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READERS GIVE CHILDREN WARMTH
The Hartford Courant of Thursday, November 26, 1998

Newspapers Participate Nationwide

Thanks to your readers' donations for the wonderful hats, boots, coats, and mittens, etc., all wrapped up and under our Christmas tree. I'm deeply grateful, and my worries are gone as my prayers are answered. I had no gifts, nor did I have any real hopes of any -- I had no warm winter gear for my kids. God bless you all, and many, many thanks. My children are good kids, they're helpful and they don't ask for much. What they asked for, you gave. -- Thank you note from a mother whose four children received winter clothing through Warm The Children.

Caption: MACK AND NATALIE STEWART of Higganum started the "Warm The Children'' program in Torrington 11 years ago. They have put their energies into expanding the program nationwide, signing up newspapers throughout the country to participate. Readers give donations, and volunteer shoppers take children to buy winter clothing.

Mack and Natalie Stewart of Haddam were brought up to do for others and to look for ways to ease suffering. Throughout their 41- year marriage, the native Texans have honored their roots by finding ways to help.

A newspaperman throughout his career, Stewart and his family were living in Troy, N.Y., in the early 1980s, where Mack was advertising director for a community paper. The paper had started a program to collect donations from readers to buy winter clothing for needy children.

The Stewarts quickly became part of the program, and saw firsthand how much need existed. They and other newspaper readers picked up families to go on shopping trips for warm clothing, using the money donated by readers.

Since that time, the Stewarts have taken the concept nationwide, signing up newspapers to participate, collecting money and gathering volunteers to head shopping trips for families referred by area social service agencies. The program, which runs from November through January, is now in 38 cities and towns, at newspapers and bureaus large and small. In Connecticut, it is run in Middletown and New Britain by the Hartford Courant bureaus there, in shoreline towns by The Shoreline Times, and in Torrington by the Register Citizen.

Mariwyn McClain Smith, co- publisher and editor of the Parsons Advocate in West Virginia, said readers of her small weekly newspaper have opened their hearts to Warm The Children, and it's made a real difference.

"This is a poor county. Coal mines have closed as well as a shoe factory,'' Smith said, and a flood in 1985 about wiped out the town's business community. Many homes have had to be demolished since, and there is great need for a program that helps children. That the paper has been able to make a difference has been rewarding, she said. "Never in my 27 years as editor of the Parsons Advocate have I seen such a response by readers to anything like Warm The Children. This year we've already received enough money for 100 children!.''

Planting Of A Seed

The Stewarts' original experience in Troy, with a program that gave them personal contact with those receiving help, fueled their commitment to do more. He recalled their Troy experience, traveling to a walk-up apartment in a falling-down brownstone to pick up the children there for a trip to shop for warm clothing.

"All we had was a name and address, plus the number of children we were to take shopping,'' he said. "The building looked abandoned except for a light on the third floor. We found our way up the dark stairway...

"We knocked. Pretty soon a little girl about 9 or 10 answered. She was expecting us."

When the Stewarts went inside, they saw that the father of the girl was severely mentally retarded, and the mother appeared retarded as well.

Then, Stewart recalled, "the girl called for her little brother, and we were ready to go shopping."

The couple was struck by two things: the grim poverty of the children, and the unusual maturity of the older sister.

"She was well-spoken and was, it seemed, sort of a mother to her little brother,'' he said.

Stewart recalled how the girl responded when they lost sight of the boy at the store. "She called for him, then hurried to where he was and put her arms around him.''

"I suppose it's, partly at least, the memory of that trip which keeps us doing what we do,'' Stewart said. "If we can, with our program, make it possible for a needy child to have something nice to wear to school, something new that the other kids won't make fun of, if it will help them stay in school and try a little harder to deal with the life that's been given them, then knowing that is our reward.''

Growing Of The Seed

In 1986, the Stewarts moved to Torrington, when Mack was made publisher of the Register Citizen. The Stewarts decided to re-create in Torrington the "Clothe A Child'' program from Troy, improve upon it and make it an effective and important part of the holidays in their new community.

