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Students fast learners in season for sharing

Share House, Doernbecher benefit from teens' efforts

By Howard Buck
Published: December 22, 2009, 12:00am

Lest anyone suspect most Clark County teens are simply whittling the hours before they tear the latest iPod, iPhone or i-whatever from gift wrap this week, think again.

Fresh evidence shows young people have a pretty solid grasp of the holiday spirit: Namely, reaching out to others, leaving the “I” behind.

Our tale begins with Union High School senior Kyle Ralston, 17, whose family again had selected used blankets and other items to donate. Recipients would include the Portland Rescue Mission and Vancouver’s own Share House.

That’s just when a cold snap hit town, and Kyle felt compelled to do more.

Clark County residents have been generous this year in donating cold weather gear, Share House outreach case manager Pam Hunt said. Coats, hats, blankets and gloves are in good supply.

What's missing? Socks. "I know that socks are a tremendous thing. They tend to go very quickly," Hunt said. Pants are also appreciated. "It all adds up. It's just a wonderful thing that people do," she said.

“He texted me: He just couldn’t get those (homeless) people off his mind, how cold they must be,” said Kim Ogles, his mother.

Kyle quickly won permission to launch a Union coat-and-blanket drive, which coincided with a weeklong “random acts of kindness” campus campaign.

Come Friday afternoon, the family SUV was stuffed full of gloves, coats and blankets gathered at school, when Kyle, Ogles and her partner drove to Share House headquarters in downtown Vancouver.

“We were feeling pretty good about it, proud of him,” Ogles said.

They were greeted at Share House, but, soon, politely asked to make way. A second group needed the driveway access.

Clark County residents have been generous this year in donating cold weather gear, Share House outreach case manager Pam Hunt said. Coats, hats, blankets and gloves are in good supply.

What’s missing? Socks. “I know that socks are a tremendous thing. They tend to go very quickly,” Hunt said. Pants are also appreciated. “It all adds up. It’s just a wonderful thing that people do,” she said.

Here was a white, long-bed Ford pickup, heaped high with even more items. All Ogles saw were several teen boys wearing Hudson’s Bay High School athletic T-shirts. And big smiles.

“It was neat. I could just tell by the looks on those players’ faces, they just looked excited,” Ogles said. Not only had Kyle and his Union mates delivered, but here were other motivated teens.

“To watch this group of kids from Hudson’s Bay doing the exact same thing, I was just completely overwhelmed with pride,” she said.

It was Bay’s varsity basketball team, capping a community service push head coach Andy Meyer had initiated last spring. The squad, which had struggled on the court, agreed that a holiday shelter drive made a worthy team-building exercise.

“We talked about doing the right thing,” said Meyer, in his third year guiding the Eagles. “They got into it, and kind of got into the cause.”

Meyer set up competition for all boys basketball players, junior varsity and “C” squads included: two points for each coat, one point for a blanket. Players would canvas their families, school friends and others to scare up donations.

By Friday, they had earned an impressive 580 points, or about 300 items, hauled in 55-gallon plastic bags — 13 bags in all.

“This is a huge contribution. I don’t think I’ve seen that many bags,” said Pam Hunt, a Share outreach case manager who works to see that Clark County’s homeless receive gear or shelter to cope with winter’s chill.

The Eagles who accompanied Meyer “just had the most wonderful attitude,” Hunt said. “They were very excited to be doing that, I could just tell.” She found them “polite and respectful,” she said, and invited them to return for a Share House lunch to meet some of those people they had helped.

It was a soaring assist from an urban high school and athletes familiar with challenges.

On Monday came word of yet another effort to spread some Christmas warmth.

Shelby Meader, 17, dropped off 252 gift-wrapped (all but the bigger teddy bears) presents at the lobby of the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland.

It was a culmination of her senior project at Camas High School. She’d left drop boxes at the school, outside Doc Harris Stadium for the Papermakers’ homecoming football game and at the credit union branch where she works part time, she said.

Shelby praised the generosity of Camas students and others.

“I had wanted to get 100 toys,” she said. “It went well over my expectations.”

Howard Buck: 360-735-4515 or howard.buck@columbian.com.

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