Woman’s Kindness Is Children’s Saving Grace

A nice, warm coat and a new pair of shoes.

Every child should have such things. The fact that many do not broke a certain county welfare worker’s heart. Broke it so badly that she vowed to make sure a thousand poor children in Los Angeles County would have new shoes and a new coat by Christmas. On Monday, she collected her thousandth pair of shoes. Now she’s working full-bore on the coats.

Call her “Grace,” a woman who aches at what poverty does to children.

Grace doesn’t want her real name made public; she’s afraid she might get in trouble with her supervisors and colleagues if they found out just how much of her free time and effort she has put into her coats and shoes project. She has been receiving a lot of private kudos and she doesn’t want to make anyone jealous.

“It’s important to have a new coat because it is a new coat,” she says over lunch at a downtown restaurant, forgetting to eat. “It’s something that somebody gave you that said you are worthy--that we want you to experience what the other children experience. We have to prepare our children by first making sure their basic needs are met, so they don’t think of themselves as less than any other human being.

“When you put good clothing on the children--warm, clean clothing--then you make an atmosphere of learning. You see what I’m saying?”

Many poor children, Grace says, “are not participating at school, not talking, not understanding because they are wet or cold or hungry. This is not good. Sometimes they are missing school entirely. And if they miss school entirely, we are going to pay one way or another. Why not head it off at the pass? You see what I’m saying?”

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It kills Grace that Americans are willing to open up their pocketbooks to feed and clothe the disadvantaged children of Third World nations.

“I can show you that same child right here,” she says, pointing emphatically. “I can show you that child in any color you want. You see what I’m saying?”

The Variety Club, a children’s charity, is sponsoring her crusade, “Operation Children: Coats and Shoes.” Grace contacted the charity after an administrator at the Compton Unified School District told her about the dozens of homeless students who come to school inadequately dressed.

She has coordinated other good deeds in her spare time for thousands of children throughout the county. She has taken them to see “The Glory of Christmas” program at the Crystal Cathedral and had limousines drive them to the Grammys. She has found scholarships for children who were in danger of not being able to afford college tuition. She filled an outdoor amphitheater with 6,000 children for an anti-drug rock concert.

She is famous throughout county government for her ability and tenacity.

“There are a lot of people who are well meaning. They have the desire but they lack the contacts. She can make the contacts. She can execute. She is really just amazing,” said county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

Grace asks no public credit. This is about the future.

“If I didn’t do these things for the children, how would they know to do it for other kids?”

And it is about the past.

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Grace grew up in a poor neighborhood in Dallas, and she remembers how children at school made fun of her because all her dresses were made out of the same 15-cents-a-yard bolt of material, and because she only had two pairs of shoes a year. (“And if anything happened to those shoes, you put cardboard on them and you kept going.”)

Her mother always taught her to share what little she had with the other poor children in the neighborhood, and to remember the kindness others have shown.

“My mother told me, ‘You are here. You are blessed. God has something for you to do. You must never forget that.’ The reason I am so determined to help kids is because I remember what happened to me.”

The Variety Club is planning to present the coats and shoes Thursday to the 1,000 youngsters at a holiday event at the Music Center. Although the shoes are taken care of, Variety officials say they do not have nearly enough coats.

Grace is furiously making phone calls in search of coats and praying for a miracle.

“Another storm is coming. These children are going to be wet. Have mercy. Where is the mercy?”

You see what she’s saying?