Sandy Shirey for Athens:Glimpses of Home

Recalling a lifetime of service

Jenaye Antonuccio (photo by Sherry DiBari)
May 29, 2008

Clara Barton, clad in long skirts appropriate to the era, stepped over bodies that littered the hot and bloody fields, searching for live ones who needed help. Known as the “Angel of the Battlefield,” she had tirelessly persevered through whizzing bullets, personal illness, and endless soliciting for donations to increase scarce emergency medical supplies.

This determined woman overcame her childhood shyness to provide relief in times of war, crisis and disaster, and finally found success in the year 1881, at the age of 60. Through much persuasion, the American division of the Red Cross was finally born. Working well into her 70s, and not leaving her executive post until age 82, Clara Barton lived nearly 10 more years before her death from pneumonia at 91.

It is Barton’s legacy, strong, true and determined, that Sandy Shirey has strived to emulate. “Clara Barton cared more about giving that service to people than anything,” says Shirey, executive director of the Athens County chapter of the Red Cross. “She wanted to see what people needed and get people rolling to do it, and that’s been my approach in 23 years. Plus, she was really feisty and would fight for what she wanted, and I will do that, too.”

From the moment she set foot in the Athens chapter of the emergency response, disaster relief and humanitarian services organization in 1985, Shirey’s simple focus has been “what are we here for?” while working to make a difference in others’ lives.

Yet she has inspired and aided countless southeast Ohioans with fierce dedication, no matter the season or the hour. “It is a huge job; I won’t kid you about that,” says Shirey. “I’ve really devoted my entire life in 23 years to the Red Cross. I’ll admit that and people know it.”

As with Barton, 23 years was exactly enough time for both women to prepare to move on. Shirey, 65, after unprecedented volunteer recruitment, award-winning blood drives and personal sacrifice, is retiring from her position as director.

“I feel that it is time,” she says.

Though she will remain as a disaster volunteer, she is heading into a different territory of need. She will work part-time for the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development (COAD), recruiting and training low-income seniors as foster grandparents in the schools and as companions in other seniors’ homes.

“I want to keep working in volunteerism,” says Shirey. “You are either born with it, or it is promoted by your upbringing. I guess it was my path. Though I strayed a little bit, I finally got to the right thing.”

Here are some benchmarks in Shirey’s life of service:

• As a child in the 1940s and ’50s, Shirey lived six houses down from the railroad tracks. Men would ride the rails and come to the nearby houses searching for food. Says Shirey, “I was instructed by my mother that if a gentleman asked for food, I was to fix him two ham sandwiches and a big jug of coffee with a lot of cream and sugar in it.”

• In the third grade, a disabled child needed help, so Shirey didn’t think twice about helping through tutoring.

• The middle of the night once found Shirey sniffing the air in confusion. She could hear flames crackling above her head, and smelled smoke. One son had already vacated his room due to the smoke and noise from the attic. “It was 1 or 2 in the morning and the Richland (volunteer) Fire Department came and saved our home,” she says. “I was really impressed.”

• A fire broke out on Court Street. The flames consuming the building didn’t captivate her as much as the service of a man she knew who worked for the Red Cross. She watched him set up a shelter and begin to provide for the firefighters. “He was going to get them coffee and snacks because they were going to be working this fire for a long time,” she says. “That really made me aware of the Red Cross. Then over time, I began paying more and more attention to it. It’s in the news almost every day.”

IN 1985, SHIREY WAS STILL cutting commas out of wax layouts in the wee hours of the morning for last-minute changes to The Athens NEWS. Fresh out of graduate school with a master’s in journalism/public information, she had already covered stories of social needs in the county, from a rape trial to local hunger to the Glouster Community Center’s need for a cooking stove (and receiving one because of her article). “It just gave me satisfaction to be doing those things,” Shirey recalls. “I was taking a direction into service. It was always there.”

Shirey proposed to write a story about Lucille Smith, then director of the Red Cross, who was retiring after nine years. Shirey remembers walking up the steps of the then North Congress Street location, about to change her life. In learning about the job, she fell in love with its goals. Says Shirey, “After I wrote the story, I came back a couple days later and handed her (Smith) my application. She was pretty surprised.”