They named their new program "Warm The Children'' and launched its first effort in 1988.

Many families in the area were in need of the help, and the program made an obvious difference, they said.

Warm The Children moved with the Stewarts in 1991, when Mack was named publisher of The Middletown Press. They launched the drive in Middletown that year.

Five years ago, the Stewarts were publicizing and running the program out of the newspaper, watching the effort thrive. But the program, and Stewart's tenure as publisher, came to an abrupt end with a shake-up in leadership under new ownership of the paper.

At age 60, Stewart found himself out of his publisher's chair, and unsure what the future held.

"I never envisioned leaving the newspaper business,'' Stewart said.

Within hours of losing his job, Stewart said, he was laying awake in bed, thinking to himself, "Here I am, 60 years old, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?''

That's when the idea of taking Warm The Children national came to him. He decided that instead of trying to pick up his career, he and Natalie, who was the coordinator of Warm The Children in Middletown, would trumpet their idea as far and wide as they could.

"Our house is paid for and our kids are all educated, so we said, "Why don't we give it a shot and see if other newspapers will do it? '' Stewart recalled on a recent late fall morning in his home in the back woods of Higganum. One by one, publishers signed on, saying the idea "was the greatest thing they had ever heard of,'' Stewart said.

Bill Sheedy, associate publisher at The Courant and coordinator of Middletown Warm the Children, says the program offers the newspaper and its readers "a wonderful opportunity to reach out to those less fortunate in the community.''

"It's a win-win-win situation,'' he said. ``The paper wins by demonstrating that it is, indeed, a caring corporate partner in the community. Its readers win by providing the funding to buy the clothing and by being volunteer shoppers. And, finally, the children who receive brand new warm winter clothing win by being the recipients of this collaborative effort. And, here's a key ingredient: Absolutely every cent donated goes to buy clothing.''

The Stewarts say growth of the program has given them many rewards. "There are a lot of reasons for its success -- the way that volunteers act as shoppers and they get to do this act of kindness, '' Mack Stewart said.

The up to $80 per child spent by Warm The Children can only be used for children's clothing.

A store is selected ahead of time by Warm The Children, and in many cases, gives the charity program a discount, even beyond sale prices. Kmart in Cromwell, for example -- the store used by the Courant's Middletown-based Warm The Children program -- gives Warm The Children purchases an extra 20 percent off the entire purchase price.

It costs little for a newspaper or one of its bureaus to publicize and coordinate the program in its circulation area. The Courant's Middletown bureau, for example, paid the Stewarts $154.20 for administrative costs for this year's involvement in Warm The Children. Smaller papers pay even less.

Those small fees help cover the Stewarts' phone bills and administrative costs managing the 38 papers in 15 states where Warm The Children programs now operate, from Wisconsin to West Virginia.

The fact that the sponsoring newspapers pay all administrative costs and that volunteers from the community help bring the families shopping allows "every penny that comes in to go toward clothing," Mack Stewart said.

Last year, Warm The Children nationwide took in $5,753 from newspapers and a little more in donations to offset administrative costs of the program, Stewart said. They spent $5,395 mostly on phone bills, postage, office supplies and some limited travel in helping spread the program to more papers.

Since 1993, when the Stewarts began dedicating their energies full- time to Warm The Children, the program has grown from $66,153 in reader donations that year to the 1997-98 figure of $594,524, Stewart said.

One day, the Stewarts hope, Warm The Children will be part of every newspaper's holidays.

As one couple who volunteered as shoppers wrote to the Stewarts:

"My wife and I have just returned from our first trip (as shoppers) for the Warm The Children program. Anyone that has not experienced this program does not yet know the true meaning of Christmas. Thank you.''

 

Warm The Children   P.O. BOX 431 Higganum, CT 06441-0431 Telephone 860-345-4873  FAX: 860 345-3561 E-mail: mack@warmthechildren.org

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