000 nursing homes to spend precious time with the old and infirm.

Army workers visit 100,000 prisoners each year and tend to the needs of 17,000 released prisoners and their families.

The army runs day-care centers for more than 23,000 children and more than 1,000 community centers with a range of social and recreational services.

Emergency Services

It offers alcohol rehabilitation at 15 Harbor Light Centers serving 150,000 resident clients a year. That is in addition to 113 rehabilitation centers that accommodate 11,000 residents.

It provides emergency services for 2.5 million people a year and finds employment for another 70,000. It operates 51 camps for 10,000 youths. It even has a missing persons program.

The Salvation Army’s worship services draw 23 million people a year.

It does all this on a $4-million national budget.

There are more than 3,500 cadets and officers in Asia overseeing 5,000 other employees and aided by 87,000 church adherents. Every day, they help feed and clothe the homeless of India and Southeast Asia.

Responded to Mexico Quakes

Like the Red Cross, the army leaps into disasters all over the world. The 1985 earthquakes in Mexico City brought army emergency centers to the scene. More than a year later, the army was still there, feeding 15,000 people a day. In the first 11 months, the army spent more than $1.3 million sent by U.S. Salvationists and served almost 4 million meals. The army also provided 300 tents, 11,000 blankets, 11,000 sheets of corrugated, tar-treated cardboard and poles for emergency housing and about 1 million articles of clothing.

Further, the army set up two cement block factories that are still operating, producing 4,000 blocks a day to repair and reconstruct homes.

Who are these people who choose to serve God through the Salvation Army? The list of the dedicated is varied--a former bank vice president, a police officer, a dance band musician, a barroom bouncer, a former Air Force colonel, a former airline pilot, a circus performer.

About half of the officer corps comes from Salvation Army parents. Arrowood remembers the rigors of his parents’ post in Middlesborough, Ky. “I shared a bedroom with the wolf rats. I would lie in bed listening to the rats inside the walls. The church was 10 feet out the front door.”

Many in the army in the past have suffered from the same ills they seek to correct. There are former drug addicts, recovered alcoholics, one-time derelicts. They have seen for themselves that, in people who are down and out, “to be continued” can have a happy ending.