2000 Award Winners
Good Neighbors
These heroes next door give UNSELFISHLY and are rewarded many times over.
What often gets lost in the hustle and bustle of selling homes and building successful real estate businesses is the good that
REALTORS® do every day for their communities.
The fact is, REALTORS® are among the strongest advocates for their communities--and the most dedicated volunteers. That’s why REALTOR® Magazine created the Good Neighbor Awards with the generous sponsorship of eNeighborhoods. It’s an annual program that provides recognition and grant money for REALTORS®’ good works.
In its inaugural year the program attracted more than 200 applicants, all local heroes. The five humanitarians our judges named as Good Neighbors--and seven finalists selected for honorable mention (p.48)--are living proof that one person can make the world a better place.
Though they serve different causes, the 2000 Good Neighbors have two important things in common. First, they each saw a need and had the courage to say, “I can help.” They spend an average of 15 hours a week working for their causes, and, collectively, they’ve raised millions of dollars and recruited thousands of hours of volunteer time. Second, although each has literally changed lives, they’re unanimous in their contention that they get back much more than they give.
The 2000 Good Neighbors each receive a $2,500 grant for their cause, and they’ll be honored in November at the REALTORS® Conference & Expo in San Francisco.
In February, we start over, seeking applicants for the 2001 Good Neighbor Awards. This year’s winners, whom you’ll meet on the following pages, are the first members of what is destined to become a large and celebrated society of Good Neighbors.
Linda Booker
Christmas Angels
Tidings of comfort and joy
Linda Booker wants no child to be without gifts on Christmas.
BY ROBERT SHAROFF
Fifteen years ago, Linda Booker, one of Realty Executives’ top U.S. salespeople, was in a very different place.
As the single mother of two small children in suburban Phoenix, she was struggling to rebuild her life. Her former husband was in jail. Christmas was coming and presents were scarce.
She saw the pain and confusion in her children’s faces as they struggled to come to terms with the disintegration of their family. “We were pretty much on our own,” she says. “I’m a big holiday person--I grew up on a farm in North Dakota, and Christmas was always a very special time for us--but trying to find some joy in that situation wasn’t easy.”
A year or two later, she read a magazine article about a fledgling charitable organization founded by Charles Colson, the convicted Watergate conspirator who later went on to become a Christian evangelist. The organization was called Angel Tree, and its aim was to provide Christmas gifts for children whose parents were in prison.
“You know how sometimes you read something and it strikes a note in your heart?” she says. “I thought, I have to do something. If I can prevent those kids from going through what mine went through, maybe there was a reason for it all.”
She called the charity, which was headquartered in Washington, D.C., and was told a branch was just starting up in Phoenix. “I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing,” she says. “The first year, we gave 250 presents. I put up a tree at my church and asked the congregation to donate toys, but that wasn’t enough. I went to everyone I could think of. One of my friends charged $600 worth of gifts on his credit card to make up the difference.”
But she knew she was on to something when she began making deliveries the week before Christmas. “When you deliver presents, it’s a real personal thing,” she says. “You take them to the front door and say, ‘This is from your mom,’ or ‘this is from your dad.’ And the kids are just wide-eyed. They can’t believe they’ve been remembered.”
Flash forward to the present: Last year, Booker’s group--which consists of about 150 volunteers from her church, her company, title companies, and lenders--collected and distributed 25,000 gifts to children all over the Phoenix area. Over the years, the group’s mission has also grown. The group now also provides presents to homeless children as well as to a number of orphanages and domestic abuse shelters and to adult AIDS and indigent hospital patients.
The group, which Booker renamed Christmas Angels, remains a grassroots effort.
“This is done on a wing and a prayer,” she says. “Every year we start fresh in late August or early September. There’s no budget.” The Good Neighbors prize money, she says, will buy “a lot of Barbie dolls.”
Most of the gifts come from Christmas trees set up in about 20 Wal-Marts, Kmarts, and Costcos in the area, where customers are encouraged to drop off clothing and toys. Booker and the other volunteers pick up the gifts, wrap them, and then make deliveries starting the week before Christmas.
Up until this year, Booker used her Realty Executives office in suburban Glendale as a combination gift-wrapping and distribution center. This year, however, the company has relocated to smaller quarters, making a warehouse necessary.
“It’s a dead run from November 1 when the trees go up until Christmas Eve,” she says. “I get up at 5:30 in the
morning and I’m at the office until 2:00 or 3:00 the next morning.”
