Wiedmer: Helping Bethel Bible Village a great way to ring in the new year

Mark Wiedmer
Mark Wiedmer

The song came over my car radio a few days ago. It was Pat Boone smoothly singing "Joy to the World" as only Boone can.

But to have called Chattanooga home for any amount of time since the late 1970s is just as likely to associate the ageless Boone - now 84 years young - with our town's Bethel Bible Village, for which he hosted yearly fundraisers for 35 years.

The last Pat Boone Bethel Celebrity Spectacular was in 2011, however. With the Christmas season about to end, one couldn't help but wonder how Bethel is doing these days without his assistance.

"We've changed a lot from the days when we only served children whose parents were incarcerated," the charity's Nancy Hoover said a few days before Christmas. "We now focus most of our time on kids and families in crisis. Our goal is to reunify families, to have them come back together as a whole family unit."

With more than 40 percent of all marriages ending in divorce and more than 30 percent of children living with a single parent, the opportunity for a family crisis rarely has been higher, which means Bethel's need for contributions never has been more important.

"We have to raise $2 million annually just to keep Bethel running," Hoover said. "But that's just to cover the essentials. We count on so many contributions from individuals, churches and other groups to provide our kids the things that make their time here special."

One of the most special of those things took place over Christmas break. The charity's 25 students left its Hixson campus on Friday, Dec. 21, not to return until this Wednesday.

Thanks to the generosity of many, including the Rotary Club, Bethel's kids didn't just receive numerous Christmas presents for themselves before they left. They also were given gifts to take home to siblings not involved in the program.

"I have a twin sister and older brother," said one 16-year-old girl. "It's very exciting to be able to bring them gifts. My brother's getting a really cool set of headphones. My sister's getting clothes. To be able to bring gifts for my whole family means a lot. Just the generosity of the community. I could never afford to buy these things on my own."

And her own favorite gift before she left for the holidays?

"A ukulele," she said. "We have a ukulele class here at school. Now I have my own."

Asked what she has most learned during her months going to school at Bethel and living in its village, the girl said, "Not to be ungrateful for what you have."

Jenny Vowell is principal of the licensed and accredited private school, which currently has students from ages 11 to 17.

"Our students are usually behind emotionally, academically and socially," she said. "We have very small classes, grades 6 through 12. We work in tandem with the families. We teach communication, honesty, those types of things. We have a 100 percent graduation rate. The most important solution is a reunification with the family."

Most students live at the Village anywhere from 12 to 18 months. In some cases "they return as day students," Vowell noted.

And in at least one case, a former student has returned to be a houseparent, the woman known as Missy now living in the same Poindexter Cottage where she resided as a student in the 1980s.

"I live in that house all the time now," she said. "I came here because my mom was dying. This place gave me the extra security of family."

Yet that's not why she returned as an adult.

"I was headed to Europe," she said. "God told me to come back."

Twenty years later, she's still at Bethel, still giving back for what it gave her.

So how has Bethel moved on now that Boone hasn't been the front man for its biggest fundraiser the past seven years?

"Kelley Lovelace," said Hoover, referring to the country music singer and songwriter who grew up in Hixson. "His golf tournament at Bear Trace at Harrison Bay and his concert at the trade center brought in over $400,000 this year."

In many ways, Lovelace embracing Bethel makes even more sense than Boone, who grew up in Nashville and went to David Lipscomb College but has spent most of his adulthood in Hollywood, where he was once the second highest-grossing recording act in the late 1950s, trailing only Elvis Presley.

Or as Lovelace noted on Bethel's website regarding affection for the charity: "I grew up in Hixson, close to Bethel, and I remember riding by and seeing about a dozen bicycles outside those houses and thinking, 'I really want to go live there!' But once I learned more about it and realized that those kids had a lot less than I had growing up, I wanted to do something special for them, to show them that somebody cares."

Not that Boone has quit caring.

Hoover noted that "we still get notes from him from time to time. He's still on our mailing list. Pat Boone's always given us great support."

But as a new year approaches with old challenges, Hoover also observed, "When Bethel started 65 years ago, there weren't many nonprofits around. Now there are thousands of them."

So as you spend this long New Year's weekend with old acquaintances or new friends, watching football while ringing out the old and ringing in the new, give a thought to helping Bethel. You can learn more at www.bethelbiblevillage.org.

You can also consider this quote from Missy, the student turned housemother, who said of what most pleases her in her job: "When our kids come back and tell us how much Bethel changed their lives for the better."

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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