A Human Interest Story : 20 Volunteers on the Front Lines of Social Service to Be Honored

Sumner Williams vividly recalls as a child meeting a poor man who had walked 15 miles on crutches in search of a job--and a meal.

Haunted by that memory, the 67-year-old Williams and his wife, Shirley, have been spurred to work almost full time to combat hunger in Orange County and across the globe.

Barbara Leon, 58, of Fullerton has championed a different cause. Three decades ago her son developed a speech disorder, making Leon an instant activist for disabled children.

Her son is now grown, but Leon has continued her advocacy for the county’s youths. She works virtually seven days a week to rescue high school dropouts from gangs and violence.

Officials with the Orange County Human Relations Commission say Leon and the Williamses are exemplary volunteers who have made outstanding contributions in “fostering mutual understanding and respect among people.”

The three are among 20 Orange County residents who will be honored for volunteer work at the commission’s 22nd anniversary banquet at the Costa Mesa Community Center on Sunday..

Among the honorees are law enforcement officials, educators and community activists whose efforts have helped foster understanding among the county’s increasingly diverse population. The awards are given to citizens whose volunteer work, among other things, has benefited low-income and minority residents.

“As Orange County has undergone unprecedented changes, it has struggled to accept this metamorphosis,” said Becky Esparza, the commission’s chairwoman. The awards aim “to celebrate our diversity rather than letting it be viewed as a threat and problem.”

Sumner Williams said news of the award came as a welcome surprise, adding that it would only spur him and his wife to make more contributions.

“You don’t think about (an award) when you do volunteer work,” Williams said. “There’s nothing more satisfying than helping a person grow and develop and get . . . out of chronic poverty.”

Williams has never known what it feels like to be poor. He was born in a well-to-do New Jersey family and went on to own his own insurance brokerage business.

But one graphic encounter with a poor and disabled man forever changed his feelings about poverty.

Williams tells the story as if it happened yesterday: It was during the Depression and he was 10 years old. His father was vice president and future chairman of the powerful Thomas Edison Co. in New Jersey.

One day, as Williams was being driven to the movies, his chauffeur stopped to give a lift to an amputee who was hobbling along the highway.

“I was shocked because the servants had a rule never to give anyone a lift,” Williams said. “But I saw why (this was an exception). The man got in the front seat and he was crying and sweating at the same time.

“Tears and sweat came down and hit the skin of his face and jumped off like water dripping into a frying man,” Williams said. “He told us he had walked for 15 miles and wanted to get to this town to look for work and some food.”

Later that night the chauffeur told Williams how he had taken the man to his destination “but how terribly hopeless it was for him to get a job. I’ll never forget that,” Williams said.

Sumner and his 60-year-old wife are retired and live in a home overlooking the ocean in Corona del Mar. They spend about 30 hours each week helping to coordinate the South Orange County Chapter of Results, an international organization formed to fight poverty and hunger.

The group lobbies major federal and international political bodies such as the United Nations, pushing for increased relief on behalf of the estimated 40,000 children each day “who die unnecessarily around the world.”

The Williamses, however, will receive the human relations award for being co-founders of the Micro Enterprise Loan Program of Orange County. The program is patterned after a Bangladesh bank, which makes small loans to the “poorest of the poor.” The idea has spread across the globe with about 100 micro-enterprise programs now in existence in the United States.

The Williamses recently traveled to Bangladesh to witness the operation of the program, and Shirley Williams is expected to return today from El Salvador, where she was studying a version of the program.

The Orange County program has a mere $15,000 in capital and participants can borrow no more than $1,500. That may seem like a paltry amount, but it could make a huge difference for a Garden Grove housewife who works in a sweatshop and wants to buy a sewing machine to start her own business, Sumner Williams said.

For the last two months, Sumner Williams has served as a mentor for JoAnne Hill, a 29-year-old Santa Ana woman who is planning to borrow $1,500 from the program to start a computer education business.

“He has been my source of inspiration,” Hill said. “After talking to him for the last eight weeks, I think I can do it. I can be successful.”

Disadvantaged youth are the focus of Barbara Leon, a secretary at the Recovery and Retention program at the Fullerton Joint Union High School District. Leon identifies students who are dropouts or at risk of dropping out and urges them to join the school district’s alternative education program to earn their high school diploma.

School officials and community activists say Leon has been extremely effective in dealing with children. She sometimes persuades former gang members--who have served time in jail for violent crimes--to return to classes.

“Only recently, one of my students who turned his back on gang life came up to me and he was so excited because he had gotten a D in a writing class at Fullerton College,” Leon recalled. “He had never received a grade (in college) before, so I was happy for him too.”

Leon said she has been successful in getting dozens of teen-agers to return to school because she believes in them.

“I don’t think kids get up in the morning and say, ‘It’s such a great day, I want to fail,’ “Leon said. “There are many underlying reasons like problems in the family and in society that we have to address.”

Two years ago, Leon, who boasts German and Irish ancestry, joined Los Amigos of Orange County, a Latino community group, when she noticed that a large number of dropouts were Latinos. She said she joined the group so that she could introduce teen-agers “with low self-esteem to people like themselves who are doctors, lawyers and community leaders and positive role models.”

In fact, leaders of Los Amigos nominated Leon for the Human Relations Commission award.

“She is an outstanding example of an individual who has the good of the community foremost in her heart,” said Amin David, president of Los Amigos. “She is colorblind. Ethnicity and skin color are meaningless to her. She’s unrelenting in her message that the more education our youths get, the better their chances of success.”