Why does she do it? “I feel like I’ve done three things right in my life,” she says, “my son, my daughter, and Christmas Angels. I feel like God’s hand is on my head when I do this.”
Contact Linda Booker at 623/561-8800, or P.O. Box 10254, Glendale, AZ 85318-0254.
Oral Lee Brown
Oral Lee Brown Foundation
A promise kept
Oral Lee Brown created opportunity for kids who had little.
BY SARA PULLAN GEIMER
One sunny afternoon in November 1987, a little girl in pigtails stopped Oral Lee Brown on the street and asked for a quarter. Brown didn’t have any change, so she walked with the girl to the corner store to buy her a treat.
She expected the girl, who looked about 8, to head straight for the candy. But the child instead chose staples: a loaf of bread, some cheese, and bologna.
Outside, Brown asked the little girl, “Why aren’t you in school?” She only shrugged. Brown asked: “Don’t you go to school?” Her answer: “Sometimes.” Then the light changed, and Brown watched her walk away.
Brown never saw the girl again, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the children in her blighted East Oakland, Calif., neighborhood were in trouble, and someone had to help. Working with her minister and a local school principal, Brown found a way. She “adopted” a first-grade class at nearby Brookfield Elementary School. There, she made a promise to the students: “Stay in school and I’ll send you to college.”
At Brookfield student scores were among the lowest in the country, and crime was more real to the students than college. “I bet you every one of my babies could tell you about somebody they’ve seen get killed or at least get shot,” says Brown. “It was a challenge to just survive--let alone get an education.”
Most of the children in Brown’s adopted class lived in poverty. Only four had fathers at home.
With her promise, Brown became benefactor, mentor, and second mother to 23 first-graders. She began with regular visits, Saturday tutorials, and parent meetings. She tracked each child’s attendance and grades; brought gifts; and purchased supplies.
To prepare for the colossal tuition bill, Brown put $10,000 of her own money into a trust account each year. It wasn’t easy money: In 1987 she was earning $45,000 a year as a real estate broker. She also held fundraisers every year--with mediocre results, until recent corporate donations bumped the college fund to $579,000. To reach graduation day, Brown still needs to raise about $350,000, she says.
Getting together the tuition money hasn’t been Brown’s only hurdle. She has sometimes filled more basic needs. “I agreed to send these kids to college--I didn’t agree to raise them,” says Brown, who reared three daughters of her own. “But when a child calls me and says, ‘Mrs. Brown, I can’t go to school tomorrow because I don’t have any shoes,’ I have no other choice but to leave my office, pick him up, and take him to get shoes.”
Thirteen years since she made her promise, both Brown and her first-graders have kept their end of the bargain: 19 are in their second year of college, and others are in junior college, cosmetology school, and cooking school. Only one member of that class failed to cash in on Brown’s promise. He died, when he was 13, playing Russian Roulette.
Brown finds strength from her past. “I grew up in rural Mississippi having nothing in terms of the material things in life. But what I did have was a solid foundation, a mother and father who gave me all of their love.”
That’s what she’s tried to give for 13 years, through field trips to a farm, camping trips, Christmas presents, and, later, career counseling. A few years ago, she took the high-schoolers to Atlanta to visit colleges. Last year, she attended graduations at nine different high schools, and she personally accompanied each student to college.
Brown’s dedication isn’t lost on the children. “She’s always been 100 percent behind me,” says LaTosha Hunter, 19, who’s majoring in accounting at Alcorn State University in Mississippi. “When I didn’t make the dean’s list last semester, I thought she’d be disappointed in me. But instead she said, ‘Now you have a goal to strive for.’ That really made my day.”
Despite her successes, Brown has never stopped wondering about the girl who asked her for a quarter. “If I had one wish,” she says, “it would be for a young lady to come up to me and say, ‘I’m that little girl, and I’m okay.’”
Contact The Oral Lee Brown Foundation at 9901 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94605; 510/430-3041.
Gil Gillenwater
Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation
Cultural crossroads
Easing poverty of body and soul on both sides of the border.
By Sara Pullan Geimer
There’s a town not far from Gil Gillenwater’s home in affluent Scottsdale, Ariz., where the average wage is $5 a day--that is, if you’re one of the 50 percent who can find employment. In that border town of Agua Prieta, Mexico, 30,000 people try and fail to enter the United States every month. The result is overcrowding and homelessness, with parents often forced to leave young children in the care of older siblings as they search for shelter and jobs.
