‘90s Family : A Message Home : It’s a simple thing, really. But for the families of those on the streets or in shelters, a videotaped greeting can be the most precious gift of all.
he activity room of the Union Station Foundation shelter in Pasadena may not look like much of a TV studio. A single $10 floor lamp and a 100-watt bulb provide the illumination, while a screen divider draped with a beige blanket functions as a backdrop. But the drama and comedy captured here during the course of this December night prove worthy of any produced on a Hollywood sound stage.
On this Thursday evening, Union Station, which provides food, sleeping quarters and other services to Pasadena’s homeless population, is playing host to Rookie MacPherson and Ray Noble, the creators and organizers of an innovative Christmas project that cuts through the commercialism of the season to focus on a simple, heartfelt gift.
Since 1993, MacPherson and Noble have donated their time, equipment and technical know-how to the shelter, enabling its residents to videotape holiday greetings to be sent to family members.
Noble, 37, is now a housing coordinator for the Fair Housing Foundation. His alcoholism and drug addiction cost him a job as a videotape editor before he found help at Union Station in 1993. He mans the video camera, on loan from his father. MacPherson, 44, a structural engineer from Montreal and aspiring stand-up comic, assists and hands out fluorescent stars that shelter residents can hang above their beds to glow after lights out, small beacons of hope.
About a dozen people take a seat and face the camera this night. Noble and MacPherson hope to double the total of 25 they taped in 1994, and will also return to two other shelters they visited previously, one for battered women and one for former prostitutes and drug addicts, where another 25 residents taped loving messages last year.
In comes a former gang member and drug user from South-Central Los Angeles who calls himself Tony S. Loose. Tony, 27, has taped one message to his sister in Los Angeles and is back to record one for another sister and her children in Detroit.
In sunglasses, Angels cap and jacket worn backward, Tony looks cool, befitting the rap he plans to do. “I want you in it,” he tells a surprised MacPherson, making up lyrics on the spot--”This is Rookie. She’s one tough cookie”--and giving her directions as to when to enter the shot and what to do.
When he heard about the videotape project, Tony says later, “I was skeptical at first. Then I said, maybe somebody else can benefit by watching this and not have to go through some of the social problems less fortunate people have to go through. And it would be a fun way to help somebody else see that people still have fun in the situation of being homeless.”
There doesn’t seem to be anything fun tonight for Poopie Esquibel of Pasadena. Although she saw her father just yesterday, she bursts into tears as she begins her message to him. Immediately, MacPherson encircles her in a hug, calming her down. “I can’t be with my dad,” Esquibel says. “I hate being here.”
MacPherson gives her a fluorescent star. She walks the young woman out, telling her, “You did good.”
The evening’s most affecting message is delivered by Alejandro Reynozo of Pico Rivera to his 12-year-old son, Mario. A recovering alcoholic, Reynozo is the only one who speaks more than two or three minutes, using most of the 10-minute allotment for a quietly eloquent speech.
“I’ve made a point to be a parent by being involved in the details of your life,” he says. “This past year, things have changed, but not because I’ve tapered off in my love for you, son. I’ve had things to work out. . . . I got myself here. . . . They’re helping you get your dad back. I remember reading that ‘Music is love in search of a word.’ You’re the music in my heart, and the lyric that comes to mind is ‘Mario. Mario.’ ”
Sending the tape makes up for spending little time with his son, says Reynozo, 47, after the session. A former assistant college dean who later worked as a senior executive account representative for a business machines company, Reynozo has purposely limited visits because, he says, “of the embarrassment of my life. I was in a deep depression and needy.”
*
Providing a means of staying in touch with loved ones despite such obstacles is exactly what MacPherson had in mind when she conceived the idea for the tapings. She volunteered at Union Station following a Christmas spent alone after she had separated from her husband of 17 years; she met Noble there. The first two years, the duo funded the project themselves. This year, an executive with a videotape company made a personal donation of 100 tapes.
“The response has been overwhelming,” MacPherson says after the last shoot. “Most have moved us to tears. They’ll say, ‘I’m sorry I can’t be with you, kids. This is my gift.’ Those are the ones that just rip my heart out. One said, ‘I’m sorry I stole your car.’ ”
The tape can be the first means of reconciliation, she adds. “I was in a restaurant last April, and this man came up and said, ‘You can’t believe what happened. I was reunited with my girlfriend.’ ”
The recipients also benefit, Noble says. “A lot of times, these families don’t know if the person is alive or dead, as my own family told me. So at the time of year when they’re doing the most grieving, they get a tape saying, ‘I’m alive and well, in recovery.’ ”
MacPherson and Noble have also been accorded a heartwarming reception at Haven House, a shelter for battered women and their children. Residents cannot celebrate the holidays with other family members, says weekend supervisor Faye Coleman. “At Christmas, one of the first places the batterers will look for the women is at home or at a family member’s home. So this way they can reach out. And they can express a different view of how they are. They let down some of that guard. The kids aren’t as afraid.”
MacPherson and Noble hope to double the number of tapes made with each successive year. “You have no idea,” Noble says, “how gratifying it is to touch somebody’s life.”
