It is easy to forget that for those without a roof over their heads, winter weather is more than a minor discomfort.  After a young homeless man was found dead from exposure during a cold spell, local churches banded together to make sure that everyone has a warm, clean, and safe place to sleep during winter months.  “We are working beyond theological differences in order to care for some of the most vulnerable in our community,” said Andy Wade, who acts as the project’s volunteer coordinator.

The “Warming Shelter” project was launched on January 1^st, 2011, with five local churches hosting the shelter on a rotating basis.   Originally, the shelter opened only when temperatures dropped below 35 degrees, leaving both guests and volunteers unsure about the upcoming night.  Fast forward to 2013 to find the Warming Shelter open every night, regardless of temperature, from December through March.  It has also grown into more than just a warm place to sleep.  Guests are offered a light evening meal, a simple breakfast, and a ‘sandwich-to-go’.  Volunteers work to connect shelter visitors with housing and job opportunities.  A mobile health unit is periodically available for first aid and medical referrals.  According to Reverend Linda Presley, nine guests are expected on a typical night.  Last year, sixty-three different people slept at the Warming Shelter, including eighteen women and nine children.

Wade says that his life has been enriched by hearing the stories of those who visit the shelter and understanding how people’s lives are truly tied together.  “In a community we are all connected,” said Wade.  “When one suffers, the whole community suffers, often in ways that we don’t realize.”

The Joan Burchell Fund recently granted $1,075 to the Warming Shelter project.  The funds will be used for shower passes and sleeping bags for those without a place to live.  The Foundation is proud to be a part of this essential community project.

Who was Pat Hazlehurst?

Pat walked into Library Director June Knudson’s office in 2003 and asked what she could do to help. She was 68. She and husband Leighton had moved to Hood River mere weeks before.

The Hood River County Library had just completed an addition almost doubling its size. The years planning and fundraising burned everyone out—the staff, the foundation board, the Friends of the Library. June’s priority was finding someone who could revitalize the Friends, because she promised the county commissioners that she would add no additional staff. To do that she would need volunteers and to find them she needed someone with experience and energy. Pat Hazlehurst arrived at her door.

Pat grew up in California graduating with a degree in sociology from University of California Santa Barbara, where she met Leighton. They married and moved to Berkley where Leighton worked on his PhD in Cultural Anthropology. Pat ran a nursery school for the children of Navy families.

Then Leighton received a research grant to study the merchant castes in a small town in northwest India. Pat responded by signing up for Hindi language lessons and taking the family to Indian restaurants to learn the vegetarian cuisine. In 1962, Pat and Leighton took their two children—Tim 5 and Brian 2—to live in River Town, India for a year.

The only available space was an empty shop in the town’s bazaar. This, their new home, was a 20 by 30 foot room. A courtyard behind the room held their well, a sheltered area for cooking, and off to one side the bathroom—a small brick enclosure with a shallow drain in the cement floor, no flush toilet or running water. Yet the family fell in love with the town and the people. You can read about their life there in the book Leighton wrote: River Town Chronicles, Pleasures and Perils of Life in India.

Leighton spent two years in the army. Then did post doctoral work at University of Chicago. In 1967, the family return to India for a year. Daughter Lori had joined the family by this time. Returning to the U.S., Leighton took a job at Cornell University. For seven years he taught anthropology, but the politics of college life in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s wasn’t for him.

He and Pat bought 30 acres in northeast Vermont. The farm had long before turned back to hardwoods, but the land came with an old farmhouse and barn. Leighton taught occasionally at the Vermont State College. The kids made and sold maple syrup.

Pat got a job as Children’s Librarian and then became the library director at the Cobleigh Public Library in nearby Lyndonville where she worked for 25 years. She was named Vermont Librarian of the Year; became President of the Vermont Library Association.

“Pat transformed the library to a community center, a place where kids could be safe,” Leighton said. “She put on all kinds of summer programs. She went to a junk yard with a mechanic to find an old van that could be a bookmobile. The mechanic fixed it and Pat got a volunteer to drive it on the rural roads, even in snowy weather. Years later she got a real bookmobile. At the summer inaugural event, she had kids put their paint-covered hand prints all over it. That bookmobile finally ran out of steam and neither the library nor the community had money to buy a new one. The story got picked up on Vermont Public Radio. The Trustees of the Manton Foundation heard the story and donated $130,000 to by a new bookmobile and $20,000 to maintain it.”

