Faith Stories Around the Synod

With faith as her teacher, volunteer learns lessons
Generosity - Debra Schulz develops a children's clothing closet, never anticipating she'd benefit from it too
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
LARRY BINGHAM , The Oregonian Staff

Can one person really make a difference?

Yes, Debra Schulz believes.

Like a sculptor staring at a block of marble, Schulz saw something where there was nothing. She didn't expect to get anything out of her idea -- and that was the part that surprised her.

The idea came last year, when Schulz was a member of the Bethlehem Lutheran Church council in Northeast Portland. The council faced what many churches face -- declining numbers. Regular Sunday attendance had dropped to about 40 people, and church leaders wondered how they could reach out to their neighbors.

Schulz, 52, started thinking about when her daughters, now 20 and 23, were younger. As a single mom, providing for them on her salary as a waitress -- especially buying clothes -- was tough.

What if we open a clothes closet for children? Schulz asked.

Clothes, after all, are a basic need. Although many churches have a clothes closet, it's the kind of endeavor that rarely gets much attention. The people behind them are not negotiating world peace or finding a cure for cancer, but they're making a difference in someone else's life. At least that's what Schulz believes, and it is why she pursued it.

"Sometimes you have to look at it like you're planting seeds," she says. "Maybe you won't see the whole thing come to fruit, but you plant the seeds anyway."

Schulz raised the idea to church members. She couldn't offer money or much power or prestige or any of the things it usually takes to get something started. "I just thought if I can do a small thing, maybe it can grow," she says.

Church leaders gave her a row of cupboards to use. The Oregon Synod gave a $300 grant. Schulz, who stopped waiting tables to take care of her mother who has Alzheimer's, shopped yard sales.

She opened the clothes closet in September 2006, but only a few families showed up.

"I am very patient," she says. "I have been since I was a small child. I know things don't happen immediately. If you stick it out, it may not happen the way you think it will happen, but it will happen."

She told her pastor, Joan Beck, it was too early to throw in the towel. She wrote to churches in the Hollywood and Laurelhurst neighborhoods and asked them to spread the news -- and to donate clothes if they had them to spare.

The next month, more families came, many speaking Spanish and Russian.

Beck knew Schulz would make the clothes closet work, no matter how many showed up or what languages they spoke. When church members met recently to assess their talents, Beck assumed gentle Schulz would score high in evangelism. Schulz surprised her pastor and scored highest in encouragement.

"For other people, she wants to be like an old couch," Beck said of Schulz. "She wants people to be comfortable around her being themselves."

To draw people to the clothes closet, Schulz staked a sign outside the church, on Northeast 39th Avenue where it crosses Interstate 84. Then a friend suggested she advertise on Craigslist. Soon more than 50 people stood waiting for her to open one weekend.

When supplies dwindled and Schulz wondered where more clothes would come from, a preschool started collecting. Providence Medical Center offered her a grant of $500. A group that meets monthly to exchange clothes brought bags stuffed full. The St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church sent 100 pounds.

As someone who has faced disappointments in life, including two marriages that didn't work out the way she planned, the ups and downs involved in getting the clothes closet on its feet were a lesson. Schulz is the kind of person who believes you can never have enough Christmas lights on your house. A sucker for love stories, she is married today to a high school friend she fell for at her 30-year reunion. When she adopted a puppy recently and the puppy was found to be dying of kidney failure, she accepted it as a lesson in learning how to let go.

That's Schulz, Beck says. "I just feel like there's so much to learn from Debbie. She sees everything as an opportunity."

The crowd at the clothes closet has continued to grow. The number of Spanish speakers grew so much a few months ago that Schulz began to wonder how she could help them because none of the church volunteers speaks Spanish.

Then in walked Karen Gonzalez, a 46-year-old Red Cross worker who came for the clothes exchange meeting, took one look at Schulz and thought this woman could use a hand. Gonzalez, who'd been looking for a volunteer opportunity, speaks Spanish.

In the few months the two women have worked together at the clothes closet, they've developed a relationship. And that was the part Schulz never expected.

Along the way, she made a new friend.
Larry Bingham: 503-221-8262; larrybingham@news.oregonian.com

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