Stories within stories. That’s how the staff at Salvation Army of Greater Chattanooga describes the hundreds of thousands of lives the organization is able to touch each year-from bell ringing volunteers to the minister who stood on a forklift for 24 hours to ask for bicycle donations to the newly widowed mother who wasn’t sure how she would make her children’s Christmas happen on her own.
“What always gives me pause is to think about the fact that Salvation Army has been serving Chattanooga for 120 years now,” says Kimberly George, Salvation Army director of marketing and development. “So for 120 years we’ve been feeding, clothing and providing Christmas assistance through two world wars, through the Great Depression, through all of our economic recession and now government shutdown, and the Salvation Army has been faithful. For 120 years our doors have always been opened. We’ve never shut down.”
Last year, more than 4,500 families in Cleveland, Tenn., and Chattanooga received Christmas gifts through the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree ministry-and though a few simple gifts may not seem like much, the staff at Salvation Army knows that those gifts can change lives. “In the past, we had one particular family whose child had asked for a bicycle year after year and didn’t get one. The family couldn’t afford it. On Christmas, he had taken and made a picture of the bicycle and taped it above his bed and said he was going to pray every day all year that he would get a bicycle,” says Sandy Leavell, director of social services at Salvation Army. “And the next Christmas the parent came to us when she realized she wouldn’t have the money for the bicycle. We had just gotten a donation of some bicycles, and she was able to take one home to him.”
Leavell knows firsthand what a normal Christmas experience can mean to a family who has fallen on hard times. “My son received Angel Tree gifts when he was 7. I was working but I had had about five surgeries in one year, and I was off work again and was a single mom,” she says. “We didn’t have a Salvation Army in our area but the organization I worked for put him on the Angel Tree in Knoxville. And he got what he had asked Santa Claus for Christmas that year. I’ll never forget him saying, ‘I must have been a really good boy because I got just what I asked for.’ Still it almost makes me cry just thinking about it.”
One of the toughest things for a parent, Leavell says, is trying to keep the Christmas magic alive for the children while experiencing financial difficulty.
“Particularly during Christmas, Salvation Army employees have long hours, we have no days off, our plans get changed, but I think it gives me the strength to do that because I know what it meant to me and it keeps me focused on knowing that there are those out there who are in that situation. I had no idea that the Angel Tree ministry would come through. It was just a wing and a prayer and thinking, ‘What am I going to tell him if his letter to Santa isn’t filled?” she says. “We all play into that fairytale …’You better be good because Santa Claus is watching you. So what do you want Santa Claus to bring you?'”
It’s all part of our fairytale as a child-that piece of our life that is magical and special and that you remember. Then to be a parent and go, ‘Oh my gosh, what if this doesn’t happen? What am I going to tell him?’ It breaks my heart for the families sometimes, but I can truly say to people that I understand. There are parents who come to pick up their things who literally break down and cry from joy of just having that release of knowing that they can provide for their children.”
Although many look at this situation and think, “That will never happen to me,” Leavell says that most people are just one unfortunate incident away from being financially unstable. “Most all of us are about one serious crisis and two paychecks away from being in a situation we can’t handle. Honestly, all of us. You lose a breadwinner, you lose those things and it’s an immediate change of events and it’s very humbling,” she says. “So those clients who come to us, many of them have never had assistance before. We see that particularly with disaster. It holds no economic boundaries. And that’s a whole different aspect of what the Army does because you have to convince those people who have always given help to now allow someone else to help them. They’re not accustomed to doing that and that’s very difficult for some people.”
Salvation Army Area Commander Major Algerome Newsome vividly remembers his parents fighting over welfare assistance and whether or not he and his siblings should be put in the Angel Tree ministry.
“My father had five heart attacks but after his first heart attack, my family was struggling financially and we signed up for welfare which was a big thing because my parents were really proud and they didn’t want to take anything from anybody, period. I think we were on welfare for three months and there was a fight every night over it. We couldn’t take the fights,” Newsome says with a laugh. “But it was also during the Christmas season and so we signed up for the Angel Tree. I can still remember the gifts … I got a radio, clothes and there was a science kit. The boom box was a huge thing then so that radio was a treasure.”
Newsome’s involvement with the Salvation Army began not a moment too soon in his life. “I grew up in New Orleans in the poor section of town where the Salvation Army was located. In my neighborhood, you kind of belonged to a gang or you got beat up every day. So I was in the younger gang and when you turned 13, you had initiation where you would transfer from the younger gang to the older gang,” he says. “On my 13th birthday, the older gang showed up at my house and took me out and there were activities you had to do throughout the day, so to speak. One of the things they did was to take me over to the Salvation Army and we were looking in through the windows to see what we would come back later that night to steal, and the Salvation Army officer saw us kind of peeking in and came out and invited us to the Boy Scouts. We thought, ‘What a great deal! You can actually go inside and see what you are going to steal later.’ So we all went into the Boy Scout meeting and stayed there for about three hours and had a good time. So much so that we never really made it back that night and we all became Boy Scouts. That began my association with the Salvation Army.”
Had it not been for the Salvation Army, Newsome says his life would have probably been very different. “Most of the gang activity usually led to directions where you would end up in jail,” he says. “The Salvation Army really did change our community. Out of that gang of guys I was with that day, there are two Salvation Army officers, several police officers and a full-time Army colonel, so it changed our lives a lot. It changed generations.” Leavell says she knows that the ripple created by the Salvation Army’s involvement in her life affected more than just one Christmas list for her son. “Once my son did reach the age where he understood Christmas, how that all really worked and that it wasn’t Santa Claus, one of his favorite things every year was that we would find an Angel for him to shop for every Christmas,” she says. “It’s still one of his favorite things and he’s 29 years old. Sometimes it’s off the Angel Tree, sometimes if he finds a person who is struggling, he’ll find a contact and get a gift put into their car at work, you know. I think it changes the heart, and my son has a great giving heart.
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