She oversaw the building of an addition to the library and a renovation of the existing building. She started a community reading program, bought computers. Her work was so exceptional that the University of Washington’s Public Access Computing Project produced a video about her for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. You can see the video on YouTube.

The kids grew up and moved away—one son to Portland, Oregon; another son to Seattle and daughter to Florida. “The kids weren’t coming back east anymore,” Leighton said. “and Pat had accomplished what she could at the library.” The family had been meeting in Hood River every summer to windsurf. The town felt like a good place to live permanently and held a library that needed her. They sold the farm and moved west.

“What I really enjoyed about Pat, especially with the library building project” June says, “is that she would say: ‘You have to take leaps of faith. When you hit a wall in a project like that you have to figure out how to get around or over or through. That’s part of the fun.’ ”

She and June agreed on the role libraries play in society: totally open and accessible to everyone in the community. But June was worried about the Friends’ burnout. She and Pat felt the group needed a new project. Pat thought a program where everyone in the county would read the same book and meet and talk about it was just such a project. She got grants for it. Bought and gave out 400 books. The successful Hood River Reads program that first year read local author Virginia Euwer Wolff’s Bat 6. The program continues today.

Pat died of cancer February 2010. But she left a legacy. We hope you’ll join in the challenge to honor her and the libraries she loved.

Pat became President of the Friends of the Library, started Hood River Reads, restarted Sunday lectures, raised money for summer kids reading program.

Her energy and ideas enhanced the library and the community. Pat died February 2010 at age 74. This year some Friends of the Library members, whom Pat inspired, started the Pat Hazlehurst Endowment for the Hood River County Library.

These donors are offering a challenge gift of up to $10,000 to match public contributions. Grant recommendation will be decided by an advisory committee composed of The Hood River Library director, Friends of the Hood River Library president and a Gorge Community Foundation board member.

Contributions to the fund can be made by clicking the Donate Now button or mailed to Gorge Community Foundation, PO Box 1711, Hood River, OR 97031

Photo: Even on a European vacation, Pat visited the library.

English teacher Haley Harkema met 28 year old Graham at a conference in Bend last fall and knew he would connect with her students.  With school budgets stretched to the breaking point, Harkema was grateful to receive a grant from the Children’s Enrichment Fund, which paid for Graham’s “Spoken Word Workshop.”  An anonymous benefactor started the fund in 2011 to help children reach their creative potential.  This is the first grant disbursed from the new fund.  Future grants will be made annually.  To sign up for information about this and other grant opportunities, subscribe to our email newsletter on the left of this page.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor seventy years ago, all people of Japanese ancestry were sent to internment camps across the country.  On May 13, 1942, Hood River residents of Japanese descent–including infants and children–boarded an army train, taking only what they could carry.  They had either to entrust their orchards, homes and belongings to neighbors for safekeeping; sell them for pennies on the dollar; or simply abandon them. Hood River evacuees were initially held in a camp in Pinedale, California and then relocated to a camp at Tule Lake where they were interned for three years.

The Gorham Babson Family Fund of the Gorge Community Foundation recently awarded a grant to The History Museum of Hood River County to create and install a plaque marking this sad event.  Sydney Babson Blaine, as a spokesperson for the Gorham Babson Family Fund, participated in the unveiling of the plaque in a ceremony at the Mt Hood Railroad station on May 12, 2012.  Blaine, the granddaughter of long time orchardist Sydney Babson, said that her grandfather opposed the internment and asked his heirs to find some way to honor his orchardist friends and neighbors.  Blaine worked with Connie Nice, Coordinator for The History Museum, to create a plaque which will be permanently displayed at the Mt Hood Railroad Station.  A crowd of nearly 100 people gathered for the unveiling event, including some of the surviving evacuees.

Pictured in the photograph above are Gorham Babson Family Fund donor advisors Sydney Babson Blaine (center) and her daughter Heather Blaine-McCurdy (left) with grandson  Malcolm McCurdy (right).