A Giving Person, Who’s Making Every Second Matter

We were a two-car caravan as Beverly Nestande led me down back streets and U-turns and road detours to show me some group homes for abused children. They are operated by the nonprofit Olive Crest Homes & Services, where she’s on staff.

I wanted to meet Beverly Nestande because for so many years I had heard about her community efforts. She wanted me to meet the children.

Nestande is on a mission. She’s got all these things left to accomplish for the neglected children of Orange County. More group homes--there’s always a waiting list--and an Olive Crest capital improvement fund drive. More lobbying with legislators about children’s issues.

But private obstacles are getting in her way. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Five surgeries for colon and liver cancer in the past two years. “Killer surgeries,” she called them, still managing to smile. The kind that keep you flat on your back and helpless for weeks at a time. And there is more to face.

When I called her to ask if we could meet, she was about to get results from her latest tests. By the time we had gotten together, she had received the news, and it wasn’t encouraging. But she’s optimistic, and too busy to fret over something she cannot control.

“Beverly has always been about causes greater than herself,” her close friend Sue Tallman told me. “She’s the most giving person you will ever meet.”

You may be familiar with the Nestande name. She is the ex-wife of former county Supervisor Bruce Nestande and was active in his campaigns when he was a state legislator. But she was mainly known on her own as a fund-raiser and leading volunteer for numerous community causes, such as the YWCA, the Braille Institute, college and hospital foundations.

One of her volunteer roles was for Olive Crest, which opened in 1973. It now operates more than 20 group homes for youngsters ages preschool through high school, as well as a network of foster families for some 300 children.

Nestande, 61, a former elementary teacher who has two grown sons, loves any cause helping youth. In 1987, after she had been an Olive Crest volunteer for six years, the owners, Don and Lois Verleur, asked her to join the staff.

“We knew how dedicated she was to the children, but what we didn’t realize at first was what a marvelous talent she had for networking with people; she’s an incredible fund-raiser,” said Lois Verleur.

Nestande had contacts not only through politics, volunteerism, and church activities, she was once on the staff at the Newport Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.

“I never throw anything away,” Nestande told me. “I’ve got membership lists that go back to the 1960s. So I just started getting hold of everyone I could, to tell them about Olive Crest.”

One example of Nestande’s clout: Her good friend Sue Tallman kept her in mind when she was selling her Villa Park home to move to Newport Beach.

“I wanted to do something special with the money I made from it,” Tallman said. “I immediately thought of Beverly and all the things she had told me about Olive Crest.”

Tallman’s $100,000 gift, donated in 1994 in honor of her parents--C.L. and Genevieve Pharris--allowed Olive Crest to buy its own building at 2130 4th St. in Santa Ana. The money it makes from leasing out the first floor is enough to cover the mortgage payments. So it was like getting a whole building free.

Now Olive Crest is halfway through a $3.2-million capital improvement campaign, to help pay off the mortgages on some of its group homes. When that campaign is over, Nestande said, “then I’ll concentrate on me.”

A nice byproduct of Nestande’s dedication to children’s causes came in 1995, when she was named Citizen of the Year by her home city of Orange. Just a few weeks after the ceremony, she learned she had cancer of the colon.

“I guess the biggest ups and the biggest downs sometimes come at once,” she said. “But cancer was such a shock; I’d never ever had a headache, or the flu, my whole life.”

Her cancer made her think harder about her priorities. “I’ve written so many letters to people these past months,” she said. “You just want to reach out and let people know you care, because you may not get another chance.”

The last I saw of Nestande that day, she had brought her car to a halt in front of mine at a stop sign and jumped out. Some children at the corner had a snow cone machine and were selling cups of the stuff for a quarter. Nestande wasn’t about to pass them by. She was making every second matter.

Wrap-Up: The group homes are clean, and there is good rapport between the residents and the staff--someone is on duty there 24 hours a day. Even so, Nestande and I agreed, seeing these youngsters makes you appreciate being part of a family. That thought hit me especially hard after meeting one 16-year-old girl who shared my own teenage son’s love for the Beatles and the Doors. She was excited that she had been chosen to give us a tour.

I thought of the many conversations my wife has had with our son about his friends and school and music, or maybe just favorite movies. The kind of small chitchat where a teen gets positive reinforcement just by knowing someone is interested in him. Who does this young girl in the group home talk to?

Lois Verleur told me later she agrees something is missing.

“We are not the same as a real family,” she said. “But sometimes the group home is the next-best thing. You have to stop and think where these children would be without us.”

The young girl I mentioned wants to some day teach music. Right now she has this one dream: a piano. A used piano, or maybe a keyboard of some kind. Something to help her work toward her goal. So if you happen to have a good used piano you were thinking of trading in. . . .