For Poor, Light at End of a Tunnel : Blind Director Leads Group’s Fight to Provide Food, Job Skills

Wilhelm de Nijs is a driven man.

During World War II, he was a blind Resistance fighter who ultimately was imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. Today, he is known to Santa Ana community leaders as the indefatigable executive director of the Bright Light Center, a private organization that helps the poor through food donations and job training.

And, at 70, De Nijs has attacked his latest venture with the same vigor he brings to all his pursuits.

“I am very, very driven for the success of this project,” he said last week, standing in the pouring rain in Blackstar Canyon near the Riverside County line.

For years, de Nijs said, he has envisioned a camp at that site where disadvantaged and handicapped children could escape from “their sometimes violent environment to build their self-esteem.”

Now, through the help of the Volunteer Centers of Orange County, about 30 major corporations have donated everything from heavy equipment to computer time to elbow grease to help make his dream a reality.

Today is the Volunteer Centers’ third annual “Corporate Combined” project day, when volunteers from Orange County corporations gather to provide labor that is often unaffordable to nonprofit groups, an organizer for the centers said. More than 400 businessmen and businesswomen are to shed their suits to dig in and help construct a soccer field, baseball diamond, volleyball court and horseshoe pits for de Nijs’ Camp Axelrod.

Playground equipment will be installed, and the area will be landscaped. The camp already has one building, housing its learning center, and is expected to be complete by June, de Nijs said. It is named after the late Dr. Leon Axelrod of Laguna Beach, who was on the board of the Bright Light Center from its inception, according to de Nijs.

“When it is finished, we can have about 200 kids here,” he said. Besides poor and handicapped children, de Nijs said, he especially wants to reach out to gang members.

“It’s very important for gang members to have someplace to go where they can build their self-esteem,” he said. “They try to band together in gangs, and that’s where they get their self-esteem. We would like people like retired engineers to come and help train these kids.”

Bernie Kautz of Volunteer Centers-South said Camp Axelrod was chosen as beneficiary of this year’s annual corporate volunteer project because of its strong community support.

“We looked at the organization’s use of volunteers,” she said. “We saw there is strong community support.” To be the subject of the annual volunteer project, an agency must also be nonprofit, she said. “But there really must be a need. This is a different sort of project. One where the volunteers do a lot of labor-intensive jobs.”

One week before all the volunteers were to gather, about 60 were busy last Saturday laying the groundwork. Among them was Mark (Ziggy) Wilczynski, a community development representative for Mission Viejo Co. who is responsible for supervising workers building a bridge to provide access to the camp from Baker Canyon Road.

Barbara Malloy, an engineer with the Irvine Co., was also on hand to help workers from Pacific Mutual Co. build a hiking trail in the mountains that will include a guardrail for the blind and for wheelchair-bound children. Southern California Edison had heavy equipment trucks on the scene to help out.

The Bright Light Center leases the 10-acre campsite for $1 a year from the Irvine Co. Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley helped in negotiating the lease and with getting Marines from the El Toro base to pitch in, clean the site and provide a water system. Riley aide Paul Carey said that all of his contact with de Nijs has shown him to be “a very sincere individual.”

Much of de Nijs’ reputation has been built around the success of the Bright Light Center, which was begun in 1978.

“It takes an incredible individual to do a lot of the things that he does,” said Gary Wheaton, assistant principal at McFadden Intermediate School. “He has a great attitude on life. I know a lot of community people can go to the center and get taken care of. Kids go all out for him because they know he is doing a lot of good for their community.”

Said de Nijs, explaining why he works to help those he calls “the damaged people”: “It is a waste for all of us if kids do not turn into productive citizens.”

Howard Haas, assistant principal at Santa Ana High School, called de Nijs “a very positive and inspirational person doing great things for the community.”

Both Santa Ana school officials got to know de Nijs through food donation drives.

De Nijs said he was born into a wealthy family in Java, Indonesia, which then was a Dutch colony. As a young man, he said, he traveled to Europe and earned degrees in psychology, child development and Oriental sociology from the universities of Heidelberg and Utrecht.

He joined the Royal Dutch Indonesian Army when World War II broke out but was blinded in 1940 by an exploding hand grenade. He then spent a year in the Dutch underground. Eventually, he was captured and was sent to Buchenwald but managed to escape and make his way to England.

At the end of the war, he returned to Indonesia and then spent some time in the Netherlands before coming to the United States in 1963 and settling in Orange County.

The Bright Light Center is funded entirely through foundation and corporate grants, fund-raising events and private donations, according to its annual report.