Share the Wealth, Enrich Your Life in the Land of Plenty

Everyone else was talking about how beautiful Hong Kong was, but leave it to me, Mr. Downer, to zero in on the uneven distribution of wealth.

It was 1976 and, at that point in my life, I hadn’t seen a great deal of the world outside Nebraska. So, in seeing the regality of Hong Kong, I was as aesthetically enriched as I’d ever been. Even now, with more world travel under my belt, few if any vistas in memory match Hong Kong for sheer majesty.

The bus kept going that day, however, past the harbor and the coastline and the high-rises and the scenic panoramic views. Within minutes, we were in the nether regions of the Third World, where tenements appeared built on top of tenements and clotheslines with ragged garb stretched from one side of the narrow street to the other. The same eyes that had exulted minutes earlier now took in some of the most depressing squalor they’d ever seen.

To that fledgling traveler, the image that stuck was how grandeur and despair could live in such proximity.

I see now that the Hong Kong excursion was just a primer.

Only a blind man today couldn’t acknowledge the disparity between the haves and the have-nots in our society. I ain’t blind, and so I see it, and keep on wondering how to bridge the gap. Every thinking person realizes that wealth is distributed unevenly in Orange County, just as it is in the country and the rest of the world. That’s a reality I could live with, I think, if we just didn’t waste so much of the wealth we have. And I’m not just talking about the super-rich--I waste my proportionate share of food and money, too.

Would it be so hard to pass it around a little?

A partial but not-at-all trivial answer to that question takes us to a comfortable neighborhood in Fullerton, where Nancy Leonard, a 39-year-old mother, wife and former public administrator, turned a birthday party for her 1-year-old daughter into an object lesson.

Her daughter’s birthday was Jan. 22, but it was around Christmas that Leonard got the idea. She’d been reading the usual assortment of tragic events that hit families and, besides upsetting her, reinforced how lucky her family was.

“This year, it just kind of hit me hard,” Leonard said. “Here we are at Christmastime, the whole room was filled with presents, we had the tree over here, and I thought, she (her daughter Dana) doesn’t need more gifts, more clothes, more books, more toys. She has everything she needs.”

So, when Leonard planned Dana’s first birthday party, she sent out this note to the small group of invitees: “Dana is a very fortunate little girl. So in lieu of gifts, please bring an unwrapped present to be donated to the Women’s Transitional Living Center.”

Leonard set a $10 limit. She picked the center, which houses battered women and their children, because she knew they needed help and because it’s in her North County area.

All her friends reacted enthusiastically to the idea, Leonard said, and she took about 30 presents and other items to the center. The most common reaction from her friends, she said, was how simple, yet inspired, her idea was. Some said they were going to do it in their own families.

“It’s so easy,” Leonard said. “Ten dollars or less. We blow ten dollars every day.”

She likes the idea so much she’s having an encore this weekend for her husband’s 40th birthday. She has asked friends to forgo spending money on gag gifts and instead bring something for the shelter.

“It’s just that I worked for government for 15 years. I know what’s going on in government and organizations like this (the women’s center) have relied a lot on government,” Leonard said. “And (the money) is just not there, anymore. And it’s not going to be there.”

It may be asking a bit much for the Leonards and the others on their block in Fullerton to single-handedly reduce the gap between rich and poor in Orange County. But the rest of us can at least tip our hats and let our imaginations wander as to what would happen if every mom or every family copy-catted the Leonards.

As for little Dana’s future birthdays, Nancy Leonard says: “She’ll get birthday presents, no question about it. But I think she’ll learn that instead of take, take, take, there’s also a lot of giving that needs to be done.”

Make no mistake. Little Dana Leonard had a great first birthday party. There was a clown and balloons and lots of laughs.

There was also something else you don’t always see at parties for 1-year-olds.

One of the kids, about 2 1/2, arrived with his unwrapped gift and said: “This is for a baby I don’t know.”

Whatever you brought, little fellow, it was a great gift. A great gift.