It’s a cycle of poverty that Gillenwater wants to end. Thirteen years ago, he founded the Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation. His mission: to keep Agua Prieta’s struggling families together and provide for the neediest children. Since then, he’s raised more than $1 million to support orphanages, a soup kitchen, and new home construction in Agua Prieta.
One of the foundation’s primary projects is La Divina Providencia, a unique shelter for 30 orphan girls and 20 abandoned seniors. Here, and at the adjacent soup kitchen that feeds 300 people a day, school attendance is mandatory. “Education is the only thing you can give them that somebody can’t take away,” he says.
Gillenwater’s inspiration was born at the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day in 1987 as he stared at more food than he and his family could possibly eat.
“It hit me at that moment that I lived in so much abundance,” he says. “And I knew 200 miles from my home there were people who weren’t eating at all.”
Gillenwater and his brother, Troy, literally got up from the table, bought $2,000 worth of groceries, and drove south.
On a dirt road across the border from Douglas, Ariz., they came across a sign pointing to Rancho Feliz Orphanage. There, the brothers found a 20-year-old woman caring for eight orphaned children in a building without heat or indoor plumbing. “The children were easy to fall for, but what struck me was the young girl and her devotion to these children,” he recalls. They turned over the food and returned home with a new determination to help. Their first fundraiser brought in about $10,000 to equip the facility with heat, bathrooms, and showers.
“This whole concept of borders is a bit antiquated,” says Gillenwater of his cross-border mission. “All children, no matter where they live, should have access to basic needs: Heat in the winter, a place to go to the bathroom, a place to take a shower, and most important, love and security so they don’t have to be afraid.”
The foundation has since invested more than $400,000 in La Divina and the nearby Naco orphanage, expanding existing structures, building dormitories, installing indoor plumbing, and adding luxuries such as basketball courts and gardens. Combined, La Divina and Naco house about 80 children, and Gillenwater’s mission to help the children still holds strong. But that’s only half the story.
As friends and relatives returned from Agua Prieta, where they’d helped build bathrooms or distribute food, “they felt they were returning with much more than they’d taken down--myself included,” he recalls. “By allowing us to serve, the people of Agua Prieta enabled us to solve our poverty of purpose.”
Gillenwater capitalized on the phenomenon he calls reciprocal giving by building a 4,000-square-foot dormitory for 60 volunteers and developing an exchange program to give volunteers a chance to serve. The program drew more than 1,000 people last year.
But labor isn’t Agua Prieta’s greatest need: It’s funding. “Access to capital is really my company’s forte,” says Gillenwater. Many of his contacts in the investment world are also donors to Rancho Feliz. Last year alone, the foundation raised more than $250,000.
Gillenwater is still delighted by the individual successes. Recently, he helped a girl with an abscessed tooth get dental treatment in the United States. She’d been in pain for two years--and two hours after the operation, she was a new person. “My greatest joy is seeing these borders broken down,” he says. “Now I guarantee her life is changed because she has an expanded vision of what she can do.”
Contact Gil Gillenwater at 480/949-7144.
Joseph Pitts
West Gate Elementary School
The ‘mayor of West Gate’
Army vet Joe Pitts reclaims his hometown parcel by parcel.
BY ROBERT FREEDMAN
If anyplace can be said to have been left for dead, West Gate Estates in Palm Beach County, Fla., is it.
The city of West Palm Beach de-annexed the area in 1929, leaving its 6,000 working-class households with virtually no infrastructure and an inadequate tax base. As neighboring areas prospered from the growing tourist and agricultural economies, West Gate Estates steadily slid into blight. Businesses were scarce and drugs were rampant.
That was before Joe Pitts, a 20-year Army vet with a knack for navigating the thicket of government regulations, rolled up his sleeves. Pitts set in motion a citizen-led machine that’s turning the area around, parcel by parcel.
“West Palm Beach just forgot about this area,” says Pitts, 67, who, with the exception of his Army years, has lived in West Gate Estates since he was five. “We’re in the bottom of a drainage basin. And while other areas around here were getting roads, dredged swampland, and land banks to prevent flooding, we were bypassed. So when it storms, all the water runs in on us.”
Armed with his broker’s license, Pitts has led the effort to turn the area’s nascent redevelopment agency into an aggressive economic development machine.
The quasi-governmental agency was formed in 1989, and Pitts turned down offers to head it, believing he could be more effective as a private businessman. But he has sat on virtually every committee at the agency.