The rest is history.

“I don’t know how we functioned in that place,” she says of the cramped house that is now a student rental. “Because if you set your work down and walked away for a minute, someone else’s work would pile on top of it. A couple cars could park there, but you’d get stuck and have to ask four other cars to back out before you could leave.”

In the beginning, quick learning of the ins and outs of the job complemented her ability to take charge. “Once I learned what needed to be done, I could handle a variety of tasks and I was raring to go,” she says. “I saw myself handling a lot of the things on my own because we didn’t have a lot of volunteers. I would cook sloppy joes for the bloodmobile and work the bloodmobile.”

In 1998, a donation from a former volunteer allowed the purchase of 100 S. May, a former Columbus Southern Power/AEP building. “We have a full parking lot, meeting rooms and the volunteers can have their own desk,” she says. “As a result of having a better facility, we have far more disaster volunteers than we had before.”

THE ATHENS COUNTY CHAPTER of the Red Cross serves Athens, Vinton and Gallia counties, providing basics in disaster relief: food, shelter, clothing, medication, and comfort. Disaster Education, Armed Forces Emergency Communication, Health and Safety Education, and Blood Drives are also components of Red Cross services. All could not be accomplished without the physical and monetary support from volunteers and other donations.

“You go ahead and give relief, and at the same time you are telling the public what you are doing so that they will help you pay the bills,” says Shirey.

Fundraising, and alternately, constant accountability, is essential to keeping the organization steadily afloat. Everything is donated, and the organization is efficiently run on a shoestring. As a private nonprofit organization, it must document every penny earned and spent. Unlike Clara Barton, who was reputedly a poor administrator, Shirey is matter-of-fact about this necessity. “If you don’t keep your books, then you don’t have a good organization.”

The Red Cross Web site proudly states, “Volunteers are the Red Cross.” Every facet is sustained by the steadfast aid of volunteers. “A volunteer helps people, wants and enjoys doing it,” says Shirey.

A preliminary list of regular volunteers to call upon in times of need consists of a tight-knit core group of about 60, all willing servants under Shirey’s care and leadership.

Her success is attributed to allowing people to work on what they are interested in, giving them the leeway to make decisions to recruit and train others, and to take the lead in their area of work.

“It’s like a little army,” Shirey says of her volunteers. “One of the reasons I’ve been so successful in recruiting volunteers is because I give them lots of attention, and it becomes like a family.”

Volunteers accomplish a majority of tasks, ranging from writing checks, vacuuming, changing toilet paper, setting up shelters, gathering receipts, and manning the hand radio when cell phones fail in the deep parts of the county. “We don’t ask anyone to do anything that we won’t do ourselves,” says Shirey.

She claims that one cannot be demanding of volunteers, but she is known for her subtle gift of persuasion. “By lightly putting forth the idea,” she says, “people will jump in if they want to. If people appreciate what we do, they will come through and donate or give blood or volunteer.

“Throughout the course of a normal day, I am the hostess of the office,” says Shirey. “I like the planning the best. I just love to plan things to the fine detail. When people are willing to pick up on each aspect, and it works like clockwork, and we can quickly get out and serve those people, then that’s very satisfying.”

A typical daily routine includes e-mail communication with the regional office, national conference calls and organizational meetings. “I know a lot of people hate meetings,” says Shirey, “but I say, ‘Let’s not call it a meeting. Let’s just get together to figure out what we’re going to do and let’s just do it.’”

The office is staffed from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day with mostly volunteers, and only two fulltime equivalent of paid staff — Shirey and two part-timers.

IN HER MEMORY, TWO county disasters stand out as the worst.

March 1997 brought historic flooding to Amesville. Subsequent flooding in June 1998 was “6 feet deeper than historic,” according to Mayor Frank Hare.

