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Letter to the editor

Anonymous angels

During the holiday season, their motto becomes: It's better to give, than receive any credit for it.

By CURTIS KRUEGER
Published December 25, 2004

Janet Jackson Beckerman was tearing through a tower of 39 boxes donated to Metropolitan Ministries in Tampa.

She slit open cardboard and pulled out canned hams, corn bread stuffing, au gratin potatoes and Little Debbie Honey Buns. She found Hershey's Kisses, candy canes and chocolate-covered marshmallow Santas. The boxes also contained toys - Spider-man watches, Play Putty, puzzles and puppets.

The only thing she couldn't see was the story behind these gifts.

All 39 boxes, plus four more plastic barrels of donations and 16 boxes of diapers, came from one woman in rural Hillsborough County. The woman, who sends a load each week of the holiday season, insists on keeping her name secret.

"This is incredible," said Beckerman, of Tampa, pausing a moment from unpacking to hear the woman's tale. "It has to be highly organized and a daily activity to do this. You just can't do this part time. Just amazing."

Secret givers are helping make sure that needy people in the Tampa Bay area have meals to eat and beds to sleep in this holiday season. In a culture where the religious meaning of Christmas sometimes disappears in commercialism, these people make donations for deeply personal and often spiritual reasons.

"They're not giving it and hoping for the recognition," said Lesa Weikel, community relations coordinator for Metropolitan Ministries. "They're doing it for their own sense of helping others."

What makes people give when they know they won't receive a public thank-you? This year, a few secret givers agreed to share their stories.

The businessman was not sure why he should discuss his holiday tradition to a newspaper reporter, even one who agreed not to print his name.

"I don't think it's anybody's d--- business," he explained affably. Besides, he insisted over and over, "this thing, this is just a little bit of nothing."

Every year he pays for a shopping spree for mothers who have been battered by husbands and boyfriends. The shopping allows these woman who are staying at the CASA spouse abuse shelter - who have run away from their abusers and often their only sources of support - to buy Christmas gifts for their children, who stay at the CASA shelter with them.

"I just thought that, well, gee, for maybe one evening and one part of a day they can forget their troubles and have something of a Christmas. So that's what I've done done, end of story."

He took the women to Wal-Mart on Friday and they shopped for an hour, filling carts with around $70 of merchandise for each child. One of the women was looking for a Barbie Dream House for her 5-year-old and couldn't find it. No matter. She found a talking Barbie story book and three pairs of shoes for her daughter - enough, she said, to make today the best Christmas of her daughter's life.

The man who paid the $1,226 bill to help these women celebrate Christmas won't be celebrating today. He's Jewish.

So why make such a big deal of Christmas?

Well, he says, he's been lucky in life and wants to share some of that luck. "A lot of people are cynical about it, but I love the holiday season," he said.

"I remember one gal, she says, "You'll never know what this means to me.' Because she obviously had nothing for her children at Christmas. That stuck with me pretty hard."

Sometimes, including Friday, he brings his own children on the shopping trips.

"I wanted them to see that you could do little things and touch a life."

She and her husband worked hard in their contracting business up north, made a good income and retired early to St. Petersburg.

For medical reasons, the couple, who are in their 60s, did not have children. Maybe that's why their attention turned to Children's Village, a St. Petersburg home for kids who have been removed from their parents. The home provides a familylike setting for foster children considered unlikely to be adopted.

"We're not high rollers," the woman says. But after attending a groundbreaking in 2001, they began sending in $250 a month, as regularly as most people mail the rent. When they have extra money, they send that in, too.

Their reasons for giving? "Since we had no children, hopefully we're doing some good for some children."

She and her husband "were both raised with the concept of helping and tithing to the church and it was instilled in us very young and we're following through with it."

The couple has been very willing to discuss Children's Village with their friends and other potential donors, said Lisa Paulson, who heads the development office of the Salvation Army's St. Petersburg area command. But they don't want public recognition.

"We don't need to have any fanfare about it," the donor said. "I don't think you have to blow your own horn. We'll get our reward some day."

He gave $10,000 to the United Way of Tampa Bay this year, and he gives generously to others, both in St. Petersburg and in a Midwestern city where he had a retail business. His reasons for staying anonymous are simple.

"I just felt it was a chance to cut down on the harassment," said the man, who lives in northern Pinellas County and is in his 60s.

This approach allows him to support the United Way - "I think I can trust them to do a good thing with the money" - without having dozens of other outfits calling him and begging for more.

Her children come to her and ask for money, which is what she wants.

The family gives away about $50,000 each year. They have been longtime supporters of Religious Community Services, a social service network supported by churches and synagogues in northern Pinellas County, and other causes. Their children get in on the act, too. They scan the newspaper, listen to friends and look for worthy causes.

"My kids will see something and say "Did you read this? We need to help.' You need kids to understand that it really is more blessed to receive," said this woman, who is in her 40s.

That's a gift she wants to give to her children: the gift of understanding giving, especially as part of their Christian faith.

"It's just a wonderful way to raise children," she said.

The woman in rural Hillsborough County who gave the 39 boxes of food and toys says, "Some people like their name in lights, and we just don't work that way."

The woman, who is in her 60s, prefers to stay behind the scenes. And because she lives alone, this makes her feel safer. Though she has donated well over $20,000 in goods since 1998, her name appears on no plaques or brochures.

She works in agriculture, lives in the country, and describes herself as the kind of person who feels closest to God when she's outdoors. But more than a decade ago, she began driving into the city, dropping off diapers and wipes and other goods to the Tampa charity on Florida Avenue.

Most of the time she did not talk to the people who received these gifts.

But one day, shopping at Big Lots, the cashier looked down at her cart filled with rice, dried lima beans, loaves of bread, canned corn, canned green beans and diapers, and figured things out.

"Are you by any chance collecting for charity?" the cashier asked.

The woman said yes.

"Let me tell you, I can't thank you enough," the cashier said. Then the cashier told her story: how she and her husband once got down on their luck. How they moved into a shelter run by Metropolitan Ministries. How they regrouped, got jobs, and saved enough for their own place.

"That was the nicest feedback I have ever got," the Hillsborough giver said.

The comments put her on a mission.

"I went out and started recruiting more neighbors," she said. "I said we need to get more things done."

Now she has built an extensive network of friends, neighbors and family members who bring donations to her house. Metropolitan Ministries now knows her well, though they don't share her name with others. Driver Carmelo Santana Jr. said that when he comes to her house, he often leaves 60 or 70 empty boxes, because he knows she can always fill them. The truck comes every week or so during holidays, and once a month at other times of year.

Why does she do it?

"To me, that's Christmas. (It's) to help those who need help. One day I may be in that situation, you never know."

Times staff writer Curtis Krueger can be reached at krueger@sptimes.com or 727 893-8232.

[Last modified December 27, 2004, 22:59:09]