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CongratulationstoShelter DirectorTom Burnhamon hisLifetime Achievement Award!!An excerpt from Steve Campbell's December 1, 2007 25th Anniversary address at The Cedars in St. Louis
When we first sat down to plan our 25th Anniversary Event, we wanted it to be a way to say Thank You to our volunteers. Our honoree started out working with the shelter as a volunteer. Since that time, he’s had the opportunity to observe the generosity of thousands of other volunteers for over twenty years. In that time he’s seen great tragedies and amazing triumphs in people’s lives, and everything in between. Some among us may have gotten discouraged when they see people continue to be homeless for years, but it has only motivated him to want to do even more. He has a depth of compassion for a group of people, who like all of us, can be very complex. Walk with him along any downtown sidewalk, and he will know every homeless person you pass. He knows the blues…and by that I mean the both music, and the pain that inspires the music. He’s spent his life helping people whose lives are in chaos. He is about creating a community where everyone is included. Musicians and writers, lawyers and doctors, social workers and junk yard owners.
I always thought it made sense that he ended up working for Peter & Paul Community Services, because he is at the service of the very idea of community. In the days when our shelter was only open during the winter, he made sure that at the end of every season, we hosted a pig roast…and everyone was invited…staff, volunteers, residents, and our neighbors from Soulard. He has a love for the arts and he knows art’s healing power. He knows that by giving residents an opportunity to participate in art, it leads to their empowerment, to healing, and a reawakening of their own dignity. You saw a concrete example of that tonight with our client presentation.
He dreams big dreams…That is what has led him to pursue opening a safe haven. I’d like to close this tribute by reading my favorite piece of his writing, about a couple residents of our shelter: I know two men who lived in shelters for at least two years. Korean War Veterans, they took hefty falls from the graces of “the good life” to become homeless. We enabled them to find work and reestablish themselves. The triumph is theirs. They did it. These gentlemen pooled their resources and moved into an apartment. They also stayed in touch. They came into the shelter they used to live in and helped keep order. They pass out the blankets they used to sleep under. They help distribute the food that once sustained them. After their first night of working in the shelter the time came for them to leave. They donned their coats and hats and stood by the door. I was preoccupied as I walked by, not fully aware of the moment for them. They sheepishly stopped me. They stood awkwardly shifting their weight from one foot to the other with ear-to-ear grins. Not saying anything. I looked at them waiting, for I knew something was up. They were obviously savoring the moment. Finally Bill said. “Tom, we’re going home.” With the accent on home. “We’ll see you tomorrow.” I suddenly knew why they looked like the cat that just ate the canary. Going home after work is something I do everyday without much thought. These guys were going home after a long day for the first time in years. It was so simple yet for them so profound.
The next day Bill told me how he got up and fried a couple of eggs before catching a bus to work. The simple act of preparing breakfast and going to work, something I do in my sleep, was to him about the most sustaining, reaffirming evidence of his self-worth. The quiet dignity of getting up and providing for himself in a most basic of means is for him so truly profound. I can only share their joy vicariously. I have always been had a home. I have witnessed but never experienced what they lost. In the end I can never truly appreciate their sense of what they have regained. I have my problems, money is tight, bills keep coming, yet there is so much I take for granted. These men and their experience gives me a glimpse though, of how truly blessed I am, the good things in my life. Count all your blessings. Brush them aside and count what’s left. For that is what these men are finding particularly fulfilling. The rewards of working in shelters are few. When one comes along it is something to savor. They come in most surprising forms. You must make the most of small victories or the enormity of despair will swallow you. Triumphs are incremental and undramatic to most people’s comprehension. The most mundane acts take on great significance. It is true about the best things in life, the simple pleasures, without them there is nothing else.
Standing Ovation!!Steve Campbell presents Tom Burnham with a Lifetime Achievement Award December 1, 2007 at the agency's 25th Anniversary celebration in St. Louis.
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© 2004 Peter & Paul Community Services,
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