Shirey remembers that people needed to be rescued from second-story windows. Response had to be split into two areas of service. Shirey stayed up all night in an elementary school shelter. Extensive follow-up occurred in visiting homes, providing for needs, and subsequently, fundraising.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita occurred in New Orleans, but affected Athens County in unexpected ways. Outpourings for offers of help meant extensive training and deploying of volunteers, plus gathering equipment they would need for aid. The room was filled with volunteers needing instruction, and Shirey had to explain the difficulty of the mission. Not liking to turn anyone away, she also realized the danger and intensity of the assignment. Evacuees poured in as well with basic emergency needs. This also required major fundraising.

The end of June is Shirey’s estimated departure. Her advice to whoever takes her place is simply this: don’t forget what the Red Cross is here for. She says it’s too easy for an agency to focus on staff, salary and structure instead of core values. She feels satisfied with what she has accomplished, though things have not always been perfect. “I won’t be kicking myself, saying ‘Oh my gosh, I never got that done.’ Unless I don’t get my desk cleaned off,” she adds, laughing.

ON WEEKENDS, SHIREY HAS the energy to break for a moment of solace in a pine grove off the side yard of her house. The birds sing, and she can tell where the deer have been. She tries not to think about work as she enjoys the scenery.

She believes the 23 years she put into the Red Cross has grown her personally, equipped her with many skills, but also satisfied her need to do something worthwhile. She doesn’t believe in retiring and staying at home. As long as she is able, Sandy Shirey will never stop living a life of service.

Mickey Hart for Athens: Glimpses of Home

What one man builds, another calls it home
By Jenaye Antonuccio (photo by Sherry DiBari)

