ELECTIONS ’92 : The Key to Their Success? It’s Simple

With so much American wit and wisdom expressed on T-shirts, ball caps, bumper stickers, neckties, mud flaps, post cards, sneakers, jackets, blimps, suitcases, scoreboards, lunch buckets, gag underwear and the like, it’s pretty hard to catch anyone’s attention in these agitated, overactive days.

At first sight of one particular bumper sticker, back in Seattle, I thought it only curious. The second time, a week or so later in Richmond, Va., I actually read the whole message:

“Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live.”

A very un-1980s sentiment, coarsely printed on recycled paper.

Maybe there is a story for the political seasons of the 1990s behind it.

Turns out, the bumper sticker people live here in Ft. Wayne, not far from Dan Quayle’s home, not far from where nurseryman Johnny Appleseed planted his biggest orchards, not far from the very bull’s-eye middle of the Midwest.

They are Jim Goetsch and Marian Waltz and their 5-year-old daughter, Melody. They made $6,100 last year and live in a 121-year-old brick walk-up. They teach jobless people the printing business on 19th-Century, hand-fed platen presses. They market and sell coffee from small-scale farmers in Nicaragua, woven baskets from Africa, corn dolls from Appalachia--rough-hewn crafts from the poorest neighborhoods in the world.

They recycle tons of garbage from the local neighborhood, take in boarders, wear second-hand clothes. They run a direct-mail operation that posts newsletters for about 30 nonprofit organizations, have turned their back yard into a garden, will give a bag of food to the needy who knock at the door and sell their bumper stickers for 50 cents.

They’ve been at it 20 years and two months. And by the example of their lives, they believe they are doing their share to make the world a better place.

“Each of us had to decide what we’re going to do. If you decide to get up in the morning, sit eight hours at a desk, come home and watch your two hours of TV a night, you’re letting someone else use up your time without making a contribution of your own,” says Goetsch.

Their home is like a hive--small rooms, ancient and impressive clutter, the steady movement of people, banging of doors, meowing of cats.

In other words, they live the slogan on the bumper sticker, which is attributed to Elizabeth Bayley Seton, the founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph and the first native-born North American saint. Goetsch and Waltz call their organization “Friends of the Third World.”

As students back in 1970, they began as participants in walk-a-thons for the needy of Ft. Wayne. The effort turned into a permanent operation two years later. Now, they have chapters scattered here and there all the way to California.

“You know, we’re not unique. There are people like us all over the place,” says Goetsch.

It occurs to me he is probably correct. But somewhere in the 1970s, the so-called “alternative” lifestyle drifted out of the mainstream debate in America. Unlike the mighty roar of the Christian right wing, the Unitarian-Catholic-liberal-New Age-mystic-recyclers lacked rage, ambition and 50,000-watt broadcasting stations. They indeed lived simply, in their self-satisfied niche outside the commercialized swirl. And besides, who in a pair of cast-off bib overalls and earning $200 a month could really argue with the 1980s anyway?

“Fortunately, we’re in the 1990s. I think we’re starting a new cycle, one of those every 20- or 30-year social cycles, in which people are open to new ideas and change,” says Goetsch.

“You see it in young people. More and more, they’re interested in social responsibility, not just a job. There are new organizations on campuses, and we get a lot more young volunteers.”

Consider their coffee business, Goetsch and Waltz say. They explain it this way: Through a Canadian importer, Friends of the Third World purchases coffee from peasants in Nicaragua. They pay extra-premium prices (growers get 40% to 50% of the retail price instead of the usual 10% to 15%), and as a result the coffee is said to be superior.

“Good coffee is the result of good farming. Big companies try to keep the price down and tell the grower, sorry, this is low quality, so we can pay you only so much. We do the opposite. We pay them for the best they can produce.”

Using their low-overhead volunteer and trainee labor force in Ft. Wayne, the coffee is packaged and distributed. Shipping costs are high, but labor is not, so the coffee is sold at competitive prices. Not only is there supposed to be a quality edge, but the drinker gets the satisfaction of knowing that a Nicaraguan coffee grower is not suffering on the edge of poverty for his or her labors.

“We like to use this as a direct example of how trade can be conducted better. We give customers a choice and an education,” says Goetsch.