Over the past decade, the agency has used its authority to issue bonds and request federal grants to install infrastructure, change zoning, and launch other developments, including a community gymnasium and a wellness center for indigent residents.
Earlier this year--after years of agency effort to change setback rules--the subdivision’s main commercial corridor was widened from two lanes to five. The original setbacks were too small to sustain a viable commercial corridor, so the street widening is expected to bring commercial development and pave the way for long-due infrastructure improvements, including roads, sidewalks, public sewer, and potable water. And thanks to Pitts’ obtaining a federal matching grant, funds have been earmarked to address the area’s drainage problems.
Pitts has also turned a needed eye on the local public grade school, which was groaning under the weight of a 760-student load, twice the number it was built for. “By the time I came back from the Army, the school had filled the playground with 27 portable classrooms to accommodate all those kids,” he says. “That’s just not a good learning atmosphere. When I asked school officials why they’d done nothing to expand the school, they said they couldn’t because they were landlocked.”
Pitts set out to change that. He persuaded many of the surrounding property owners to sell to the school, freeing up enough land to build a new school large enough to handle 900 students. Construction will start this spring.
“Joe was indefatigable in his efforts to get us the land for the school,” says Thais Villanueva, principal of West Gate Elementary School.
“This area had just been written off,” Pitts says. “But now I envision that both the commercial north side and the residential south side will be fully developed. I want to call it the Miracle Mile, because that’s what it’ll be once we get businesses in here.”
Pitts hasn’t been one to wait for miracles. He makes things happen, and his efforts don’t stop at development issues. He has led projects to clean up public areas, reduce crime, rid the area of drugs, and instill civic pride. He has also been a good friend to people in his community. “Joe has been a godsend to me,” says Jessie Morrison, one of Pitts’ neighbors.
Pitts volunteered time and effort to help renovate several houses when Morrison and other elderly owners couldn’t muster the resources to keep them in adequate repair. “He really does help his neighbor,” says Morrison.
That explains why Pitts, who isn’t one to trumpet his achievements, has been affectionately dubbed by his neighbors the “mayor of West Gate Estates.”
Contact Joe Pitts at 561/684-2259.
Jill Rich
American Red Cross
The calm after the storm
When calamity strikes, Jill Rich puts people back on their feet.
By Robert Sharoff
It happens all the time—at dinner, during a listing appointment, often in the middle of the night. Jill Rich’s pager goes off and she springs into action.
Rich, a salesperson with Realty Executives of Tucson, is a volunteer with the local Red Cross’ disaster relief program. One week out of every month she’s on call--meaning it’s her responsibility to be ready at a moment’s notice to provide aid and comfort to the victims of fires, floods, storms, and other catastrophes in the Tucson area.
“Often we get there and people are standing around looking at a burned-down building,” she says. “They’re in shock. Usually they’ve lost everything. Sometimes there’s been a death.”
Rich’s job is to assess the situation and provide whatever help is needed. “We find them shelter, give them vouchers for food and new clothes. If they need a prescription for a medical condition, we pay for it.”
The “we” Rich is referring to may be herself or another volunteer, but just as often, it’s the friend or client she was with the moment the pager went off.
“I’ve taken clients to fires before,” she says. “Usually it happens when I’m out on showings. I let clients know in advance that I’m on call and that if they don’t want to come, we should take different cars.”
Rich has been a Red Cross volunteer for about 15 years in addition to being involved in a number of other charitable activities. Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, she and her husband, Jim, were active in a refugee resettlement program. They served as temporary foster parents to about 40 Vietnamese children, even adopting and raising two as their own.
“We got completely immersed in it,” she says. “The kids were 10–17 years old at the time. We’re still in contact with many of them.” Today, they mentor refugee families from Bosnia, Russia, and Ethiopia, teaching them about American culture, currency, banking, transportation, and other tools of daily life.
Rich has also gotten involved in a number of charities aimed at homeless people. She’s head of homeless services for the local Red Cross and is also chairperson of the Tucson Planning Council’s winter shelter program, Operation Deep Freeze. The program provides beds, hot meals, and medical services on cold winter nights.
“It’s an enormous, multi-faceted program that gets activated when the temperature is either below 35 degrees or below 40 degrees with precipitation,” she says. “The beds are mainly in churches and other congregations and gymnasiums. Last year, we provided more than 17,000 beds over the course of the winter.”