From the beginning, Mickey Hart has looked at the bigger picture.
“I see myself as a generalist,” says Hart, the director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center on campus. “And I like working to improve the quality of life with whatever group I’m connected with.”
Whether managing his previously-owned restaurant; playing euchre at card tables with patients of the now-closed Athens Mental Health Center; overseeing life in concrete-blocked rooms of the residence halls; chatting inside the third floor LGBT Center in Baker; or stripping 50-year-old wallpaper off the walls of his own house, his lasting impact is to build comfortable points of connection to which anyone can return.
He keeps a few goals in mind: service to others; hospitality; and leaving things better than the state in which it was found.
Hart was born and raised in the beautiful backyard of tourist-attracting Hocking Hills, in Laurelville. Small town life fostered tight-knit social gatherings, of which Hart was an observer. “In a really small town,” Hart says, “businesses and restaurants can be a community building piece.”
Fresh out of high school, the future before him, with no encouragement to go further, he began work at Bob Evans. He hosted, bussed tables, and worked the kitchen area and out front, fully servicing customers. “I enjoyed it,” says Hart, “because I got to see all parts of the operation.”
When asked to consider becoming manager, he took his knowledge of restaurant operation and invested in an un-leased business. Hart formed a business partnership with his former school bus driver, and Sue and Mic’s Village Café came to life. A mom and pop hometown diner, its specialties were homemade comfort food. Owning it gave Hart awareness of his ability and power to serve others’ needs. “Everyone that hadn’t really worked much, I employed lots of those people,” says Hart. “(The restaurant) makes people happy, but it’s also (serves) as a community-organizer.”
After five years, Hart admitted it was time to leave the business and pursue his Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts painting. The restaurant, renamed The Village Café once Hart’s monetary interests were removed, still runs strong. Hart’s mother is manager, and partners with his former partner. Hart continues to design menus and create specialty items such as sandwiches, salads and sauces.
Athens became home for Hart as soon as he arrived in the fall of 1990. He lived in the Athens Mental Health Center during the final two years of its Resident Volunteer program, making lifelong friends and learning to play euchre, pool, and talk with people no matter what their background.
“I’ve always done some kind of giving back work,” says Hart, “to help people out.” He also served as Resident Director in the dorms, with Teen Institute in peer leadership for substance abuse prevention, with Health Recovery Services coordinating retreats, and served on the board of Equality Ohio, and organization promoting equal rights of LGBT Ohioans. For the first time, Hart has decided to take a two-year sabbatical from devoting himself to any volunteer work, giving him time to renovate his home.
“A lot of the work I try to do is to create community,” says Hart. As director of the LGBT center, he focuses on being welcoming. “I try to make it feel like a home. My vision is that it’s the LGBT living room on campus.” In all his responsibilities, he pulls from both administrative and creative sides of himself. From making posters for the “Faces of Pride” every quarter, to organizing social and educational events, to creating table settings for the pride graduation events, he calls himself the glue. “Because the university population is always changing, someone needed to be here to be the glue, to hold the community together for the LGBT people,” Hart says. “I don’t think I hold it completely together, but it’s a binding thing and a lot of other people add to that.”
Hart believes Ohio University and Athens’ strong point is friendliness towards LGBT and Allied people. Hart stresses for students to always be aware of their surroundings, and thinking of ways they can positively give back to the local community. One specific way of making students aware is by archiving: clipping and saving posters and fliers, cataloguing history of LGBT issues on campus and in Athens. “Creating context helps students understand what came before, what they can build on, what may not have worked then but may work now, what may never work, and some things that work no matter what.”
Hart grieves the loss of personable-ness and small-school feel with recent changes to Athens and the university. “We had a big boom thirty years ago and now we have this wave of retirement happening. We have new administration in the upper levels and we’ve lost a lot of institutional memory,” he says. “We’re weathering a lot of change all at once.” He is also concerned about the imbalance between increase of students and decrease in faculty and staff. According to Hart, this affects the economy of Athens. “It’s been nice to see new business come to town,” says Hart, “but we lose what is uniquely Athens as we get more mainstream.”
Hart would like anyone to avoid “traveling a path”, cycling only through the path from home to work and back, keeping options limited. Better navigation comes when connected in many areas. In his opinion, one opportunity for involvement is often overlooked: United Campus Ministries. UCM’s mission is to engage the Ohio University and Athens communities, and has been an incubator for some such organizations as My Sister's Place, Careline, Appalachian Peace and Justice Network, Athens AIDS Task Force, River Valley Community School, and Southeastern Ohio Foodbank.
In his spare time, Hart hunts mushrooms with his 78-year-old grandmother, whom recently bagged over 6 pounds of the fungus. He says he’s slowing down a bit, and reflects on what is important. Of missing time for artwork, he says, “I’d like to make some beautiful things and add beauty to the world that way.”
“In Athens,” he says, “you have to get comfortable with people coming into your life, staying a few years, and then moving on.” These cycles are difficult, but part of the way of life here. He feels Athens is a safe and comfortable place overall. On sharing the same name as the famous drummer from the Grateful Dead, he says: “I am Mickey. My legal name is Michael, but from day one I was Mickey.”
Considering the big picture, Athens should be grateful for its own Mickey Hart.

Darlene Wasserman for Athens: Glimpses of Home

Local woman expands meaning of ‘home’

Athens: Glimpses of home

Jenaye Antonuccio (photo by Sherry DiBari)
May 1, 2008

One of Darlene Wasserman’s titles is about to change, but the first half of all of her roles has always been the same.

As a home-schooling mother, she has nearly completed her responsibilities toward her son’s education. Until June, she will continue equipping her son for high-school graduation and his next steps in life. Her reasons, she says, are multi-faceted. “I do it because it needs to be done, I have the skills to do it, and it seems like the right thing to do for our family and our son.”

As a homemaker, she has expanded the definition of beyond taking care of the house. “It extends beyond the concept of keeping rooms clean, preparing food, taking care of clothing,” she says. “It goes into making an environment that meets the bigger needs of the people living in the house: a place to relax, be safe, to be enriched.”

As an advocate for the homeless, Darlene, who is married to Keith Wasserman, executive director of the Good Works homeless shelter in Athens, offers care and support behind the scenes. “We encounter a lot of people who haven’t had a home, don’t know how to make one, but want or need one,” says Wasserman.