Rich also is the founder of a program that provides homeless people with basic toiletries and warm winter clothing. She funds the program out of her own earnings. Last year, she and her husband distributed more than 3,000 pairs of socks and gloves, as well as toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Despite spending an average of 20 hours a week on volunteer work, Rich has been named Realty Executives No. 1 Solo Residential Sales Associate for the last two years. How does she fit it all in?
“What I do best is juggle,” she says. “I have no problem going from a disaster call to a listing appointment. That kind of flexibility comes naturally to me.”
The reason, probably, is that Rich has been “juggling” volunteering with her other responsibilities for most of her life.
“I started when I was five,” she says. “I remember it like yesterday. I heard a news report about children not having milk and asked my father--who was active in a number of charities--how that was possible, because we had lots of milk.”
That led to a candy sale (“I sold Hershey bars at his office”), which raised $3.88 for the local milk fund.
“Volunteering keeps me centered and gives me a more realistic view of the world,” she says. “I couldn’t imagine a life without it.”
Contact Jill Rich at 520/615-8400.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
More hometown heroes
Narrowing more than 200 entries down to five Good Neighbor Award winners wasn’t easy. We singled out these seven entries for honorable mention.
Jean ClaryCentury 21 Clary & Associates, South Hill, Va., Mecklenburg County Business Education Partnership
Jean Clary was introduced to community service as a child, when her mother, a rural schoolteacher, mentored and cared for poor second-graders. She remembers visiting their homes, which had no electricity and dirt floors. Knowing how important it is for children to know someone cares about them, Clary co-founded Children Are Really Extra Special (CARES), which finds corporate sponsors to “adopt” classes to provide college scholarships and youth mentoring to children in need. There are currently 10 corporate sponsors supporting 280 children.
Elizabeth “Betsy” DemaraySmith & Co. Real Estate, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., Rotary Club of Sault Ste. Marie
Betsy Demaray is a true leader, serving as president of both the Chippewa County United Way and the Rotary Club of Sault Ste. Marie. For 2000–2001, Demaray will be district governor of Rotary International, leading more than 3,400 members in community service. On her own, Demaray founded a facility for drug-addicted mothers, led efforts to build a community playground, and founded a food pantry at her church.
Joy Silber GouydJ T Brokers Group Inc., Jupiter, Fla., Lighthouse Habitat for Humanity
As a founding member and president of Lighthouse Habitat for Humanity, Joy Silber Gouyd formed a unique partnership with the local government and association of REALTORS® to build houses for local families. Lighthouse completed its 14th house this year. Gouyd is a hands-on leader--just as likely to be found painting a kitchen as helping to develop curriculum for classes on self-esteem and home maintenance.
Howard Hoffman F.C. Tucker Co., Indianapolis, Ind., Friends of Holliday Park
Howard Hoffman co-founded and leads a revitalization effort to reclaim Indianapolis’ 95-acre Holliday Park from drug dealers and neglect. Under Hoffman’s leadership for more than 10 years, Friends of Holliday Park has built a $500,000 playground, redesigned roads and parking lots, restored trails and gardens, and launched a $5 million, 13,000-square-foot nature center.
Linda W. Norton Rhoades Realty, Ft. Collins, Colo., Funding Partners for Housing Solutions
Linda Norton has dedicated her career to helping low-income families achieve homeownership, often bragging that she has the lowest average sales price in her area. She has served three years as president of Funding Partners, a group that has helped about 600 families rent and own homes through low-cost financing and technical assistance.
Kenneth RosenKendar Realty Inc., Coral Gables, Fla., State of Florida Guardian Ad Litem Program
Kenneth Rosen, CCIM, serves as a court-appointed advocate for children who have been removed from their parents’ custody because of abuse or neglect. For years he has put in hundreds of volunteer hours gathering information on each case and researching appropriate medical, educational, social, and psychological remedies. He’s gained the respect of judges, social workers, and attorneys. "[Rosin's] knowledge, good common sense, and integrity are beyond reproach,” said Judge Philip Cook, 11th Judicial Circuit Court.
Matthew Schrum Weichert, REALTORS®, Yardley, Pa., Northampton Township Volunteer Fire Company
Like many children, Schrum was fascinated by firefighters, and so it was no surprise when he joined the volunteer fire department during his senior year of high school in 1983. Schrum now holds the rank of battalion chief, overseeing three stations and 60 firefighters in a community of 45,000 residents. He says being awakened at 3 a.m. to go to a house fire or respond to a traffic accident is just part of the job. “If I didn’t go, then who would?” he says.
More information on the Good Neighbors:
Upcoming contest and entry form
How to get involved in your community