From her contact with people in poverty, she believes they don’t learn how to dream. “It’s debilitating and handicapping to a person to not have a good home life,” says Wasserman. “It’s destructive to not have an environment that nurtures you, or to have a place that addresses your physical, emotional and soul needs.”

Wasserman arrived in Athens in the fall of 1976, as an undergraduate. Raised in a single-parent home, she and her two brothers did not question their mother’s work, their subsistence on food stamps or the support they received from the government. “I was aware of my mother not having energy or time to read or to have dreams,” recalls Wasserman. “Her focus was surviving.”

Wasserman is the only one in her family to complete a college degree. From Ohio University, Wasserman earned a bachelor’s in fine arts, with an emphasis in art education and a minor in English for teaching reading. Recently, she earned a master’s degree in reading.

During her first two years of living on campus, she mistakenly thought Court Street was the town. Soon she discovered people and places that would become fixtures in her life.

“I was living with nine other people: one married couple and seven women,” says Wasserman. “I was involved with a Christian community on Elliott, Mill and Oak, with a lot of sharing of meals, and popping in and out of one another’s houses.”

During this time, she met and dated the man who would become her husband. “I got married and my husband had a house then, and was doing something with his life that required his energy.”

The house, located at 3 Elliott St., had a sign posted next to the door: Good Works. Her husband, Keith, was seeking to remedy homelessness in Athens County.

“For me to live in a house where people were coming and going,” says Wasserman, “wasn’t that unusual.” She describes herself as flexible and adaptable no matter what goes on around her. “I don’t think I thought too much about what it was going to be like. Living with somebody else always has its moments whether you are married to them or sharing common living space.”

After about five years, their vision hadn’t changed, but their response to what was going on around them was different. Rapidly disappearing from the neighborhood were the little old ladies with flower gardens, who were replaced by more students. “Some behaviors were starting to bug us,” Wasserman acknowledges. “We realized we either had to accept behaviors or move.”

They bought property for themselves outside of town. Good Works moved to its current west-side Central Avenue location and the subsequent Luhrig Road property just to the west of Athens.

THE CITY IS NEVER completely dark. In the country, often you cannot see in front of you. Having been a city-dweller her entire life, Wasserman was shocked upon moving outside of town. “There is a sound to silence,” she says. “It has a weight to it. It can be disconcerting.” Yet space is something she has come to appreciate.

“I haven’t formed what Good Works is,” says Wasserman. “I haven’t guided what it has become.”

Never enjoying the spotlight, she is more comfortable in the background. She provides impact by being flexible. “I didn’t say (to Keith), ‘We are not taking anyone into our house.’ Or when he is gone a lot of weekends, evenings or night shifts I didn’t say, ‘You can’t do this.’ I think I enabled him to put the time and energy into it that it requires and demands.”

Darlene Wasserman believes Good Works has impacted the community in unrecognized ways. “The community would not be the same if what he (husband, Keith) started did not exist,” she says. “I can’t even imagine how our community would be different, but I know it would be.”

Good Works has sought to give to those who have needed it. People in poverty are focused on survival, on the basics of human need. “Their energies don’t go into, ‘What do I want to do 10 years from now?’ or ‘Where would I like to go? What would I like to see?’ They are not thinking about having a garden in their front yard, or what color their curtains are.”

Over the years, Wasserman has discovered deeper parts of Athens: “There’s this whole world of people that were born, grew up, and had children here. They have gotten old, had jobs and life not even connected to the university. They are manufacturers, homemakers and farmers.”

A group of women with whom she became involved changed her perspective on relationships. They valued connectedness and longevity.

“These women had gone to school together, stayed in the community, and had children. And their children went to school together,” says Wasserman. “So they could talk about a lot of their lives. It’s probably the way we’re supposed to live: deeply connected, aware of one another’s history, having a vocabulary that can give your life stability. To feel the depth that time and history give to life.”

She hopes to enjoy the alterations that will soon take place in her life. She hopes to once again nurture her artistic temperament through painting. Regardless of the circumstances, no doubt she will live as she always has, providing for others’ needs. “Athens is home and it will be home for most of our lives, if not all of our lives,” she says.